Professor Arthur C. Nelson Honored with Western Planner’s Article of the Year Award

Arthur C. Nelson, an emeritus professor of urban planning and real estate development in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, has received the Western Planner 2023 Stan Steadman Article of the Year award for his “Homes on the Range” article series.

Nominated and selected by the Western Planner editorial board, the award recognizes the top article (or in this case, article series) of the past year from the journal.

In the “Homes on the Range” series, Nelson evaluates the broad housing needs of 14 Western states and metropolitan areas through 2030. Though the series contains three articles, three additional installments are on the way, he says. 

“We all know intuitively that demand for homes exceeds supply,” writes Nelson in introducing the series. “This pushes up prices and rents, stifles choice and prevents people from relocating to advance their economic or personal wellbeing. Although we’ve often had more demand than supply, it seems to be getting worse.”

The first article presents an overview of the states included in the series, while the second and third dive into specific regions.

Nelson will be honored at the 2023 American Planning Association Alaska and Western Planner Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, September 20-22.

Nelson, who joined CAPLA in 2014 after serving as presidential professor and director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah, retired in May 2022. As the author of nearly 30 books and more than 400 other scholarly publications, and principal investigator or co-principal investigator of more than $50 million in grants, he is ranked 9th nationally among more than 1,000 planning professors in the quality of published work based on scientific metrics.