Stephanie Wakefield, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor,
Department of Urban and Regional Planning
swakefield@fau.edu
(561) 766-7627 | Office: SO 284
Curriculum Vitae
Stephanie Wakefield is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Design in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at ´óÏó´«Ã½. Dr. Wakefield is an urban geographer specializing in social-ecological systems thinking and design, nature-based infrastructure, and future scenarios. She holds a PhD in Geography from the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. Her work analyzes the conceptual and technical transformations of urban theory, planning, and design in the 21st century, and the challenges and opportunities involved in managing nature in coastal cities.
Funded by the Urban Studies Foundation and the National Science Foundation, her research has focused on urban resilience as a new planning and design paradigm centered on reconnecting cities with natural environments and harnessing nature’s inherent vital capacities.
Her current work focuses on future-oriented urban development concepts, including floating, new, and salutogenic cities. She is also developing conceptual and practical approaches for biophilic and vitalistic urban planning and design. As part of this her research explores blue and green infrastructures such as living shorelines, marine architecture, and ‘living with water’ design, as well as design for rewilding. She leads social-ecological research for the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research Project, through which she is interested in connecting urban development and environmental restoration in South Florida.
She is the author ofÌýAnthropocene Back Loop: Experimentation in Unsafe Operating SpaceÌýand co-editor ofÌýResilience in the Anthropocene: Governance and Politics at the End of the World, as well as numerous articles in academic and cultural journals includingÌýUrban Geography, Urban Studies, Political Geography, Geography Compass, Geoforum, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Place, andÌýe-flux architecture. Her new book,ÌýMiami in the Anthropocene: Urban Resilience and Rising SeasÌý(University of Minnesota Press, 2025), critically analyzes experimental adaptation imaginaries and infrastructures in Miami and, through these, suggests new limits and pathways for urban theory and practice in the 21st century.