U-M Launches Search for New Dean of Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Ann Arbor's housing and development debates do not end at City Hall. The research, professional training and networks of U-M's Taubman College can also influence the choices that affect rents, new construction and who can afford to remain in the city.

The University of Michigan has opened its search for the next dean of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The search comes as Dean Jonathan Massey prepares to finish his second term on June 30, 2027, closing a decade in the job. Massey's first term ran from Aug. 1, 2017, through June 30, 2022, and his second from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2027.

For Ann Arbor, this is more than a campus personnel decision. The next dean will help set the ideas, research priorities and professional training that Taubman College brings to housing debates, development decisions and the planning conversations shaping the city.

The question is whether U-M chooses a leader who sees Ann Arbor's affordability and development pressures as central to the college's work—or one focused mainly on global stature, broad research programs and work less connected to the city beyond campus. Those goals do not have to conflict. But the search will show which priorities the university puts first.

The college has land-use expertise. Jonathan Levine, a professor at the University of Michigan's Taubman College, is identified as an expert in land use. The university describes Taubman College faculty as actively influencing Ann Arbor's local zoning and housing policy.

The next Taubman College dean will be expected to lead the college through technological transformation affecting architecture and urban planning, climate change challenges facing the built environment with a focus on sustainability, and shifting global development patterns. The successful candidate must also navigate shifting enrollment dynamics while building financial resilience, deepen internal cohesion among faculty and students, and strengthen external partnerships. The university says the new dean must possess credibility in both scholarship and practice, with a dual track record of high-level academic research and professional work, and must provide decisive leadership with the energy and vision to shape solutions to urgent global challenges.

The university's stated search priorities emphasize global challenges, technological transformation and climate sustainability but do not explicitly call out housing affordability, local community engagement or the college's role in addressing Ann Arbor's housing needs.

That absence matters. A dean decides how a college uses its research capacity, professional networks and educational mission—and whether local housing questions receive sustained attention rather than occasional interest. Ann Arbor residents are concerned about housing affordability and supply, issues that fall squarely within Taubman College's areas of research and professional training. The dean search offers the university a chance to signal whether it views the college as a partner in addressing Ann Arbor's housing challenges or as an institution whose work happens to be located here but is oriented elsewhere.

Residents should look for a candidate whose record demonstrates commitment to housing abundance, zoning reform, equitable development and community-engaged research—not just academic credentials in architecture and planning divorced from policy impact.