Mr. Adam Henry :: Sustainability Science Program :: Center for International Development

Sustainability Science Program

Mr. Adam Henry
Center for International Development
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
373 Taubman Building
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Tel: (1) 857-919-5148
Fax: (1) 617-496-8753
Email: adam_henry "at" ksg.harvard.edu
Group affiliation: 2008-9 Doctoral Fellow

Adam Henry is a Doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard’s Center for International Development and a doctoral candidate with the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on regional land-use and transportation planning in California. Henry focuses on how belief systems influence the structure of social networks in planning processes, and how these networks impact agents’ propensity to learn, innovate, and agree on contentious policy issues. This research is ultimately oriented towards understanding how collaborative institutions can be used to foster more sustainable outcomes. He received his Masters degree in Transportation Technology and Policy from the University of California, Davis, where he was a Department of Energy GATE fellow in 2004. He is a recipient of the Giorgio Ruffolo Doctoral Fellowship in Sustainability Science (2007). Prior to graduate school he lived in China. He is an alumnus of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, where he was engaged in research on the environmental impacts of population growth in China. Henry graduated from Washington and Lee University with a B.S. in mathematics and a B.A. in East Asian studies. His faculty hosts at Harvard are David Lazer and William Clark.

Social Networks and the Challenge of Learning for Sustainability in Regional Planning: Decision-making for sustainability in regional planning is often confounded by the complex and ideologically divisive nature of planning issues. Some agents, however, tend to be much more successful than others in learning to deal with transportation and land-use problems. This study draws on network-theoretic perspectives to explain learning as a function of information exchange relationships amongst multiple policy actors. Data on learning and networks are collected from policy elites involved in three regional planning processes in California. This study underscores the importance of non-hierarchical information exchange relationships in promoting learning within complex issue domains, although the results also suggest that persistent ideological conflict is an important barrier to learning.