John C. Keene, emeritus professor of metropolis and regional planning, authorized professional, and worldwide lecturer, dies at 90

John C. Keene, 90, of Haverford, an award-winning professor emeritus and former chairman of the division of metropolis and regional planning on the College of Pennsylvania, authorized marketing consultant to governments and others on environmental and farmland safety, worldwide lecturer, mentor, creator, and veteran, died Friday, March 4, of prostate most cancers at his house.

Professor Keene was tireless in his 55 years of service at Penn. A lawyer and professional on legal guidelines relating to city planning, progress administration, and environmental coverage, he was the college’s division chairman of metropolis and regional planning from 1988 to 1992 and served two phrases as chair of the division’s graduate group and its doctoral program.

He was additionally, amongst different roles, chair of the college senate, college ombudsman, and coordinator of a complicated grasp’s diploma program in environmental administration that companions Penn with Mines Paris Tech in France and Tsinghua College in China.

Described as “a tutorial thoroughbred” and “a broad thinker” by colleagues, Professor Keene taught an array of lessons and lectured concerning the authorized elements of planning and planning principle, and he wrote a chapter for a 2001 commerce publication that illustrated the importance of that work.

“Human society has launched into a course that may convey us into collision with the capability of our pure techniques to maintain us,” he wrote in Managing Change: Sustainable Approaches to the Conservation of the Constructed Setting. “These concerned in historic preservation and cultural conservation can work to ameliorate a few of the contributing causes to the unsustainability of metropolitan areas internationally.”

A colleague at Penn’s Weitzman Faculty of Design wrote in an on-line tribute: “He virtually invented the earliest pondering on progress administration, farmland safety, and switch of improvement rights.”

Professor Keene spoke French and Spanish, and lectured in additional than 50 international locations. He wrote, cowrote, and edited dozens of experiences, articles, analyses, and scholarly books, together with Saving American Farmland: What Works in 1997 and The Legislation of Agricultural Land Preservation in america in 2018.

He was a member of a number of preservation committees and acquired a 1999 College Analysis Basis award to review planning in three areas of northern Spain.

He gained the 2004 Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Basis Award for Distinguished Instructing at Penn and the 2005 G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Instructing from the college of design.

“He was a lifelong learner,” stated his daughter Lisa.

Professor Keene was born Aug. 17, 1931, in Wynnewood. He graduated from Episcopal Academy in 1949 and earned a bachelor’s diploma at Yale College in 1953, a regulation diploma from Harvard Legislation Faculty in 1959, and a grasp’s diploma in metropolis planning from Penn in 1966.

He served within the Navy from 1953 to 1956 as a fight info officer on the USS Strickland. He married Emma Thune within the Fifties, and so they had daughters Lisa, Suzy, and Katy and sons John and Peter.

After a divorce, Professor Keene married Ana Maria Delgado in 1973, and her youngsters — daughter Carmen and sons Carlos, Rene, Mario, Raul, and Silvio — blended almost seamlessly together with his youngsters. “He had a strategy to make it simple to return collectively,” stated his spouse. “He was a affected person, considerate, pricey man who was devoted to his household.”

He partnered with fellow planner Bob Coughlin in 1976 to kind Coughlin, Keene & Associates, and so they consulted with townships, counties, and others for twenty years on planning points.

Professor Keene favored opera and sang in highschool with the glee membership and a barbershop quartet and in school with Yale’s freshman refrain. He was interested by family tree, wrote a 500-page memoir, and photographed as many household gatherings as doable.

A former scholar stated in a tribute: “I solely hope that I can encourage others half as a lot as he impressed me.”

His spouse stated: “We had been yin and yang.”

Along with his spouse and mixed youngsters, Professor Keene is survived by 24 mixed grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. His former spouse and a sister died earlier.

Companies are to be at 3 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at St. Christopher’s Church, 226 Righters Mill Rd., Gladwyne, Pa. 19035.

Donations in his title could also be made to Penn’s City Research Program and Metropolis and Regional Endowed Fellowship Fund, College of Pennsylvania, Workplace of the Treasurer, P.O. Field 71332, Philadelphia, Pa. 19176.