Janice Perlman

Janice Elaine Perlman (born July 12, 1943) is an American urban scholar and policy advisor known for her research on urban poverty, informal settlements, and social mobility, particularly in Brazil. She is the founder and president of the Mega-Cities Project, a global nonprofit organization focused on accelerating the transfer and adaptation of effective urban innovations. Perlman has held academic appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, New York University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Perlman is best known for her book The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro (1976), which challenged prevailing assumptions about favela residents and received the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems.

Her later book, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (2010), based on a multigenerational longitudinal study, received two PROSE Awards from the Association of American Publishers and was reviewed in academic journals and international media outlets, including The Economist.

Early life and education

Perlman was born in New York City and grew up in Queens and on Long Island. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology from Cornell University in 1965 and a PhD in political science and urban studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971.

Career

Research on Brazilian favelas

Perlman conducted field research in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in the late 1960s while Brazil was under military rule. This work formed the basis of The Myth of Marginality, which argued that favela residents were economically integrated into the city despite persistent social exclusion.

In the late 1990s, Perlman returned to Rio de Janeiro to locate families she had interviewed decades earlier. Working with a local research team, she carried out a multigenerational panel study examining social mobility, housing, and livelihoods across four generations. The findings were published in Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro.

Academic appointments

Perlman’s first academic appointment was as an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She later joined the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became the first woman to receive tenure in the department.

She subsequently held teaching and research positions at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Trinity College. She is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania as an International Urban Research Fellow.

Mega-Cities Project

In 1987, Perlman founded the Mega-Cities Project, a transnational nonprofit organization intended to connect researchers, policymakers, and grassroots organizations in large metropolitan regions. The project developed city-based networks in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Bangkok, and Jakarta.

Policy and advisory work

Perlman served as coordinator of the Inter-Agency Neighborhood Task Force for the U.S. National Urban Policy during the Carter administration. She later held senior roles at the New York City Partnership and the New York Academy of Sciences, and has served on committees of the National Research Council and as a delegate to United Nations conferences on human settlements, including Habitat II in Istanbul.

Honors and awards

• C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems (1976)
• Chester Rapkin Award, Journal of Planning Education and Research (1988)
• Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2005)
• Two PROSE Awards, Association of American Publishers (2010)
• Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Tufts University (2009)

Selected works

Books

• The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro (University of California Press, 1976)
• Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (Oxford University Press, 2010)

External links

• https://megacitiesproject.org
• https://penniur.upenn.edu

Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:American social scientists Category:Cornell University alumni Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty Category:New York University faculty Category:Columbia University faculty Category:American women social scientists

References

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