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Memoir
Robert L. Fishman
Regents' Proceedings
Regents' Proceedings
Robert L. Fishman, Ph.D., professor of architecture and urban and regional planning in the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, retired from active faculty status on May 31, 2022.
Professor Fishman received his A.B. degree in history from Stanford University in 1968 and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University in 1969 and 1974, respectively. He began his academic career as an assistant professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, Camden in 1974, rising through the ranks to professor of history in 1988. In 2000, Professor Fishman joined the faculty of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and was appointed as the Emil Lorch Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning from 2006-2009 and served as interim chair of architecture in 2013 and interim dean of the College from 2016-2017. He also served as co-principal investigator for the Michigan-Mellon Project on the Egalitarian Metropolis funded for $1.1 million dollars from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 2019-2022.
Professor Fishman is a nationally recognized expert in the areas of urban history and urban policy and planning. He is the author of two books regarded as seminal texts on the history of cities and urbanism: Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (1987) and Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier (1977). His contributions have been recognized by numerous awards and distinguished lectureships. Professor Fishman was bestowed the Laurence Gerckens Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Society for American City and Regional Planning History in 2009. His esteemed lectureships include the Urban Studies Lectureship at the University of Pennsylvania and the Lansdowne Lectureship at the University of British Columbia in 2002. From 2005 to 2019, he served as associate editor and member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American Planning Association. In 2003, he was named president of the Urban History Association.
The Regents now salute this distinguished architecture and urban design educator for his dedicated service by naming Robert L. Fishman, professor emeritus of architecture and urban and regional planning.