Niraj Verma

Professor and Chair

office: 116A Hayes Hall
phone: 829.3485 x 109
e-mail: nverma3@buffalo.edu

Education

B.S. Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology,Ranchi, India
M.Infrastructure Planning, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Ph.D. (Design Theories & Methods) University of California, Berkeley

Courses

Dr. Verma's teaching repertoire includes theoretical and applied courses at graduate and undergraduate levels.  Since joining the department as Chair in 2006 he has regularly taught the core Planning Theory course for master’s students as well as the required Colloquium for graduate students.  In addition Dr. Verma has designed and led a summer studio to Stuttgart, Germany.  The studio design was cited by the International Institute of Education (IIE) as a Best Practice for international education and received honorable mention in the 2008 Heiskell Awards competition for study abroad.  Before coming to the University at Buffalo, Dr. Verma taught in the planning and public administration programs at the University of Southern California where he served as Director of Doctoral Programs.

Research

Dr. Verma's research focuses on the professional and intellectual environment within which planning and design flourish.  Through a series of articles and his first book, Niraj Verma’s early contribution was in clarifying, formalizing, and applying an idea of “pragmatic rationality” that draws on American pragmatism and particularly on the writings of William James. Applications of pragmatic rationality are found in Verma’s writings on sustainable development, metaphor and analogy as methods of design, new social movements, negotiation and consensus building, and the new institutionalism. The institutional interest has resulted in an edited book and multiple grant-supported work that casts public participation as a way of reducing the transaction costs of stakeholder interactions.  Recent applications include freight transportation in the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and transit planning in Buffalo, NY. 


Niraj Verma’s current research aims to study some recent policy initiatives, such as "Three Strikes Law," "Term Limits," and "Zero Tolerance Against Drugs" as examples of risk avoidance strategies in an effort to understand the motivations behind these policies. In a manuscript currently under development, Verma argues that these seemingly dissimilar problems share important characteristics, and understanding these commonalities illuminates new ways of thinking about these three policies.

Selected Publications

  • “Pragmatic Ethics and Sustainable Development,” in Huw Thomas and F. Piccolo (eds.) Planning Ethics.  London: Ashgate (in press). 2009.
  • "Pragmatic Rationality and Planning Theory,” in Jean Hillier and Patsy Healey (ed.) Critical Essays in Planning Theory, Vol. 2: Political Economy, Diversity, and Pragmatism.  Aldershot (U.K.): Ashgate, 2008.  Reprinted from Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 16, 5-14.
  • “Communicative Action and the Network Society: A Pragmatic Marriage," (with HaeRan Shin), Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 24: 131-140, 2004. Reprinted in Seymour Mandelbaum and Loius Albrechts (ed.) Planning the Network Society.  London: Routlege, 2006.
  • “Open moral communities and the Myth of theArmchair Theorist," Planning Theory, 5, 2006.
  • “Communicative Rationality, Marx, and the Pragmatists: A Revisionist Reading" (with HaeRan Shin), Planning Theory (forthcoming).
  • Similarities, Connections, and Systems: The Search for a New Rationality for Planning and Management, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 1998.
  • Institutions and Planning (edited), Oxford: Elsevier, 2006.