Laura Lawson

Laura Lawson is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Dean of Academic Programs in the School for Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MLA and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research includes historical and contemporary community open space, with particular focus on urban agriculture and the changing roles of parks in low-income communities. She is currently working on a collaborative project, Cultivating Justice, to develop a website that explores African American values and experiences in rural and urban agriculture. She is author of City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) and co-author of Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity (Washington DC: Island Press, 2017), Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Urban Community Gardens in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), as well as of numerous publications in academic journals, edited books, and popular media. At Rutgers, Professor Lawson teaches courses focused on social and cultural issues in design and planning.