GWIPP Director - Hal Wolman
Hal Wolman is Director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy and a Professor in the Department of Political Science at The George Washington University. Professor Wolman's fields of interest include urban and metropolitan policy and politics, local and regional economic development, housing and community development, and comparative urban policy and politics. Much of his work is interdisciplinary, drawing upon the fields of political science, policy analysis, and economics. He teaches courses in Urban Problems and Policy Analysis; Urban Politics; and Politics and the Policy Process.
Professor Wolman holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan and a Master's in Urban Planning from M.I.T. Prior to coming to George Washington, Dr. Wolman was Director of the Policy Sciences Graduate program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County from 1997-2000. Prior to that he was Professor of Political Science and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University . He also was a Senior Research Associate in the Urban Institute's Public Finance Program from 1978-1984.
In addition to his work in academic and research institutes, Dr. Wolman has experience in the world of public affairs and policy making, both as staff Director of the House Subcommittee on the Cities and as a legislative assistant to Senator Adlai E. Stevenson. He also was Director of Research for the White House conference on Balanced Growth and Economic Development. He has recently served as the staff consultant to the National Research Council's Committee on the Future of American Cities.
Professor Wolman's authored and edited books include Governance and Opportunity in Metropolitan Areas (National Academy Press, 1999), Theories of Urban Politics (Sage Publications, 1995), Urban Politics and Policy: A Comparative Approach (Basil Blackwell, 1992), and Comparing Housing Systems: Housing Performance and Housing Policy in the U.S. and Britain (Oxford University Press, 1992). His research and publications have been on a wide range of subjects, including the effect of population change on urban representation in Congress, city-suburban disparities in income and their causes, the relationship of cities to suburbs, the evaluation of “urban success stories,” the effect of mayoral change on public policy, changing intergovernmental relations, and articles on specific problems and policies in areas such as urban economic development, urban fiscal problems, housing and community development, urban labor markets, welfare, and transportation. Currently he is working on a project, the first stage of which was funded by the FannieMae Foundation and the second stage by the U.S. Geological Survey, to define and measure urban sprawl in the United States, a project funded by the Ford Foundation to examine how some children who grow up in poor households in high poverty neighborhoods nonetheless succeed, and research funded by the Brookings Institution to analyze how cities pursue their interests in the state legislative arena and what coalitions they forge with legislators from other types of areas. He is also involved in research on how local governments learn from the experience of one another in the area of urban revitalization.