UF DCP dean recognized for work in Indonesia

October 1, 2012

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Christopher Silver, dean of the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning, has been awarded a Ganesa Award by the Bandung Institute of Technology, or ITB, in Indonesia. To commemorate the 92nd anniversary of Indonesian Engineering Higher Education, ITB chose 18 recipients – Silver being the only non-Indonesian — to receive this honor.

Silver’s award recognizes his contributions and involvement with the ITB and Indonesia in higher education, specifically in the fields of urban and regional planning and development.

Silver’s involvement began in 1989, serving on three separate occasions as a Fulbright Scholar, initially at the University of Indonesia and subsequently ITB. He continued his work as an urban policy advisor to the Indonesian Development Planning Board in Jakarta under a U.S. Agency for International Development project, during which he also served on master’s and doctoral committees at ITB.

Silver authored “Planning the Megacity: Jakarta in the Twentieth Century” and has since published works on Indonesia’s decentralization and planning processes. With a three-year federal grant to promote a community-based planning process, Silver worked with colleagues at ITB on a successful decentralization program in Jatinangor, an emerging urban area near Bandung. Throughout his time at UF and previously while at Virginia Commonwealth University and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Silver developed faculty and student exchange programs with ITB, involving more than 24 Indonesian master’s and doctoral students in the field of urban and regional planning. He is researching the challenges of water management in Indonesian cities that will be explored in a forthcoming book, “Four Hundred Years of Water Management in Jakarta.”

“This unexpected recognition of my efforts to forge academic connections between U.S. and Indonesian urban scholars adds an accent mark to a relationship that has contributed so much to me and my family over more than two decades,” Silver said. “I am so very honored by ITB’s generous gesture.”

Silver will receive the award from ITB’s rector at the opening ceremony of the PlanoCosmo International Conference on Oct. 8, where he also will serve as a keynote speaker.