Emily Talen, a senior sustainability scientist and professor in ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, has been chosen for one of this year’s prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships. The fellowship program selected 178 scholars, artists and scientists from among almost 3,000 applicants on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.

Talen, who holds the fellowship from July 2014 through June 2015, intends to use it to compose a book about neighborhoods. The book, to be published by the University of Chicago Press, will compare neighborhoods throughout time and in places with varying cultures. With over 2,000 sources on the topic already, Talen aims to determine what urban form means for social interactivity – for example, do certain city patterns create a “sense of community”?

“The book is ‘all things neighborhood.' I’ll explore how they’re idealized, abstracted, attributed effects, designed, bounded, fought over," Talen explains. "My task is to try to make sense of it all, tease out the big picture and think about what neighborhoods have to do with the future sustainable city."