Professor John Keene joined the Temple University Ambler Community and Regional Planning faculty three years ago after several decades of experience in the field. His teaching and research interests have centered on the legal aspects of city and regional planning, growth management techniques and policy concerns, land development regulation, legal and policy issues relating to brownfield remediation, policy analysis of techniques for the protecting farmland, environmental planning and law, and urban law.
Prior to joining the Department, he was a professor of City and Regional Planning in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania from 1966 to 2006 — he was chair of the Department from November 1989 to June 1993. Prior to becoming a member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty, he was associated with the law firm of Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz, in Philadelphia.
In the fall of 2006, he was a Visiting Professor at Bryn Mawr College. He has taught courses such as Analysis and Evaluation of Innovative Methods of Managing Urban Growth; Urban Law; Historic, Scientific, and Policy Dimensions of Brownfields; Environmental Law; and the Law of Planning and Urban Development. He is currently a visiting professor at Haverford College where he teaches a course on “Social Justice and the American Judicial System.” He continues to teach several courses at Penn in the planning field. He is also serving as the University Ombudsman at Penn.
Professor Keene has been actively engaged in research and writing in two major fields: Land Use Control and Management of Urban Growth, and Policy Analysis in Farmland Protection. His article on “regulatory takings,” entitled “When Does a Regulation ‘Go Too Far:’ the Supreme Court’s Analytical Framework for Drawing the Line between an Exercise of the Police Power and n Exercise of the Power of Eminent Domain,” which analyzes recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning this centrally important issue in growth management and land development regulation, was published in the Penn State Environmental Law Review in 2006.
Professor Keene received the Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching in the School of Design in May 2005 and the Lindback Award in April 2004. He has been a member of the American Planning Association since 1970 and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners since 1971.
