John W. Frece is the Center's associate director and an adjunct professor in Urban Studies and Planning. His responsibilities
include public outreach and response to media inquiries related to Center research projects, smart growth generally and Maryland's
Smart Growth initiative specifically. He coordinates publications, web page content, writes and edits articles and reports,
assists and teaches in the Center's Smart Growth Leadership Program, and serves as a deputy to the Executive Director.
Frece leads the Center's efforts as a partner in the Governors' Institute on Community Design, a project that provides
workshops on land use issues for governors around the nation. At the University of Maryland, he has taught a graduate
course in "The Politics of Smart Growth," has served as a coordinator of the Center's Reality Check Plus growth
visioning exercises, and helped plan the Center's Smart Growth @ 10 conference.
Frece previously worked for seven years on the staff of former Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening, where he was a coordinator,
adviser and chief spokesman for Maryland's Smart Growth initiative. For more than two decades prior to that, Frece was a longtime
newspaper reporter covering politics and government for the
Baltimore Sun, United Press International and the Reston (Va.) Times.
He is co-author of My Unexpected Journey: The Autobiography of Governor Harry Roe Hughes (The History Press, 2006), co-editor of
Incentives, Regulations and Plans: The Role of States and Nation-states in Smart Growth Planning (Edward Elgar, 2007), and author
of Sprawl & Politics: The Inside Story of Smart Growth in Maryland (forthcoming, SUNY Press, April 2008). He holds a B.A. in
philosophy from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
(301) 405-6799
jfrece@umd.edu
