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Joshua Newell

Josh Newell
Professor of Environment and Sustainability
Environmental Justice
Sustainable Systems
Cities + Mobility + Built Environment
jpnewell@umich.edu
(734)- 763-8652
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Dana 1064
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Lightning Talk VIDEO: Cities + Mobility + Built Environment

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About

Joshua Newell is a professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He is a broadly trained human-environment geographer, whose research focuses on questions related to urban sustainability, resource consumption, and environmental and social justice. Newell’s current research can be divided into two primary areas of interest. The first, Urban Infrastructure and Form, focuses on structural features of the urban form (e.g. built environment, transport, energy, and water infrastructure). The second research area, Urban Consumption and Commodities, focuses on the interrelationships between the consumption of consumer products, our responsibilities as global 'green' urban citizens, and the role of governance mechanisms and frameworks (including local institutions) in regulating product consumption. His research approach is often multi-scalar and integrative and, in addition to theory and method found in geography and urban planning, he draws upon principles and tools of industrial ecology, and spatial analysis. He teaches Sustainability and Society, a large undergraduate course, and Urban Sustainability, which is designed for MS and PhD students. He also leads a year-long interdisciplinary PhD student workshop that grapples with theories and concepts of urbanism, sustainability, and resilience.

Publications

  • 2020.  Goldstein, B.*, Gounaridis, D.* and Newell, J.P. The carbon footprint of residential energy use in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Accepted.

  • 2020. Newell, J.P. and A. Ramaswami. Urban food-energy-water systems: Past, current, and future research trajectories. Environmental Research Letters. 15: 05201

  • 2020. Goldstein, B.*, and Newell, J.P. How to track corporations across space and time (TRACAST).  Ecological Economics. 169: 106492.

  • 2019. Meerow, S., and Newell, J.P. Urban resilience for whom, what, when, where, and why?  Urban Geography. 40 (3): 309-329. Note: Web of Science Highly Cited Paper (Top 1% of Social Sciences

  • 2019. Foster, A.*, and Newell, J.P. Detroit’s lines of desire: Informal footpaths and vacant land in the motor city. Landscape and Urban Planning. 189: 260-273.

  • 2019. Newell, J.P., Goldstein, B.*, and Foster, A*. A 40-Year review of food-energy-water nexus literature and its application to the urban scale. Environmental Research Letters. 14(7).

Read more publications here.

Research

Current Projects

The Sustainability Hoofprint of Cities: A Spatial Model to Assess Transboundary Urban Consumption. National Science Foundation (NSF), 2018-2021. PI: J.P. Newell (U. Michigan). Co-PI: Jennifer Schmidt (U. Minnesota). $313,049   

Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: The FEW-Meter - An Integrative Model to Measure and Improve Urban Agriculture, Shifting It Towards Circular Urban Metabolism. National Science Foundation (NSF), 2018-2021. Five PIs in five countries. U.S. PI: J.P. Newell (U. Michigan). [U. Michigan Portion: $399,500] $2,000,000

U.S.-China: Integrated Systems Modeling of Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus for Urban Sustainability. National Science Foundation (NSF), 2016-2020. PI: Ming Xu (U. Michigan). Co-PIs: J.P. Newell (U. Michigan), S. Miller (U. Michigan), J. Johnson (U. Michigan), N. Love (U. Michigan). $499,000

SRN: Integrated Urban Infrastructure Solutions for Environmentally Sustainable, Healthy and Livable Cities. National Science Foundation (NSF), 2015-2020. $12,000,000

PIs: A. Ramaswami (U. Minnesota), P.J. Culligan (Columbia University), Y. Fan (U. Minnesota), B.S. Orlove (Columbia University), A.G. Russell (Georgia Institute of Technology)             

Senior Personnel: J.P. Newell (U. Michigan), R. Felock (Florida State University), B. Bakshi (Ohio State University), K. Kockelman (UT – Austin), D. Zimmerle (Colorado State University), N. Botchwey (Georgia Institute of Technology) [U. Michigan Portion: $750,000]

Expanding Green Infrastructure as a Response to Environmental Injustice and Climate Change. National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), 2018–2020. $140,000

PI: J.P. Newell (U. Michigan)        Co-PIs: Robert Goodspeed (U. Michigan), Richard Rood (U. Michigan), D. Gounaridis (U. Michigan)

Education

PhD, University of Washington (geography)

MA, University of Washington (geography)

BA, Brown University (history)

Affiliations
  • Chair, Human Dimensions of Global Change Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) (2012–2014).
  • Technical Committee, International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) Conference (2013).
  • Founding Board Member, Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Section, ISIE (2011-2015).
In the News
SEAS research teams chosen for new Boost program
September 7, 2023

SEAS research teams chosen for new Boost program

The Bold Challenges Initiative has selected eight interdisciplinary teams, including three whose members are from the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS)...

Palm oil plantations and deforestation in Guatemala: Certifying products as ‘sustainable’ is no panacea
July 20, 2023

Palm oil plantations and deforestation in Guatemala: Certifying products as ‘sustainable’ is no panacea

Contact: Jim Erickson Cheap, versatile and easy to grow, palm oil is the world’s most consumed vegetable oil and is found in roughly half of all packaged supermarket...

Future of Big Data
News date
May 22, 2023

Meet the Future: Big Data and Sustainability Solutions

Thanks to the digital revolution, a burgeoning amount of big data is available in real-time on a mass scale. Big data is a collection of larger, more complex data sets...

change in transportation energy burden
January 11, 2023

EV transition will benefit most US vehicle owners, but lowest-income Americans could get left behind

Contact: Jim Erickson ANN ARBOR—More than 90% of vehicle-owning households in the United States would see a reduction in the percentage of income spent on transportation...

Faculty Accolades
News date
November 1, 2022

Faculty Accolades

Professor Paul Mohai was appointed senior policy adviser at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He joined the Office of Environmental Justice as an expert on...

forest
News date
November 1, 2022

Research Highlights

More Tree Species to be Discovered A study involving more than 100 scientists from across the globe and the largest forest database yet assembled estimates that there are...

Do urban gardens lead to gentrification? Not in Detroit, study finds
May 25, 2022

Do urban gardens lead to gentrification? Not in Detroit, study finds

A wide-scale look at Detroit’s urban gardens finds that while they don’t seem to foreshadow gentrification in the city, there are some unsettling trends about where they...

Urban agriculture in Detroit: Scattering vs. clustering and the prospects for scaling up
April 4, 2022

Urban agriculture in Detroit: Scattering vs. clustering and the prospects for scaling up

ericksn@umich.edu Despite Detroit’s reputation as a mecca for urban agriculture, a new University of Michigan-led analysis of the city’s Lower Eastside, which covers 15...

In the Media
08/02/2023
Joshua Newell
Detroit farms, gardens still fighting for right to flourish (The Detroit News)
01/27/2023
Joshua Newell
EV adoption doesn’t lighten energy costs for all American families (Popular Science)
01/11/2023
Joshua Newell
Most US car owners would benefit from EV switch, but lowest-income Americans could be left behind: study (The Hill)
01/11/2023
Greg Keoleian
Joshua Newell
Switching to EVs will save nearly everyone money and reduce carbon emissions, study says (MLive)
01/11/2023
Joshua Newell
Seven in 10 U.S. Drivers Could Halve Their Fuel Costs by Going Electric, Study Finds (Yale Environment 360)
04/11/2022
Joshua Newell
Study: Scattered Strategy Best Approach to Scaling Up Urban Agriculture in Detroit (DBusiness)
04/08/2022
Joshua Newell
The Untapped Potential for Urban Agriculture in Detroit (Modern Farmer)
04/07/2022
Joshua Newell
Detroit Evening Report: April 7, 2022: Scattering community gardens on Detroit’s lower eastside could help community, report says (WDET FM)
04/04/2022
Joshua Newell
Why isn't more vacant land in Detroit used for gardening? (Michigan Radio)
11/29/2021
Joshua Newell
Tony Reames
White Neighborhoods Have Higher Carbon Emissions (Futurity)
11/23/2021
Joshua Newell
Despite better energy efficiency, larger suburban homes cause more greenhouse gases (Michigan Radio)
11/01/2020
Joshua Newell
Benjamin Paul Goldstein
Neighborhood Wealth Dramatically Impacts Home Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Scientific American)
09/01/2019
Joshua Newell
Visible from outer space, Detroit's unofficial pathways could play important role in land redevelopment
09/01/2019
Joshua Newell
Detroit's unofficial footpaths could play important role in land development, researchers say
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