Moira Zellner

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and an affiliated researcher with the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy (IESP) at UIC. I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and earned my undergraduate degree in ecology at the Centro de Altos Estudios en Ciencias Exactas. My doctoral degree is in urban and regional planning from the University of Michigan. I also got my certificate in the study of complex systems at UM. Before coming to the US, I worked in Argentina as a consultant on environmental issues for local and international environmental engineering firms and for the undersecretary of Environment in the City of Buenos Aires. In the US, my professional work includes greenway development and river restoration projects in Miami Beach and in California, and transportation surveys. My current research involves assessing the environmental impacts of urbanization, and exploring how to enhance the sustainability and resilience of urban areas. The focus is on how specific policy and behavioral changes can effectively address complex environmental problems, in which decentralized decisions result in regional land-use and consumption patterns that negatively affect resource availability and quality. My research also examines the applicability of complexity theory and complexity-based models to policy exploration and social learning.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Zellner, M. L.; Page, S. E.; Rand, W.; Brown, D. G.; Robinson, D. T.; Nassauer, J.; Low, B.; 2009. "The Emergence of Zoning Games in Exurban Jurisdictions." Land Use Policy 26 (2009): 356-367.

Lu, Y.; Kawamura, K.; Zellner, M. L.. "Exploring the Influence of Urban Form on Work Travel Behavior with Agent-Based Modeling." Journal of the Transportation Research Record, (2082): 132-40.

Zellner, M. L.; 2008. “Embracing Complexity and Uncertainty: The Potential of Agent-Based Modeling for Environmental Planning and Policy.” Planning Theory and Practice 9 (4): 437-457.

Zellner, M. L.; Theis, T. L.; Karunanithi, A. T.; Garmestani, A. S.; Cabezas, H.; 2008. “A New Framework for Urban Sustainability Assessments: Linking Complexity, Information and Policy.” Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Special Issue on Geocomputation: Modeling with Spatial Agents 32 (6): 474-488.

Brown, D.G.; Robinson, D.T., An, L.; Nassauer, J. I.; Zellner, M. L; Rand, W.; Riolo, R.; Page, S. E.; Low, B.; Wang, Z.; 2008. “Exurbia from the bottom-up: Confronting empirical challenges to characterizing a complex system.” Geoforum 39 (2):805-818.

Zellner, M. L.; 2007. “Generating Policies for Sustainable Water Use in Complex Scenarios: An Integrated Land-Use and Water-Use Model of Monroe County, Michigan.” Environment and Planning B, Planning and Design 34 (4): 664-686. Brown, D. G.; Page, S. E.; Riolo, R.; Zellner, M. L.; Rand. W.; 2005. “Path dependence and the validation of agent-based spatial models of land use.” International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Special Issue on Land Use Dynamics 19 (2): 153-174.

Brown, D. G.; Page, S. E.; Riolo, R.; Zellner, M. L.; Rand. W.; 2005. “Path dependence and the validation of agent-based spatial models of land use.” International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Special Issue on Land Use Dynamics 19 (2): 153-174.