By Ann Nordby
As Professor Edward Goetz retires from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs this year, he leaves a legacy of helping students to see the invisible. The skill he has taught them is not magic—it's urban analysis.
Goetz has been teaching in the Humphrey School's Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program for a quarter century. He is also director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, where he will continue for two more years.
Students enter the MURP program wanting to use planning as a way to address societal problems. They bring with them their own experiences and beliefs about why some neighborhoods are more livable than others.
In the MURP program, they examine the policies that make neighborhoods livable. Sometimes, government policies don't match up with reality.
Goetz joined the Humphrey School in 1999. Along with teaching courses in urban and regional planning, he has advised a number of PhD students. In 2009, he also became director of CURA, a research and outreach center focused on statewide environmental issues and community development.
A different perspective on integration
His research area is housing and community development, especially as it relates to race and income. Goetz examines programs and outcomes critically, and readily acknowledges that his positions are not always universally agreed upon.
For example, he believes that change—even well-intentioned change—always comes at a cost to someone. Most times, the cost is borne by those who lack the power to influence policy.
"I try to get students to critically assess these programs and assumptions. I get them thinking about ‘How far are you willing to go to try to achieve this goal?’" Goetz said.
His 2018 book, The One-Way Street of Integration, examines how good policy intentions can miss the mark. He cites the popular approach of "deconcentrating poverty," whose goal was to integrate communities.
"We too often conceptualize integration as the objective of moving people of color into white communities," he said. "Sometimes, we do it in ways that are coercive. We never asked any white people to move."
Goetz wrote about this concept in a 2020 article in the Journal of the American Planning Association, "Whiteness and Urban Planning." He also developed and taught a required course for urban and regional planning students called “City of White Supremacy.”
‘Significant impact’ on students’ education, careers
In Goetz's urban planning classes, he assigns students to look at city or regional plans, then conduct interviews to see how they affect residents of those municipalities.
A 2002 MURP alumna, Jill Mazullo, remembers doing her capstone research project along those lines. For the project, she interviewed the city planner of a Minneapolis suburb about that community’s inclusionary housing policy, which called for affordable units to be provided in all new housing developments.
"But that's communism!" the city planner objected, not realizing Mazullo was citing the city's own comprehensive plan.
"It was revealing," Mazullo said. "It made me realize that cities might not be paying close attention to what's in their plan, what they had committed to do."
Mazullo, now in her "dream job" as director of communications for the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, said Goetz had a significant impact on her education and career.
She said Goetz's coursework helped students to see the machinery behind neighborhoods and how they function, and he taught with expertise and with humor. Goetz gave her the confidence to go after a job with an affordable housing developer. "I'd recommend you in a heartbeat," he told her. He did, and she got the job.
Will miss teaching
"I'm interested in how cities work,” Goetz said. “They fascinate me. They're so complex physically, socially, and spatially, so they're innately interesting to me.”
Goetz will continue to pursue those interests for the next two years at CURA, which is a national model for university-community partnerships. The Center works closely with entities like the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability, local governments such as the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin and Ramsey counties, and neighborhoods within them.
Many Humphrey School students work with CURA to find paid placements in community organizations to further develop the skills they learn in the classroom.
Although he will continue working with students through CURA, Goetz says will miss classroom teaching.
"Humphrey School students are remarkable. They choose the Humphrey School because they want to change the world,” he said. “They're smart as hell and they want to change things. They're active in the classroom, they push back, they engage. Every class session is a real intellectual treat. Being around so many bright young people all the time is probably what I'm going to miss the most in retirement."
