Assistant Director, GIS Operations & Research
Center for Sustainable Communities
Adjunct Faculty
Department of Community & Regional Planning

Meenar's Web Site

Mr. Mahbubur Meenar has spent the last decade developing applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and other technologies to urban and regional analysis. His research interests involve hunger & food insecurity, GIS-based environmental modeling, sustainable urban design & revitalization, and the role of digital technologies & visualization in community engagement.

He joined the Center for Sustainable Communities (CSC) at Temple University in 2002 with responsibilities for GIS research and education, grant writing and web site design. He is the Principal Investigator and or lead GIS specialist on dozens of funded research projects. He has received research funding from Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Philabundance, Upper Dublin Township, and Temple University.

His work has been published in Journal of Planning Literature, Environmental Management, Local Food Geographies: Concepts, Spatial Context, and the Local practices (Reid et al, eds. forthcoming), The Handbook of Research on Geoinformatics (Karimi, ed. 2008), Artificial Crime Analysis Systems: Using Computer Simulations and Geographic Information (Liu and Eck, eds. 2008), Encyclopedia of World Poverty (Odekom, ed. 2006) and Planning.

Mr. Meenar teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in GIS applications, Urban Design and Internet and Digital Technologies at the Department of Community and Regional Planning (CRP). He has also conducted professional GIS application workshops at Temple University. He oversees CRP student tech fee and organizes departmental activities at the annual EarthFest event, which draws 12,000 students to campus for a day of environmental education. In addition, he has served as a Temple University Faculty Mentor, a voting member of the Ambler Campus Sustainability Council, and a member of the Delaware Valley Regional Food Systems Planning Stakeholder Committee.

Mr. Meenar received a master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) with a specialization in Information Technology and GIS in 2002. He worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for Urban Studies and the Regional Institute at SUNY Buffalo from 2000 to 2002.

He earned a bachelor degree in Architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) in 1997 and later joined as a lecturer in the Department of Architecture and Planning at Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh. He also worked as a professional architect from 1997 to 1999. Currently, he is a second year Ph.D. student in Urban Studies program at the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University.

Courses Taught:

C+R PLN 2114/8114 Urban Form and Design (undergraduate and graduate)

C+R PLN 2524/5525 Geographic Information Systems (undergraduate)/ Spatial Analysis Techniques (graduate)

C+R PLN 5525 Advanced Techniques in GIS (graduate)

C+R PLN 3860/8860 Topics in Community and Regional Planning: Internet and Digital Technologies in Communtiy Engagement (undergraduate and graduate, videoconferenced)