Speaker: Mark Allen Hughes, Ph.D., Vice President for Policy Development Public/Private Ventures, Philadelphia, PA

Sweeping changes in metropolitan settlement structure have had profound implications for urban antipoverty policy. Poverty is concentrated in the historic centers of metropolitan areas while employment is deconcentrating toward the metropolitan periphery. These trends will be documented for large metropolitan areas. In the face of these conditions, antipoverty policy becomes a profoundly geographical exercise. The strategic implications of employment suburbanization will be discussed in detail, and current and pending programs, including transportation initiatives, seeking to redress this new metropolitan reality will be examined.

Mark Alan Hughes received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1981 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. Thereafter, at the age of 25, he joined the faculty of Princeton University and later, in 1992, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He has also served as a senior research consultant to the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution in Washington, and has received research grants from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has published in leading journals of several disciplines and has received numerous honors for his scholarly writings, including the 1986 International Dissertation Prize from the Regional Science Association and a 1992 National Planning Award from the American Planning Association for the best scholarly article published that year.

Hughes is currently Vice President for Policy Development at Public/private Ventures in Philadelphia, adjunct professor of Regional Science at the University of' Pennsylvania, and a visiting professor at Swarthmore College. Mr. Hughes has lectured on problems at Universities around the world and has advised numerous state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Transportation, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development.