Raymond Charles Rauscher is a conjoint lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and a director of the Habitat Association for Arts and Environment Inc. Ray was born in Brooklyn, New York City (1943), and graduated from the City College of New York (Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) (1966)). He later completed part one of a master’s degree at the University of Michigan (research on Detroit entitled A Solution to the Urban Crisis: Proposal for the Creation of Region Serving New Cities (unpublished 1969)). His Master of Town and Country Planning degree was completed at the University of Sydney (1971), including a thesis Community Response to a Redevelopment Proposal (Sydney) (University of Sydney Library Microfilm Department 1971). The thesis covered planning conflicts in Erskineville (Sydney) and a framework to resolve urban planning conflicts. Delving into the subject of sustainable urban planning (SUP), Ray completed a PhD (2009) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Following further research, Ray published Sustainable Communities: A Framework for Planning (Springer 2014). Moving to address urban renewal, Ray completed research and published Brooklyn’s Bushwick – Urban Renewal in New York, USA (Springer 2014). Researching further, Ray then examined urban planning (from the 1970s) in inner city neighborhoods of Sydney, publishing Sustainable Neighborhoods in Australia: City of Sydney Urban Change (Springer 2015). Moving from the inner city planning, Ray then researched how cities were coping with today’s impacts of global changes (i.e., population and environmental impacts) and published Cities in Global Transition: Creating Sustainable Communities in Australia (Springer 2016). The instance of these global impacts on neighborhoods led Ray to commence research on the extent that cities, in planning neighborhoods, address Sustainable City Principles. On further researching this question (and completing fieldwork over nine New York neighborhoods in 2014), Ray completed this book (New York Neighborhoods – Addressing Sustainable City Principles). Ray would appreciate hearing from any reader on his/her views on planning neighborhoods and cities (New York or anywhere) (ray.r@idl.net.au).
