Bruce Stephenson is dedicated to the art of city planning.  A Rollins professor and consultant, he is a recipient of the John Nolen Medal, the 1000 Friends of Florida Better Community Award, and the Graham Frey Civic Award, and his biography, John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner,  won the JB Jackson book award.  Serving on the Orlando Sustainability Task Force and the Pearl District (Portland) Planning & Transportation Committee inspired his most recent book, Portland's Good Life: Sustainability and Hope in an American City

 

Portland was a model for Sustainability Task Force's Orlando's Greenworks Plan, and Portland's Good Life documents the author's life after he sells his car and takes up residence in the Pearl District--a prototype urban renewal project--to document the future Orlando envisions.  In addition to assessing living in a historic neighborhood designed for sustainability,  the book concludes with the lessons Orlando drew from Portland and that are featured in the January 2021 edition of Planning.

​

Portland's Good Life builds on John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner and Stephenson's research on Lewis Mumford, the great urbanist who inspired Portland's path-breaking experiments in urban planning. Since 2018, Stephenson has contributed to City Planning History, Planning, and The Classicist, The Wilder Heart of Florida, and Iconic Planned Communities: The Challenge of Change.

 

Stephenson is working on a new book, The Clansman and the City Plan: Thomas Dixon, John Nolen and the Birth of a New Nation