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Michael Rios joined the University of California, Davis faculty in July 2007. Previously, he held a joint faculty appointment in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University. While at Penn State, Professor Rios also received his Ph.D. in geography and was inaugural director of the Hamer Center for Community Design from 1999-2007. He received his Master of Architecture and Master of City Planning degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.
Michael Rios's research focuses on the relationships between space, action, and identity, with a primary focus on urbanism and placemaking in U.S. cities. Urbanism and placemaking provide a lens from which to analyze, interrogate, and reflect upon contemporary practice and highlights the tensions that exist between the state and civil society groups, professionals and the publics they purport to serve. The aim of this collective work is to understand how institutions, practitioners, and citizens develop capacities for collective action, praxis, and meaningful participation as members of political communities. He has published articles on these topics in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of Park and Recreation Management, the Berkeley Planning Journal, and the Journal of Urban Design. He has also contributed chapters in a number of books including: Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (Routledge), Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism (Metropolis), Partnerships for Empowerment: Participatory Research for Community-based Natural Resource Management (Earthscan), Good Deeds, Good Design: Community Service through Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press), and From the Studio to the Streets: Service Learning in Architecture and Planning (Stylus). Michael's recent work includes research on placemaking in Latino communities, the design of multi-ethnic spaces, and post-disaster planning and urbanism.
In his teaching, Professor Rios provides a cross-disciplinary perspective among the spatial fields of architecture, geography, landscape architecture, and urban planning. Some examples include courses on urbanism and placemaking, citizenship and public space, post-disaster urbanism, urban and community design. He is on the executive committee of the Center for Regional Change, and was president of the Association for Community Design (2003-2005) and a founding member of the Pennsylvania Advocates for Nutrition and Activity (2001-2007).
2/8/2010
