Stefan P Chavez-Norgaard
Teaching Assistant Professor
303-871-4356 (Office)
https://www.stefannorgaard.com/
Sié Chéou-Kang Center, 2201 S. Gaylord St Denver, CO 80208
What I do
I am a scholar who researches urban politics, planning, and development. I consider urban planning institutionally, as a negotiated and historically informed social relation. My research interests include urban and planning theory, local-government and planning law, public policy and planning implementation, ethics and public policy, and planning practice and urban governance in the related but distinct late-liberal contexts of South Africa and the United States.
Broadly, I study how communities engage, contest, and repurpose state-led and corporate-led planning schemes and the resultant composition of cities, regions, and territories. I draw on mixed-methods research, institutional analysis, urban planning history and theory, and planning law. My research lies at the intersection of public policy, democracy, and equitable urban development, focusing on the everyday local state through on-the-ground institutions of urban planning. Geographically, I focus on post-apartheid South Africa and the United States.
A primary, active strand of research considers resident tactics of bottom-up accommodation, negotiation, and resistance to apartheid-era spatial planning practice in one former South African "Bantustan" capital city, a non-white receiving site of widespread forced relocation, Mmabatho and today Mahikeng, North West, South Africa. My Columbia University dissertation, available to read and engage in Columbia's Academic Commons web portal and included as an activity on Watermark, considered specific tactics of repurposing in Mahikeng. In Mahikeng, residents have repurposed top-down technocratic planning premises with an array of multi-actor amalgams, creative assemblages, and heterogeneous spatial forms. Residents respond to public architecture and planning with amalgams that remain subject to contestation, disruption, repurposing, and innovation. I believe that repurposing is a glimpse into grassroots popular democracy. From my research, a general lesson applicable to the field of urban planning and processes of urbanization emerges: planning does not end with the plan; it merely begins with the plan. My interest lies in how those relocated residents, those whom we might call the “planned upon,” received colonial and apartheid plans, and how varied resistances produced, fomented, or otherwise reworked master-planning premises. To engage such processes, I draw on institutional analysis and mixed methods including archival research, semi-structured interviews, and a close analytic readings of built sites. I find that Residents' responses to public architecture and planning themselves remain subject to contestation, disruption, repurposing, and innovation. These responses of repurposing stem from healing, but also for both universal and contextually specific demands for human dignity, economic equality, and social justice.
A second active strand of research explores demands for "equitable development" in the United States and specifically Denver, CO. I investigate equitable-development opportunities and imperatives in Denver through examination of historical and contemporary housing, land use, and transportation planning projects, and the links between them.
Broadly, my research considers the ways in which land, law, and property condition urban planning, and how planning is embedded, historicized, and institutionalized within specific community contexts, power relations, and socioeconomic struggles.
Specialization(s)
Topics of expertise include urban and planning theory, local-government and planning law, public policy and planning implementation, ethics and public policy
Professional Biography
I am a Teaching Assistant Professor in Public Policy at the Douglas and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy at the University of Denver (DU's) Josef Korbel School of International Studies. I was previously a PhD Candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University. During the 2023–2024 academic year, I was based in Cambridge, MA, as a Research Assistant with the Bloomberg Center for Cities, a Visiting Democracy Fellow with Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance, and a scholar-in-residence at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
I hold a PhD in Urban Planning from Columbia University, where research and coursework focused on planning history and theory; local government and planning law; political economy and world systems; urban governance and democracy; and African urbanism with a focus on South Africa.
I also hold a Master's in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, where I served as Managing Editor for the Kennedy School Review (KSR), Teaching Fellow for Professors Roberto Unger and Cornel West at Harvard Law School, and Course Assistant for Quinton Mayne's "Urban Politics" class. While at HKS, I worked on developing negotiation analytic teaching cases with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative (BHCLI) in 2019, and in 2018 supported the OECD's Champion Mayors Team, developing program strategy, research, execution, and implementation in Paris, France.
In 2015 I graduated from Stanford University (Major: Public Policy and Urban Studies). My honor’s thesis centered on South Africa’s youth population and its potential to change social and political structures. This thesis built on study-abroad experience with Stanford in Cape Town and my work with the U.S. Department of State’s South Africa desk. I served as Chair of Stanford in Government (SIG) to explore the roles of government and public service in envisioning and operationalizing social justice.
Prior to my PhD at Columbia, I worked as a Negotiation Research Fellow with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative (2019). Previously, from 2016 to 2017, I served as an NYC Urban Fellow with the New York City Department of Transportation, working on public space planning and design with the DOT Urban Design, Art, and Wayfinding teams. From 2015 to 2016, I worked on the Ford Foundation's Equitable Development team, focusing on housing insecurity, access to opportunity, and equitable urban infrastructure and decision-making in both domestic and global contexts.
I hold a PhD in Urban Planning from Columbia University, where research and coursework focused on planning history and theory; local government and planning law; political economy and world systems; urban governance and democracy; and African urbanism with a focus on South Africa.
I also hold a Master's in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, where I served as Managing Editor for the Kennedy School Review (KSR), Teaching Fellow for Professors Roberto Unger and Cornel West at Harvard Law School, and Course Assistant for Quinton Mayne's "Urban Politics" class. While at HKS, I worked on developing negotiation analytic teaching cases with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative (BHCLI) in 2019, and in 2018 supported the OECD's Champion Mayors Team, developing program strategy, research, execution, and implementation in Paris, France.
In 2015 I graduated from Stanford University (Major: Public Policy and Urban Studies). My honor’s thesis centered on South Africa’s youth population and its potential to change social and political structures. This thesis built on study-abroad experience with Stanford in Cape Town and my work with the U.S. Department of State’s South Africa desk. I served as Chair of Stanford in Government (SIG) to explore the roles of government and public service in envisioning and operationalizing social justice.
Prior to my PhD at Columbia, I worked as a Negotiation Research Fellow with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative (2019). Previously, from 2016 to 2017, I served as an NYC Urban Fellow with the New York City Department of Transportation, working on public space planning and design with the DOT Urban Design, Art, and Wayfinding teams. From 2015 to 2016, I worked on the Ford Foundation's Equitable Development team, focusing on housing insecurity, access to opportunity, and equitable urban infrastructure and decision-making in both domestic and global contexts.
Degree(s)
- Ph.D., Urban Planning, Columbia University, 2024
- MPP, Political and Economic Development, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2019
- BA, Public Policy, Urban Studies, Stanford University, 2015
Research
Using institutional analysis, I study the intersection of urban politics, planning, and development. I consider in particular the implementation of urban plans and policies, how residents contest and repurpose formal built sites and plans, and the resultant socio-spatial composition of planned spaces. I believe that it is in this resident-driven engagement and contestation that possibilities for grassroots popular democracy can be cultivated.
My Columbia University dissertation examined planning, implementation, contestation, and repurposing in the South African city of Mahikeng (a former "Bantustan" capital city during apartheid and today the capital city of South Africa's North West Province).
My Columbia University dissertation examined planning, implementation, contestation, and repurposing in the South African city of Mahikeng (a former "Bantustan" capital city during apartheid and today the capital city of South Africa's North West Province).
Areas of Research
Areas of research include urban and planning history
urban theory
planning theory
international development planning with a focus on South Africa
informality in urban planning and development
planning implementation
transportation planning
and land-use planning.
