Ernest Sternberg

Professor

office : 279 Hayes Hall
phone : 829.2133 x 224
e-mail : ezs@buffalo.edu
website: www.ap.buffalo.edu/~ezs

Education

B.A. (social sciences), Empire State College
M.S. (development sociology and Southeast Asian studies), Cornell University
Ph.D. (city and regional planning), Cornell University

Courses

Dr. Sternberg teaches a graduate planning studio, which has taken on topics ranging from heritage development to wind energy planning.  Land Use and Physical Planning serves as a general introduction to roles of planners in shaping the built environment. He also teaches Planning Concepts and Controversies, the department's course on planning theory and ethics.

Research

Dr. Sternberg’s current work is on the ethics of complex decision making to avert disasters, whether from terrorism or natural or technological hazards. His earlier research has examined complex resources whose allocation requires public planning because they are not effectively allocated by pure markets. He pursued this topic through successive studies of resource types, including technological research endowments, cultural and heritage resources, urban physical form and infrastructure systems, and (the opposite of such resources) geophysical and technological hazards. Some of the results may be seen in the publications listed below.

Public service

In fall 2005, Dr. Sternberg organized a State University of New York system-wide “Conversation in the Disciplines,” bringing together researchers to discuss “Scholarship on Homeland Security: Exploring the Intellectual Territory.”  Otherwise, his most active service has been in his role as a member of the editorial board at State University of New York Press, where he participates in the final screening of scholarly manuscripts before they are accepted for publication.

Selected publications

  • "Classical Precariousness versus Modern Risk: Lessons in Prudence." Humanitas (forthcoming).
  • "Counting Crises: US Hospital Evacuations 1971-1999," (with George C. Lee and Daniel Huard). Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. (2004)
  • "Planning for Resilience in Hospital Internal Disaster." (2003). Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. Vol. 18, No. 4
  • "Educating the Economic Strategist." (2002). in James Dator, ed., Advancing Futures: Futures Studies in Higher Education. Westport, CT: Praeger
  • "What Makes Buildings Catalytic? How Cultural Facilities Spur Surrounding Development." (2002). Journal of Architecture and Planning Research. Vol. 19, No. 1
  • “An Integrative Theory of Urban Design.” (2000). Journal of the American Planning Association. Vol. 66, No. 3
  • The Economy of Icons: How Business Manufactures Meaning. (1999). Westport, CT: Praeger
  • “Transformations: The Forces of Capitalist Change.” (1999). in Kenneth Taylor and William E. Halal, eds., 21st Century Economics. Boston, MA: St. Martin’s Press
  • “The Iconography of the Tourism Experience.” (1997). Annals of Tourism Research. Vol. 24
  • "Recuperating from Market Failure: Planning for Biodiversity and Technological Competitiveness." (1996). Public Administration Review. Vol. 56, January/February
  • Photonic Technology and Industrial Policy: U.S. Responses to Technological Change. (1992). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press