Professor David Sawicki, Ph.D., FAICP
Ph.D., Urban and Regional Planning, Cornell University, 1970.
B.S, Civil Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 1965.
Dr. David Sawicki is a professor, jointly appointed to Georgia Tech's City and Regional Planning Program and its School of Public Policy. Through 2010, he is serving as editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Planning Association, the journal of record for both the movement and the profession of planning in the United States. He was recently named a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners (FAICP), and serves on the AICP-exam writing committee of AICP. He is a past president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, the 900-member organization of planning faculty. His specialties include methods of policy analysis and planning, demographic and economic analysis, and forecasting.
David came to Georgia Tech in 1983, bringing with him the newly-emerging micro-computing and geographic informations systems technology. In doing so, he made Georgia Tech into one of the nation’s leading planning programs using technology, principally geographic information systems and analytical methods, to help resolve planning problems. Now, over 20 years later, Georgia Tech’s leadership in GIS and methods-based planning analysis is unparalleled. From 1993 to 2000 David served former President Jimmy Carter as senior advisor for data and policy analysis in the Carter Presidential Center’s Atlanta Project. There he used new GIS technologies to support the planning activities of the many non-profits working with poor neighborhoods in Atlanta.
Through his career he has also contributed in a unique way to the development of the profession. His best-selling textbook, Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning, written with Carl Patton, FAICP, has been used extensively in planning and public policy curricula for more than 20 years. Casey Dawkins, a recent Georgia Tech Ph.D. graduate and a faculty member at Virginia Tech. has joined Carl and David to produce the third edition of Basic Methods.
David spends most of his waking hours on JAPA matters these days. However, he does teach a spring seminar called “Urban Development Policy" (PUBP 6606/CP 6452). Over the years the words "urban policy" have become almost synonymous with "poverty policy," “ghetto policy,” "race policy," “spatial policy,” and "inner city policy." The course explores all these definitions. It is also a course in the economic development sequences in both city and regional planning and public policy; however, it does not have an E.D. prerequisite. The course spends a good deal of time exploring economic development paradigms and approaches for big cities and inner cities.
Most of Dr. Sawicki’s advisees work on urban policy questions, many with an economic development focus. However, as editor of JAPA, he is widely read and able to guide students in quite a number of different research directions.