Joseph Huennekens

Biography

Joseph (Joe) Huennekens is an urban planner interested in land use conflict, exclusionary zoning, planning law, and the politics of housing development. His research investigates how people formulate (and fight over) the rules and regulations that shape land use and city form, and the effects that those regulations have on spatial inequality. His book project, tentatively titled A Denser Type of Dream, investigates how residential densification proceeds in a polarized “ethnoburb” setting in the New York suburbs. Joe’s mixed-methods work has been published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Cityscape. His co-authored article on the YIMBY movement won the Urban Affairs Association’s Best Article Prize in 2025. Prior to entering academia, he worked as a planner for the NYC Department of City Planning and as a program manager at the Design Trust for Public Space.

Education

  • PhD in Planning, Columbia University, 2025
  • Master’s in City Planning, University of Pennsylvania, 2015
  • S. in Architecture, University of Virginia, 2012

Selected Publications

Huennekens, J. W. (2024). Judicial Review as a Second Stage of Land Use Approvals: The Case of Patrick Farm. Journal of Planning Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X241291210

Huennekens, J. W. (2023a). Learning from Land Use Reforms: The Case of Ramapo, New York. Cityscape, Symposium: Recent Reforms in Zoning, 25(2). https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscape/vol25num2/article10.html

Davis, J., Rong, H., & Huennekens, J. W. (2023). Perceptions toward Upzoning: A Parcel-Level Analysis of Public Sentiments toward the Minneapolis 2040 Plan. Journal of Planning Education and Research. (Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA). https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X231205584

Davis, J., & Huennekens, J. W. (2022). YIMBY divided: A qualitative content analysis of YIMBY subreddit data. Journal of Urban Affairs, 0(0), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2022.2139710

Huennekens, J. W. (2021). The Second Coming of the Accessory Dwelling Unit. Metropolitics. https://metropolitics.org/The-Second-Coming-of-the-Accessory-Dwelling-Unit.html