MacDonald new head of built environment school

Dr Heather MacDonald is the new head of the School of the Built Environment at UTS. MacDonald joined UTS in 2010, and has been course director of the Master of Planning program.  She received her PhD in planning and public policy from Rutgers University in New Jersey. She was an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she served as chair of department for some years, before moving to Sydney. Her research has focused on affordable housing policy and finance, and the role of spatial analysis in urban policy. She is the author of  Unlocking the Census with GIS  (2004), and Urban Policy and the Census  (2011). She is currently engaged in two research projects, one investigating whether there is ethnic discrimination in private rental housing in Sydney, the other investigating the impact of planning regulations on housing affordability in six Australian cities.