The Architecture of Boston

Dr. Alexander von Hoffman is a senior fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and a lecturer on urban planning and design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has taught in Extension since 1991. He received a PhD from the history department at Harvard in 1986. Von Hoffman is the author of House by House, Block by Block: The Rebirth of America's Urban Neighborhoods, Fuel Lines for the Urban Revival Engine: Neighborhoods, Community Development Corporations, and Financial Intermediaries, and Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920. Von Hoffman has written numerous scholarly articles on urban history, as well as general interest essays on housing and urban development for periodicals such as The Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. His current major research projects are a history of low-income housing policy in the United States and the rise of regulatory barriers to housing development in greater Boston.