Sonia Anguelova Hirt is a professor of

Landscape Architecture Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

and

Planning Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. Some researchers regard the evolution of forethought - the cap ...

and dean in the College of Environment + Design at the

University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...

Academic career

After training as an

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in her hometown of Sofia, Hirt earned masters (1995) and doctoral (2003) degrees from the Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

Ann Arbor Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

. In 2003 she became an assistant professor at the

University of Toledo The University of Toledo (UToledo or UT) is a Public university, public research university in Toledo, Ohio, United States. It is the northernmost campus of the University System of Ohio. The university also operates a Health Science campus, ...

College of Languages, Literature and Social Sciences, and moved the next year to another assistant professorship at

Virginia Tech The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...

's College of Architecture and Urban Studies. In 2011 she served as a visiting professor at the

Harvard Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urba ...

. In 2016 she was named dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...

, replacing David Cronrath. Her most recent appointment is at the

in 2018 as the Hughes Professor in Landscape Architecture and Planning. With Nicholas Dagen Bloom she is editor of the Journal of Planning History. Hirt's work attempts to explain why houses in the U.S. are so large relative to other industrialized nations. "People intuitively often think that this is the explanation … because America is such a big country. Well, this is true, but Russia is a big country. Kazakhstan is a big country. Space itself doesn’t really make people do one thing or another." She rebuts President Trump's message to immigrants that "Our country is full", saying "Factually speaking, the country is not actually full — that’s impossible. The real question is, if you continue on the current path of immigration, does this bring more benefits than it brings costs?" She also notes the unusual preponderance of

single-family zoning Single-family zoning is a type of planning restriction applied to certain residential zones in the United States and Canada in order to restrict development to only allow single-family detached homes. It disallows townhomes, duplexes, and ...

: "I could find no evidence in other countries that this particular form — the detached

single-family home A single-family detached home, also called a single-detached dwelling, single-family residence (SFR) or separate house is a free-standing residential building. It is defined in opposition to a multi-family residential dwelling. Definitions ...

— is routinely, as in the United States, considered to be so incompatible with all other types of urbanization as to warrant a legally defined district all its own, a district where all other major land uses and building types are outlawed."

Awards

''Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation'' won the biennial John Friedmann Book Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, and an honorable mention for the 2015 Best Book in Urban Affairs Award from the Urban Affairs Association. ''Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space in the Post-Socialist City'' received a 2014 honorable mention from Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies for "outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography".

Selected publications

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References

External links

Sonia Hirt - College of Environment + Design, University of Georgia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hirt, Sonia Anguelova Living people Bulgarian women academics American women academics University of Georgia faculty Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women