Vanessa L. Deane

Assistant Clinical Professor of Urban Planning & Public Service | Director of Urban Planning

Contact Details

Office

105 East 17th street
Room 349
New York, NY 10003

Dr. Vanessa L. Deane is Assistant Clinical Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Director of the Urban Planning program.

Her research praxis is rooted in the political economy of climate change and disasters, primarily in small island developing states. Currently, she is exploring the impact of postcolonial institutional arrangements on the adaptive capacity of select non-sovereign and semi-sovereign European overseas territories in the Caribbean - and the climate financing implications of these arrangements - using a climate justice framework. In 2022, she was a Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at Sorbonne Université in Paris.

Before her academic career, Dr. Deane spent a decade consulting in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. She also pioneered a comprehensive analysis of the country's ongoing institutional development challenges, which earned her the 2021-2022 'Outstanding Decentralization Paper Award for Latin America and the Caribbean.' Other accolades include the NYU Wagner 2020 'Professor of the Year' award she received just one year after joining the faculty.

She obtained her Ph.D. in Public and Urban Policy from The New School and her Master of Urban Planning from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis University with her Bachelor of Arts in African and African American Studies and in American Studies, along with double minors in Education Studies, and in Social Justice and Social Policy.

Dr. Deane is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, the only independent verification of an urban planner’s qualifications in the United States. She is also the Founding Principal of Pinchina Consulting and a Public Voices Fellow of the Op-Ed Project.

Courses

Management and Leadership is designed to empower you with the skills you will need to make meaningful change in the world—whether you care about bike lanes, criminal justice, prenatal care, community development, urban planning, social investment, or something else. Whatever your passion, you can have an impact by leading and managing. In this course, you will enhance the technical, interpersonal, conceptual, and political skills needed to run effective and efficient organizations embedded in diverse communities, policy arenas, sectors, and industries. In class, we will engage in a collective analysis of specific problems that leaders and managers face—first, diagnosing them and then, identifying solutions—to explore how organizations can meet and exceed their performance objectives. As part of that process, you will encounter a variety of practical and essential topics and tools, including mission, strategy, goals, structure, teams, diversity and inclusion, motivation, and negotiation.

The consequences of disastrous events are escalating globally in terms of lives lost, injuries, adverse social conditions, economic costs, and environmental destruction. Furthermore, the rapidity of action required when an emergency arises poses unique challenges to traditional planning and the provision of public services. This course introduces students to the discipline of emergency management, particularly regarding natural hazards, in order to better understand urban planning and management approaches necessary in preparing for, responding to, recovering from and mitigating future disaster impacts. The course also investigates root causes of who and what is at risk, along with political economic considerations that induce disasters.

This course examines historic and contemporary patterns of racial and ethnic stratification often found at the center of disputes concerning urban development, the allocation of city resources and unequal distributions of power. Also embedded throughout the course are ongoing analyses of the ways in which structural inequalities often function in class and gender-specific ways. Using New York City as a laboratory, an interdisciplinary approach is implored - within and outside of the classroom - to make explicit the impacts of this complex legacy of racial formation on planning processes, decisions and outcomes for historically disenfranchised people and communities. The racialized experiences of select immigrant populations, which includes patterns of incorporation into American society as well as enduring transnational links to countries of origin, are also explored within this context.

This course introduces students to the discipline of emergency management to better understand the urban planning and public service approaches necessary to prepare for, respond to, recover from and mitigate future emergency and disaster impacts. Focusing primarily on natural disasters, the course uses case study examples and recent events to expound upon the historical and conceptual frameworks that have and continue to shape this field. The course also includes assessments of social and individual behaviors that serve as a foundation for understanding how people act in disasters and how behavioral changes may save lives and property.

Research

2023

Abstract

Postcolonial institutional arrangements, which politically situate several non-sovereign climate-vulnerable countries in the Global North, may be affecting the extent to which these countries are able to respond to climate threats—such as coastal erosion, sea-level rise, water resource management, and more. This piece highlights the issue by specifically examining France’s postcolonial footprint in the eastern Caribbean while also presenting an example of a climate resiliency measure implemented by the Kingdom of the Netherlands in an overseas Caribbean jurisdiction. In presenting this analysis, the overall objective is to ultimately minimize the exclusion of non-sovereign nations from existing and emerging supranational mechanisms for climate adaptation financing that they might otherwise be eligible for, if it were not for their longstanding status as postcolonial overseas territories of a European nation.

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the central government operations were paralyzed, and municipal officials became even more important as they were more readily able to respond to their constituents’ needs during this time of crisis. The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) five-year post-earthquake Limyè ak Òganizasyon pou Kolektivite yo Ale Lwen (LOKAL+) program aimed to bolster the capacity of municipalities – beyond this disaster event – through revenue mobilization activities, within quake-affected and non-quake affected areas. The intended outcome of this effort was to improve local public service delivery throughout Haiti.

Nearly all participating LOKAL+ municipalities experienced increased local revenue collection, particularly in property and business taxes, from 2012 through 2017. However, the impact of these increases on public investment spending was not evident even though this was a stated objective of the program. To evaluate whether public services improved in two of the nine LOKAL+ localities, due to USAID’s local revenue mobilization efforts, I employed a case study analysis using descriptive statistics, in-depth interviewing, and content analysis.

The findings revealed modest public service improvements in one of the two case study sites. However, the political climate within which LOKAL+ was executed – mainly, the unlawful installation of interim executive agents throughout the country at the time – had an observed impact on the study’s findings. The implications of country-specific political economic realities on the timing of donor-led local governance efforts are underscored, as Haiti continues to navigate compounding political crises – including the assassination of the President in 2021 – since the end of the LOKAL+ program.

Abstract

From Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, Hurricane Dorian in 2019, and Tropical Storm Elsa in 2021, Caribbean islands have faced environmental disasters that are becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change. Though climate change is a global phenomenon, its impacts are not being felt equitably nor does every country, such as the small island developing states of the Caribbean, have the necessary resources to adequately respond to its challenges. Moreover, select Caribbean countries which belong to the Outermost Regions of the European Union are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts due to the limitations of this post-colonial institutional arrangement on their ability to access global financing instruments for their climate adaptation needs.

The goal of this paper is to therefore offer initial research regarding potential multi-scalar approaches to climate adaptation planning and implementation for non-sovereign countries in the region, starting with the French Caribbean. By evaluating the territorial fractures between mainland France and its overseas regions – the majority of which are in the Caribbean region – the paper serves as a preliminary basis for an eventual study examining political economic considerations for climate adaptation in non-sovereign Caribbean countries, like Guadeloupe and Martinique, through a climate justice lens.

2022

Abstract

This study brings a small-island perspective to the broader discussion of disaster leadership by examining the crisis leadership attributes of the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, and her Acting Prime Minister, Santia Bradshaw, during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We reviewed frameworks of crisis leadership in the literature on emergency management and used this review to assess the Prime Ministers’ press briefings and speeches from March through May 2020. Our content analysis showed that sensemaking, meaning making, and orchestrating vertical and horizontal coordination were the three most prevalent crisis leadership attributes displayed by the two leaders during the first two months of the pandemic. The paper concludes with a brief reflection on the implications of these findings for global leaders beyond this pandemic, in the face of threats pertaining to climate-related disasters and disruptions that are disproportionately impacting the Caribbean region.

2021

Abstract

The post-Duvalier Haitian Constitution of 1987 was an appeal for decentralization to reorganize the Haitian state after the fall of the twenty-nine-year Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. However, Haiti today is no closer to realizing this objective than it was then. The partial implementation of the Constitution’s decentralizing framework has created a political quagmire of critical administrative gaps that continue to stifle Haiti’s progress. Rather than moving toward intergovernmental power-sharing and greater inclusivity, as the document intended, these apertures have instead reinforced an autocratic governance system despite Jean-Claude Duvalier’s departure.

This paper is the first to conduct a comprehensive analysis of post-Duvalier efforts to decentralize Haiti. Using indepth semistructured expert interviews and content analysis, the paper presents several institutional impediments that curtail Haiti’s advancement in terms of improved public service delivery and unadulterated citizen engagement. The paper also unveils how and why key central government actors consistently impede the extent to which decentralization could facilitate widespread improvements in local development and subnational governance throughout Haiti.

Vanessa L. Deane

Assistant Clinical Professor of Urban Planning & Public Service | Director of Urban Planning

Spring 2025

CORE-GP.1020.: Management and Leadership

Fall 2024

CORE-GP.1020.: Management and Leadership

Fall 2024

UPADM-GP.2645.: Planning for Emergencies and Disasters

Spring 2024

CORE-GP.1020.: Management and Leadership

Spring 2024

URPL-GP.2620.: Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in American Cities

Spring 2024

URPL-GP.2645.: Planning for Emergencies and Disasters

Fall 2023

URPL-GP.2645.: Planning for Emergencies and Disasters

January 2023

URPL-GP.2645.: Planning for Emergencies and Disasters

Spring 2023

URPL-GP.2620.: Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in American Cities

Fall 2022

CORE-GP.1020.: Management and Leadership

Fall 2022

URPL-GP.2645.: Planning for Emergencies and Disasters

Spring 2022

UPADM-GP.284.: Emergencies, Disasters, and Cities

Spring 2022

URPL-GP.2645.: Planning for Emergencies and Disasters

2023

2022

2021