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Meet Royce Hanson
Montgomery County Planning Board Chairman
E-mail: MCP-chairman@mncppc-mc.org
Royce Hanson
Planning Board Chairman and Vice Chairman of
The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission
Royce Hanson is Chairman of the Montgomery County Planning Board of the Maryland-National Capital Park & Planning Commission, a post to which he was appointed in 2006 by the Montgomery County Council. He was re-appointed by the Council after an absence of 25 years.
During his first tour, from 1972 to 1981, he led the Board to national prominence in planning and park management and established a framework for land use policy that has been followed since that time. Under his leadership, the Board adopted new approaches to planning and developing the county’s business districts and transit centers and a public facilities ordinance to coordinate growth with adequate amenities such as hassle-free roads and uncrowded schools.
One of Hanson’s biggest accomplishments was the designation of the county’s 93,000-acre Agricultural Reserve, widely recognized as the nation’s most successful effort at land conservation on the urban fringe.
Hanson began his career as a professor of government and public administration at American University. During the 1960s, he led the citizen movement in Maryland for equal representation in the state General Assembly, which culminated in the One Person-One Vote decision of the U.S, Supreme Court.
Following two unsuccessful congressional campaigns, in 1966 Hanson became president of the Washington Center for Metropolitan Studies, a five-university consortium focused on policy research for the National Capital region. He was elected a delegate to the 1967-68 Maryland Constitutional Convention, and also served a director of the New Communities Study Center of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, before returning in 1970 to teach full time at American University and as a part-time commissioner on the Montgomery County Planning Board, prior to his appointment as the Board’s first full-time chairman.
Hanson left the Board in 1981 to become senior staff officer and director of the Committee on National Urban Policy of the National Research Council. In 1983, he was selected as associate dean and professor of public policy and planning of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Minnesota. He became dean of the School of Social Sciences and professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas in 1987.
In 1998, he retired from UTD and he and his wife, Mary, returned to Montgomery County. Hanson joined the faculty of the Graduate Program in Public Sciences at the University of Maryland Baltimore County as Wilson Elkins Visiting Professor, and later served as Professor of Practice in Policy Science and as Interim Director of UMBC’s Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education.
He moved to the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy in 2003, as research professor, and also served as director of the Center for Washington Area Studies until his appointment to the Planning Board. Hanson joined the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Environmental Trust in 2000, and was its chairman from 2001-2006.
He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Harry Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology of the University of Maryland, a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a member of the Maryland Bar.
Author of numerous books and articles on urban policy and politics, Hanson’s most recent work includes: Civic Culture and Urban Change: Governing Dallas (Wayne State University Press 2003); a series of co-authored articles on defining and measuring urban sprawl; and Corporate Citizenship and Urban Problem Solving: The Changing Civic Role of Business Leaders in American Cities (Brookings 2006). He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Government and Public Administration, and a J.D. degree from the American University.
For more information, please call the Planning Board's Community Relations Office, 301-495-4600