Ezra Glenn

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Urban planner, author

Areas of Expertise:

  • urban planning
  • community development
  • cities
  • R
  • statistics
  • data
  • census
  • consulting
  • speaking
  • training
  • writing

Ezra Haber Glenn is a Lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where he teaches courses in Quantitative Reasoning and Statistical Methods and the Practice of Community Development. Prior to this position he worked in local government in Massachusetts, including service as Director of Community Development for the City of Lawrence, Director of Planning and Development for the City of Somerville, and over five years as a land use planning consultant working in zoning, community planning, affordable housing, and environmental protection. In 2002 he was named a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP).

He is the founder and Executive Director of Public Planning, Research, and Implementation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation established in 2002 to provide research and consulting services to public and nonprofit organizations. He has written dozens of plans for local and regional governments (master/comprehensive plans, open space and recreation plans, affordable housing production plans, etc.), as well as a wide variety of reports, studies, and other planning documents and scholarly articles on the practice of local planning and community development. In his hometown, he is the President of the Board of Directors of the Somerville Community Corporation.

He is also the author of the CityState blog.

Ezra blogs at:

acs-r Mailing List: keep in the loop

April 24 2013

We’re pleased to announce the creation of a new mailing list for the acs.R package. The “acs” package allows users to download, manipulate, analyze, and visualize data from the American Community Survey in R; the “acs-r” e-mail list allows members to keep in touch and share information about the package,… read more

acs.R: a worked example using blockgroup-level data

March 12 2013

A very nice user wrote the following in an email to me about the latest version of the acs.R package: > Thanks for providing such a wonderful package in R. I'm having > difficulty defining a geo at the block group level. Would you mind > sharing an example with… read more