Professor Adler joined the faculty at Portland State in 1982 after working in the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning on transportation and growth management issues. He has taught more than a dozen different courses at Portland State and served as director of the School of Urban Studies and Planning from 1996 through 2000.  His interests include the evolution of planning institutions, theories and practices, urban social and political dynamics, and relationships between planning and public health.

Professor Adler is completing a long-term project based on archival research and interviews with activists and planners at local, regional, and state levels that explores the political history of the Oregon Land Use Planning Program. Other recent projects have included a review of recent planning activities in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, an analysis of active living ideas incorporated into a Portland-area urban growth boundary expansion plan, and a study of the evolution of transportation planning in the Portland region.  He is currently at work on a theoretical and historical analysis of the development and adoption of metropolitan Portland’s first urban growth boundary.

In his History and Theory of Planning course, Dr. Adler emphasizes a practice-oriented approach to learning.  Students develop the skills to theorize about and to place planning issues in their historical contexts in part by studying plans recently adopted by various agencies in the metropolitan area. He also teaches an Advanced Planning Theory seminar for master and doctoral students. Introduction to Urban Planning and Healthy Communities are upper division undergraduate courses in which students also engage with current issues and practices in the region, and the year-long Freshman Inquiry course that Professor Adler teaches about Portland incorporates that approach as well.