Rate My Professor John Renne

John Renne, Ph.D., AICP, served as Professor and Director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida Atlantic University from 2016 until early 2025. He previously held positions including Associate Professor and Coordinator of Undergraduate Programs in the School of Urban and Regional Planning. Renne earned his Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Public Policy from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where he also worked as a doctoral student, project manager, teaching assistant, and adjunct lecturer from 2001 to 2004. Earlier in his career, he was affiliated with the University of New Orleans, advancing research on transportation, land use, and urban development. He also held visiting and teaching appointments at institutions such as Murdoch and Curtin Universities in Australia and the University of Oxford.

Renne's academic interests center on transit-oriented development, sustainable urbanism, resilience in transportation systems, emergency evacuation planning for carless and vulnerable populations, walkability measures, gentrification near transit stations, big data applications in housing prices, and AI integration in planning. His scholarship has garnered 3,494 citations. He authored four books, including Adaptation Urbanism and Resilient Communities: Transforming Streets to Address Climate Change (2021), Creating Resilient Transportation Systems (2022), and Transit Oriented Development: Making It Happen (2009). Prominent peer-reviewed articles include "Transit-Induced Gentrification or Vice Versa? A Study of Neighborhoods around Light Rail Stations from 1970–2020" (Journal of the American Planning Association, 2021, with Jyothi Chava), "Big Data, Accessibility, and Urban House Prices" (Urban Studies, 2021, with Steven C. Bourassa, Matin Hoesli, and Louis Merlin), "What Has America Learned Since Hurricane Katrina? Evaluating Evacuation Plans for Carless and Vulnerable Populations in 50 Large Cities across the United States" (2022), and "Associations between Neighborhood Park Space and Cognition in Older Adults" (Health & Place, 2020). Renne co-edited a special issue of Housing Policy Debate (2016) and contributed to reports like "Protecting South Florida: A Discussion of Sea Level Rise, Property and Regional Planning." In 2023, he was named Scholar of the Year at Florida Atlantic University, presented a plenary talk on disasters, older adults, vulnerable populations, and resilience, and was interviewed by Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, NPR, and WFTL radio.