Dr. Peter Laurence is director of graduate studies and the Robert Mills associate professor of architectural and urban history, theory, and design at Clemson University School of Architecture. He has been a student of Jane Jacobs's work for many years, with studies in business and entrepreneurship, architecture, and urban history drawing him to her books on cities, economies, and civilizations. First a Master's thesis at Harvard and then a dissertation at University of Pennsylvania, Becoming Jane Jacobs is the term paper that he has been writing for twenty years. Prior to Becoming Jane Jacobs, his research on Jacobs and architectural and urban history was published in Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Architectural Education, and Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, in addition to a number of edited volumes including Reconsidering Jane Jacobs. His early work changed Jacobs scholarship and contributed to the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation's Jane Jacobs Medals in 2006.
While interested in ways that the history of science has intersected with architectural and urban theory since the Renaissance, as well as the larger histories of modern architecture and urbanism of the 20th century, he continues work on Jacobs and is now writing a reader's guide to The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
More about his work, which has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, and the Rockefeller Archive Center can be found at academia.edu.