Royce Hanson

Research Professor

Contact:

Email: Royce Hanson

805 21st Street NW Washington DC 20052

Royce Hanson’s research spans urban and metropolitan policy, planning, and politics, and constitutional law.

The Nation’s Metropolis: The Economy, Politics, and Development of Metropolitan Washington, co-authored with Harold Woman, will be published in early 2023 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The only book focused on the development and political economy of the national capital region, The Nation’s Metropolis describes how it functions as a metropolitan political economy and focuses on four major themes: the federal government as the region’s basic industry and its role in economic, physical, and political development; race as a core force in the development of the metropolis; the mismatch of the governance and economy of the national capital region; and the conundrum of fully democratic governance for Washington, DC. Critical regional issues and policy problems are analyzed in the context of these themes, including poverty, inequality, education, housing, transportation, water supply, and governance. Hanson and Wolman conclude that the institutions and practices that accrued over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are inadequate for dealing effectively with the issues confronting the city and the region in the twenty-first. The accumulation of problems arising from the unique role of the federal government and the persistent role of race has been compounded by failure to resolve the conundrum of governance for the District of Columbia and the region in ways that reconcile the federal interests in the capital with tenets of democracy the capital purports to symbolize. They conclude by rethinking the governance of Washington and the region.

Selected Publications

Rorschach Tests, Art Criticism, and the Jurisprudence of Gerrymandering. Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy 2(2): 355-374 (June 2012)

Corporate Citizenship and Urban Problem Solving: The Changing Civic Role of Business Leaders in American Cities. Journal of Urban Affairs 32(1):1-23 (2010). With Harold Wolman, David Connolly, Katherine Pearson, and Robert McManmon.

The Fundamental Challenge in Measuring Sprawl: Which Land Should Be Considered? Professional Geographer 57(1): 94-105 (2005). With Hal Wolman, George Galster, Michael R. Ratcliffe, K. Furdell, and Andrea Sarzinski.

Patterns and Processes of Sprawl: Phase II (2003). Final Report to U.S. Geological Survey. With George Galster, Hal Wolman, and J. Cutsinger.

Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and Measuring an Elusive Concept. Housing Policy Debate. 12(4). 681-709 (2001). With George Galster, Harold Wolman, Jason Freihage, and Stephen Coleman.

Civic Culture and Urban Change: Governing Dallas. 2003. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.

Research

Hanson is currently working on a “biography” of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution, which describes how generations of politicians, litigants, and judges shaped the meaning of its malleable Privileges and Immunity, Due Process, and Equal Protection Clauses as they protected their interests or advanced their understanding of the amendment’s objectives and effects. The book aims to raise questions about how the meaning of the Constitution is determined, why it should be done that way, and about constitutional democracy itself.

Publications

Suburb: Planning Politics and the Public Interest. Cornell University Press (2017).

Consistency with Comprehensive Plans: Does Maryland Law Mean What It Says, or Say What it Means? 6(2) University of Baltimore Journal of Land and Development 119-150 (2017).

Suburb: Planning Politics and the Public Interest in Montgomery County. Planning politics operates within pervasive thematic influences: the tensions between planners’ logic of consequentiality and politicians’ logic of appropriateness, the conflicts between competing values and interests of virtual commercial and miniature republics, the rise and fall of local governing regimes, participant roles established by law and custom, and rules of civic engagement. Hanson evaluates the consequences of the development pattern produced by a century of strategic land use decisions for fiscal and environmental well being, mobility, social equity, fairness, and opportunity for choices by future generations.

Anything for a Vote: The Ethics of Campaign Rhetoric. Political campaigns often invoke metaphors of warfare, leading to ethical lapses that erode democratic values. This essay examines campaign rhetoric in light of its essential role in providing information critical to an informed electorate and as the product of strategy and tactics employed by candidates to win elections. The aim of the essay is to explore how ethical concepts might be applied by media, other critics, and candidates themselves to contribute more usefully to deliberative democracy without impairing First Amendment rights or squeezing the exuberance and joy out of the fundamental act of democratic citizenship.

Selected Publications

Rorschach Tests, Art Criticism, and the Jurisprudence of Gerrymandering. Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy 2(2): 355-374 (June 2012)

Patterns and Processes of Sprawl: Phase II (2003). Final Report to U.S. Geological Survey. With George Galster, Hal Wolman, and J. Cutsinger.

Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and Measuring an Elusive Concept. Housing Policy Debate. 12(4). 681-709 (2001). With George Galster, Harold Wolman, Jason Freihage, and Stephen Coleman.

Civic Culture and Urban Change: Governing Dallas. 2003. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.