About

Alison Bick Hirsch, PhD, FAAR, ASLA is a landscape and environment designer, planner, preservationist and historian. She is committed to places and people that have been historically neglected, forgotten, or actively erased. She works and consults with non-profits, community groups, public agencies and institutions to develop designs, plans, and reports that sustain and strengthen communities and their resilience.

A tenured professor in the USC School of Architecture and former director of the Masters of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism program (2019-2023), Alison runs the Landscape Justice Initiative which is an applied research and service-learning platform that allows her to work with students on sustained community projects. Alison was formerly co-founder/partner at foreground design agency (2011-2024) where she co-developed many speculative and built design projects.

Alison has authored numerous books, articles and chapters [see ‘Publications’] and is currently writing a book on the entangled histories, presents and futures of California’s Tulare Lake and the Black-founded town of Allensworth, and their collective refusal to be erased.

Alison was the 2017-2018 Prince Charitable Trusts/Rolland Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy (FAAR), a 2020-2021 Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Fellow in Leadership & Innovation, and a 2024-2025 Shapiro Center for American History & Culture Fellow at the Huntington Library & Gardens.

EDUCATION: Ph.D., Architectural History/Theory, University of Pennsylvania; Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA), University of Pennsylvania; Master of Science (Historic Preservation/Cultural Landscape Management), University of Pennsylvania; BA, Art & Art History, Wesleyan University.

Alison has two spirited daughters and an energetic cattle dog who she found in the wilds of the Central Valley and who now lives her best life in Pasadena.