JANICE E. PERLMAN

Janice E. Perlman holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. Her book, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro, received the C. Wright Mills Award in 1976 for the year’s most outstanding contribution to public policy for social problems and is widely used around the world by students and scholars of urbanization. Her many other publications include "Grassrooting the System," which has been reprinted in over 40 publications, and "Misconceptions About the Urban Poor and the Dynamics of Housing Policy Evolution," which won the Chester Rapkin Award in 1988.

Dr. Perlman’s 25 years of experience in urban development include serving as a Coordinator of President Carter’s Neighborhood Task Force on Urban Policy; Special Advisor to the World Bank’s Urban Projects Department; Executive Director of Strategic Planning for the New York City Partnership; Director of Science and Public Policy at the New York Academy of Sciences; consultant to various non-profit organizations and local and national governments in the USA and abroad.

Dr. Janice Perlman is founder and current President and Executive Director of the Mega-Cities Project, Inc., a transnational nonprofit network with headquarters at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, which attempts to improve the lot of urban dwellers around the world by analyzing the conditions that foster urban innovations and discovering workable solutions to them, often invented by people at the local level. The idea is to make cities worldwide more livable places by taking good ideas from one place and trying to make them work in another.

Mega-Cities concentrates its efforts to make cities more socially just, ecologically sustainable, politically participatory and economically vital in four high-priority areas: 1.Environmental Regeneration (toward circular systems for water, sanitation, garbage, food, and energy).

2.Poverty and Income Generation (toward alleviating poverty and strengthening the informal sector).

3.Decentralization and Democratization (toward greater local participation in planning, service delivery, resource allocation, and urban management).

4.Women's Empowerment and Well-Being (toward greater choice, access, and voice).

Dr. Perlman is a also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Development Council and serves on several boards and committees, including the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Panel on Environmental Health, and the National Preparatory Committee for HABITAT II.

The Mega-Cities Project, Inc.
Trinity College
300 Summit Street
Hartford, CT 06106
Tel: (860) 297-4035
Fax: (860-297-4079
megacities@trincoll.org