With grief and sadness we inform our members that Dr. Jeffrey Featherstone passed away on Saturday 7th of May at the age of 68. Since 2001 Jeffrey was the director of the Center for Sustainable Communities and Professor at the department of Planning and Community Development in the Division of Architecture and Environmental Design, Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Pennsylvania, USA.
Jeff will be greatly missed by his wife Nancy and his two daughters. His friends and colleagues in ISOCARP will remember him as a regular and active participant in our annual congress and as a friendly and open-minded debater.
For ISOCARP he was one of the Co-Chairs of the congress in Perm and the General Rapporteur of the congresses in Brisbane (2013). This congress addressed the frontiers of planning now we have entered the urban millennium in which cities and city planning are critical to the majority of the world’s now urbanised population. Under Jeff’s leadership, the congress explored the effective new styles of planning practices that builds on past successes and on improving what we already know and how we practice it.
As one of the team leaders of the ISOCARP West Bank and Gaza UPAT workshops, commissioned by UN-Habitat and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in 2015, he was both a diligent and goal oriented leader and a team player who was respectful of diverse and competing views and interests. He contributed to the three Magazines that illustrate the findings of the UPAT workshops. In Magazine 3, now in the final stage of editing, Jeff contributed with one of the leading articles on water management in the Jordan River watershed.
For many years Jeff was of great importance to the US ISOCARP delegation. He was always available to participate, support, and contribute to the US delegates’ conversations and activities. ISOCARP will miss Jeffrey’s easy and joyous manner, and his professionalism.
A planning professional Jeff specialized in water resources management and dispute resolution. He served as a member of the Long’s Peak Working Group in 1992, an advisory body to President-elect Bill Clinton on national water policy and sustainability. The group’s final report, entitled: “America’s Waters: A New Era of Sustainability,” served as the starting point for the administration’s policy and regulatory agenda.
In 1995, he served as a ranking member of the U.S. Water Resources Delegation to China, and has advised Chinese government officials on water conservation and sustainability issues. Dr. Featherstone was the former Deputy Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate agency responsible for management of water resources in the 13,000-square-mile area drained by the Delaware River and Delaware Bay.
Previously, he was the Director of Planning for the Upper Mississippi River Basin Commission, a hydrologist and planner with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and a research specialist at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs.
Jeff served on review boards for professional associations and published in conference proceedings or professional journals of the American Water Works Association, American Political Science Association, Universities Council on Water Resources, American Water Resources Association, and National Ground Water Association. In 1999, he received a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Temple University.
The Faculty in the Planning & Community Development department at Temple University established the Jeff Featherstone Memorial Scholarship in his honour. The funds will be used to support a graduate student in the Master of Science in City and Regional Planning program who shares Jeff’s passion for sustainable water resources management. Contributions to the Jeff Featherstone Memorial Scholarship can be sent or given to Mollie Repetto or Dr. Lynn Mandarano at Tyler School of Art of Temple University, 2001 N. 13th Street, Philadelphia PA 19122.
Lorraine Gonzales, Martin Dubbeling and Mahbubur Meenar