View All
Photo of Joel Rast

Joel Rast

  • Professor, Political Science
  • Director, Urban Studies
  • Director, Center for Economic Development

Education

Ph.D, University of Oregon

B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz

Office Hours

Wednesdays, 1:30-3:30 pm on Teams; in-person by appointment

Courses Taught

  • POL SCI 213 - Urban Government and Politics
  • POL SCI 216 - Environmental Politics
  • URB STD/POL SCI 913 - Urban Political Process
  • URB STD 921 - Research Methods in Urban Studies 

Teaching Interests

  • Urban Development/Redevelopment since World War II
  • Urban Politics
  • Environmental Politics
  • The Politics of Climate Change

Selected Publications

"Racial Governance in Postwar Chicago: A Multiple Orders Perspective." Urban Affairs Review 61.5: 1314-1344, 2025.
“Urban Political Development and the Social Construction of Interests: The Case of Chicago's Dearborn Park” Urban Affairs Review 58.5: 1207-1233, 2022.
"How Policy Paradigms Change: Lessons from Chicago's Urban Renewal Program." In Richardson Dilworth and Timothy P. R. Weaver, eds., How Ideas Shape Urban Political Development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.
The Origins of the Dual City: Housing, Race, and Redevelopment in Twentieth-Century Chicago University of Chicago Press, 2019. 
“Urban Regime Theory and the Problem of Change” Urban Affairs Review 51.1: 138-149, 2015.
“Why History (Still) Matters: Time and Temporality in Urban Political Analysis” Urban Affairs Review 48.1: 3-36, 2012.
“Critical Junctures, Long-Term Processes: Urban Redevelopment in Chicago and Milwaukee, 1946-1980” Social Science History 33.4: 393-426, 2009.
“Regime Building, Institution Building: Urban Renewal Policy in Chicago, 1946-1962” Journal of Urban Affairs 31.2: 173-194, 2009.
“Annexation Policy in Milwaukee: An Historical Institutionalist Approach” Polity 39: 55-78, 2007.
“Environmental Justice and the New Regionalism” Journal of Planning Education and Research 25.3: 249-263, 2006.
“Governing the Regimeless City: The Frank Zeidler Administration in Milwaukee, 1948-1960” Urban Affairs Review 42: 81-112, 2006.
Remaking Chicago: The Political Origins of Urban Industrial Change DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999.

UWM Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge in Milwaukee that we are on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland along the southwest shores of Michigami, North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.   |   To learn more, visit the Electa Quinney Institute website.