Kent E. Portney

American Politics, Political Behavior
Ph.D., Florida State University, 1979

Biography

Kent E. Portney teaches courses in methodology, judicial politics, political behavior, public administration, survey research, and environmental politics. He is the author of Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously: Economic Development, the Environment, and Quality of Life in American Cities (MIT Press, 2003), Approaching Public Policy Analysis (Prentice-Hall, 1986), Siting Hazardous Waste Treatment Facilities: The NIMBY Syndrome (Auburn House, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1991), and Controversial Issues in Environmental Policy (Sage Publications, 1992). He is also the co-author of Acting Civically, published in 2007 by Tufts University Press, and The Rebirth of Urban Democracy (Brookings, 1993), which won the American Political Science Association's 1994 Gladys Kammerer Award for the Best Book in American Politics, and the American Political Science Association Organized Section on Urban Politics' 1994 Best Book in Urban Politics Award; and he is the co-editor of The Distributional Impacts of Public Policies (St. Martin's, 1988). He is also co-editor of Virtual Decisions: Digital Simulations for Teaching Reasoning in the Social Sciences and Humanities published in 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum. He is currently a member of the OECD's Metropolitan Review Panel.

Professor Portney also has written numerous journal articles and book chapters. His article "Civic Engagement and Sustainable Cities in the U.S." appeared in Public Administration Review (2005), his co-authored article, "Mobilizing Minority Communities: Social Capital and Participation in Urban Neighborhoods," appeared in American Behavioral Scientist, (1997), and his article, "Environmental Justice and Sustainability: Is there a Critical Nexus in the Case of Waste Disposal or Treatment Facility Sitting?" appeared in Fordham Urban Law Journal (1994). Portney has held grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Polaroid Foundation.

He received a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement in Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to support the development of Crime and Punishment, a multimedia simulation of the criminal sentencing process in the felony courts, which was selected as an Internet2 Application Showcase project and was featured at H-NET's Envisioning the Future conference. Professor Portney was recipient of the American Political Science Association's 1997 Rowman and Littlefield Award for innovative teaching in Political Science. He also received the APSA section on Information Technology and Politics Award for best instructional software.

Courses

PS 78, Political Behavior of Young People
PS 115, Public Opinion and Survey Research
PS 119EG, E-Government
PS 119JS, Governing in a Partisan Environment
PS 116, Judicial Politics
PS 194, Politics of Environmental Policy in the U.S.
PS 195, Seminar on the Politics of Sustainable Cities

Research & Publications

Prof. Portney's Research Areas:
Click on a Research Area for publications, activities, and related resources.

Student Research:

• Research on the Political and Civic Engagement of Young People
• Other Student Research and Honors Theses

• Review the "Our Green Cities" Climate Action Plan and Green House Gas Inventory Library

Links:

View Prof. Portney's "Our Green Cities" Website and Blog.
 

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