Michael Shiffer PhD.,
Clinical Associate Professor
Starting May, 2009, Dr. Shiffer will be moving to Vancouver, BC where he will be joining Translink (The South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority) as their Vice President for Planning. There, he will be responsible for planning activities related to the major roads, bridges, bikeways, freight and public transit networks (including bus, paratransit, rapid rail, commuter rail and ferries) for the Metro Vancouver region. He will be reachable at: mjshiffer@gmail.com.
Dr. Shiffer served as both an Associate Professor and later a Clinical Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He was formerly Vice President for Planning and Development at the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). For over six years at the CTA, Shiffer led the strategic and operations planning efforts of the second largest public transit system in the U.S. During his time at the CTA, ridership grew by nearly 40,000 trips per average weekday, with much of the growth on new and improved routes. He has spearheaded a collaboration between CTA, MIT, and UIC that has served as a nationwide model of collaborative research and human capital development in the transit industry. Before moving to CTA, Shiffer was an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Policy at UIC. His academic research has focused on how information technologies can better inform deliberation, decision-making and public debate with a focus on spatial (geographic) information. Prior to joining UIC, Shiffer served for nine years on the MIT faculty where he was Principal Research Scientist and a Lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. There, he directed the Urban Planning Computer Research Lab and researched how new technologies (such as GIS, wide-area networking and new models of multimedia) could inform planning processes. While at MIT, Shiffer also taught courses related to mass transit and urban planning methods. Shiffer received a Ph.D. in Regional Planning and Master's of Urban Planning (MUP) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Shiffer has a B.A. in Geography from DePaul University. Shiffer remains an active world-wide professional speaker on topics related to urban mass transit and emerging information technologies for urban and transportation planning.
Courses
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Urban Public Transportation
Rail Operations
GIS & Spatial Analytic Methods
Emerging Technologies for Planning and Decision Support
Multimedia Authoring
Urban Transportation History
Research
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Most recently, Shiffer has been working directly with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) as their Vice President responsible for Planning and Development. There, he has focused on what is necessary (from an operational standpoint) for a large mass transit system to remain viable in the 21st Century. His work at CTA has been aimed at the development of an information infrastructure so that service planning and major capital investment decisions can be well informed. His CTA work also involved the development of the human capital necessary to support such an infrastructure. This represents a significant implementation of spatial multimedia and planning support systems in a decision-making environment.
Other research projects include several cooperative investigations with the USDOT aimed at exploring new ways of representing transportation-related information to the general public using multimedia representational aids and geographic information systems (GIS). Another transportation-related project explored how emerging information technologies could improve the processing and communication of planning-related information in metropolitan planning organizations (MPO's).
Finally, some former projects that have involved Shiffer and his students explore: how to represent a public housing revitalization effort in Boston, how to deliver a community-based information system to help facilitate community development in the City of St. Louis; and how to deliver spatially-referenced multimedia material for site planning and review purposes in Washington DC.
Selected Publications
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Shiffer, M.J. (2005) Book Review of "Transport of Delight: The Mythical Conception of Rail Transit in Los Angeles" in Journal of Planning Education and Research, 12; vol. 25: pp. 221 - 222.
Shiffer, Michael, Arnab Chakraborty, Beth Donahue, Graham Garfield, Ramakrishnan Srinivasan and Sue McNeil, (2003) "Spatial multimedia representation of Chicago Transit Authority rail infrastructure." Transportation Research Record. (1838),1-10.
Shiffer, M. J. (2002) "Community Participation with Multimedia" in: Craig et al. (eds.) Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems." ( London: Taylor & Francis).
Shiffer, M.J., (2001) "Spatial Multimedia for Planning Support" in: Brail & Klosterman (eds.) Planning Support Systems. ( Redlands, CA: ESRI Press). Shiffer, M.J. (1999) "Managing Public Discourse: Towards the Augmentation of GIS," in Longley, et al. (eds.), Geographical Information Systems, ( New York: Wiley).
Shiffer, M.J. (1999) "Planning Support Systems for Low-Income Communities," in Schon, et al. (eds.), High Technology and Low-Income Communities, ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Shiffer, M.J., (1999) "Augmenting Transportation-Related Environmental Review Activities Using Distributed Multimedia," in A.S. Camara and J. Raper, eds., Spatial Multimedia and Virtual Reality. London: Taylor & Francis.
Shiffer, M. J. (1998) "Multimedia GIS for Planning Support and Public Discourse" Cartography and geographic information systems. 25 (2).
Shiffer, M.J. (1995) "Multimedia in der Stadtplanung," Garten & Landschaft, 11, pp. 18-22.
Shiffer, M.J. (1995) "Interactive Multimedia Planning Support: Moving from Stand-Alone Systems to the World Wide Web," Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, volume 22, pp. 649-664.
Shiffer, M.J. (1995) "Geographic Interaction in the City Planning Context: Beyond the Multimedia Prototype," in Nyerges, et al. (ed), Cognitive Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction for Geographic Information Systems, ( Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers), pp. 295-310.
Shiffer, M.J. (1995) "Environmental Review with Hypermedia Systems," Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, volume 22, pp. 359-372.
Shiffer, M.J., (1995) "Multimedia Representational Aids in Urban Planning Support Systems," in Marchese, F. (ed.), Understanding Images, ( New York: Springer-Verlag), pp.77-90.
Shiffer, M.J., (1994) "A Geographically-Based Multimedia Approach to City Planning," in Plaisant, C. (ed.), Human Factors in Computing Systems, ( New York: Association for Computing Machinery), pp.265-266.
Shiffer, M.J. (1993) "Augmenting Geographic Information with Collaborative Multimedia Technologies," in R.B. McMaster and M.P. Armstrong (eds.), Proceedings of Auto Carto 11, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, pp. 367-376.
Shiffer, M.J. and Wiggins, L.L., (1993) "The Union of GIS and Multimedia," in Castle, G.H. (ed.), Profiting from a Geographic Information System, ( Ft. Collins, CO: GIS World, Inc.), pp. 336-341.
Shiffer, M.J. (1992) "Towards a Collaborative Planning System," Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, volume 19, pp. 709-722.
Shiffer, M. J. (1992) "Representation of Environmental Conditions in Planning Support Systems," Paper presented at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Annual Conference, Columbus, Ohio, October, 1992. Shiffer, M. J. (1992) "Collaborative Systems for Transportation Planning," Citizen Participation, volume 2, number 2, December, 1992. pp. 2-4.
Shiffer, M. J. (1992) "New Directions: Collaborative Planning Systems," Micro Software News: Newsletter of the International City Managers' Association, May, 1992.
Shiffer, M. J. (1992) A Hypermedia Implementation of a Collaborative Planning System, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, January, 1992.
Shiffer, M. J. (1991) "Hypermedia Collaborative Planning Systems," Proceedings of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association 29th Annual Conference, San Francisco, California, August, 1991.
Shiffer, M. J. (1991) "Towards a Collaborative Planning System," Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management, Oxford, U.K., July, 1991.
Wiggins, L. L. and Shiffer, M. J. (1990), "Planning with Hypermedia: Combining Text, Graphics, Sound, and Video," Journal of the American Planning Association, 56 226-235.
Shiffer, M. J. (1988), "Hypermedia Allows Non-sequential Cross Referencing," Planning News: American Planning Association Illinois Newsletter, Spring, 1988.
Selected Lectures
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China Planning Network, Urban Transportation Congress, "Technological Change and the Impact of Public Transit on the Development of Chicago," Beijing , China , (August, 2007).
Ajman Urban Planning Conference, "Emerging Technologies and Public Transport Planning," Ajman , United Arab Emirates , (February, 2007).
China Planning Network, Urban Development and Planning in China, Beijing, China, (June, 2006).
Keynote Address: Urban and Regional Information Systems Association 41st Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, "Reshaping Mass Transit with Technology," (October, 2003).
Transport for London, Seminar Series, "Rethinking Planning in Chicago," London, UK, (July, 2003).
Portland State University, Center for Transportation Studies Speaker Series, "New Technology Applications for Transit," Portland, OR, (April, 2003).
Keynote Address: "The Future of Chicago's Transit". Minnesota Transportation Annual Research Conference, St. Paul, MN, (April, 2003).
University College London, Rothermel Thomas Lecture, "An E-Fare to Remember: Lessons for the Underground - how technology can improve public transport in London" London, UK, (April, 2002).
Keynote Address: Politecnico di Milano, "E-Government Symposium for Northern Italy," Milan, Italy, (July, 2001).
Keynote Address: International Conference on Decision Making in Urban Civil Engineering, Lyon, France, (November, 2000).
International Conference on Public Participation and Information Technologies, Lisbon, Portugal, (October, 1999).
The World Bank, "Wiring the Barrio" Symposium, Washington, D.C., (June, 1999).
Keynote Address: Mid-Atlantic GIS Symposium, New Brunswick, NJ, (March, 1999).
International Conference on Modeling Geographical and Environmental Systems with Geographical Information Systems, ( GIS), Hong Kong, (June, 1998)
Keynote Address: Mid-America GIS Symposium, Lincoln, NE, (May, 1998)
Politecnico of Milan. Video link address on the subject of: "Landscape Design in the Networked Society," Milan, Italy, (April, 1998).
Keynote Address: Hellenic GIS Conference, Athens, Greece, (November, 1997).
Keynote Address: European GIS User's Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, (October, 1997).
Keynote Address: Socio-Economic Impacts of New Geographic Information Handling Technologies, European Science Foundation Invited Lecture Castelvecchio Pascoli, Italy, (May,1997).
Keynote Address: GISRUK: Geographical Information Systems Research in the UK, (Leeds, UK April, 1997).
Keynote Address: Northwest Arc Users Conference, Portland, OR, (October, 1996).
Keynote Address: Geomatics Atlantic Conference: Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, (October, 1996).
University of Cagliari, "International Symposium on Ethics and Spatial Planning," Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy, (May, 1996).
First Conference on Multimedia and Spatial Virtual Reality, "Augmenting Transportation-Related Environmental Review Activities Using Distributed Multimedia" Lisbon, Portugal, (October, 1995).
Keynote Address: Annual Conference of ESRI Geographic Information System Users, Palm Springs, CA, (May, 1995).
Third Annual Pennsylvania Geographic Information Systems Conference, "Emerging Technologies and GIS," State College, PA, (May, 1995).
Keynote Address: "Deutche GIS Awenderkonference," (German GIS User's Conference), Munich, Germany, (March, 1995).
Contact
Michael J. Shiffer, Ph.D.
Clinical Associate Professor, Urban Planning & Policy
University of Illinois, Chicago
Phone: 312-545-7592
e-mail: mshiffer@uic.edu