I am professor emeritus of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, having held previous academic positions at the University of Denver, Old Dominion University, and the George Washington University. I received an undergraduate degree in history from Swarthmore College in 1966 and a Ph.D. in 1971 from the University of Chicago, working with Richard Wade, John Hope Franklin, and William McNeill. I served as president of the Urban History Association in 1995, co-edited the Journal of the American Planning Association from 1998 to 2005, and since 1996 have co-edited the Pacific Historical Review, the journal of the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch. My ten books in the fields of United States urban and western history and regional planning include The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities (1981; rev. ed. 1987); The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West (1993), recipient of the annual book prize of the Urban History Association; Political Terrain: Washington, D.C. from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis ( 1999), recipient of the Lewis Mumford Award for books on U.S. city planning history; Greater Portland: Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest (2001); Frontiers Past and Present: Science Fiction and the American West (2006); and How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America (2008).