Dr. Vikas Mehta
Fruth/Gemini Chair and Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban/Environmental Design and Professor of Urbanism
Vikas Mehta, Ph.D., is the Fruth/Gemini Chair of Communication in the Urban Environment (CUE), the Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban/Environmental Design and Professor of Urbanism in the School of Planning, College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati. He is the coordinator of the Urban Design Certificate at DAAP, University of Cincinnati. Dr. Mehta is also a research scholar at the Center for the Future of Places, KTH University in Stockholm, Sweden.
Dr. Mehta is interested in various dimensions of urbanity through the exploration of place as a social and ecological setting and as a sensorial art. His work focuses on the role of design and planning in creating a more responsive, equitable, supportive and communicative environment. This work emphasizes the sense of place and place distinctiveness, design and visualization of urban places and activities, and cities and regions as just, equitable, and sustainable living systems.
Dr. Mehta is the author of 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School (2018, with Matthew Frederick), Public Space, an edited 4-volume anthology (Routledge, 2015) and The Street: a quintessential social public space (Routledge, 2013 and 2014), that received the 2014 Book Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and was also a finalist for the 2014 Francis Tibbalds Award for the Best Book of the Year. Currently, he is co-editing the Companion to Public Space (Routledge) that will contain 50 new chapters by the best-known international scholars and practitioners in numerous disciplines. Dr. Mehta has published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Urbanism, Environment and Behavior, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Urban Design International, Children, Youth and Environments, International Journal of Signage and Wayfinding, and other journals. Dr. Mehta's research on the urban street, published in 2007 in the Journal of Planning Education and Research was one of nine papers that were selected as the “best of recent North American planning scholarship.” The paper also received honorable mention for the best paper in 2007. Dr. Mehta has contributed several chapters in books in urban design and planning. Dr. Mehta is also the co-editor of the Journal Children, Youth and Environments and a reviewer for numerous journals in urban design, planning, urban studies, architecture, and landscape architecture. In addition to his teaching and research, Dr. Mehta is the chairing committee member of the Trans-Disciplinary Research Leadership Program at the University of Cincinnati.