John C. Keene, MCP, JD
Adjunct Professor
Department of Community and Regional Planning
Dr. John Keene joins the Temple University Ambler Community and Regional Planning faculty with several decades of experience in the field.
Dr. Keene's 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, urban law, and regional planning.
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 from November 1989 to June 1993. Prior to becoming part of the University of Pennsylvania faculty, he was associated with the law practice of Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz, in Philadelphia. He served in the U.S. Navy as a CIC Officer and Operations Officer on a destroyer escort from 1953 to 1956.
In Fall 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; Law of Planning and Urban Development; Emerging Issues in Environmental Planning; Energy Law; and Legal Methods for Protecting Farmland.
Dr. 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.
In 2001, with a colleague, Nancy Mohr, he received a grant from the William Penn Foundation to explore the reasons for the widespread opposition to "walkable community" development proposals in the Philadelphia suburbs. He has published an 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," that analyzes recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning this centrally important issue in growth management and land development regulation.
Dr. 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 was a recipient of one of four Lindback awards in recognition of distinguished teaching, given annually to faculty in the eight non-health schools at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a member of the American Planning Association since 1970 and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners from 1971 to present.
