Featuring Our Faculty

Community Outreach Interests

As a professional planner, I am committed to affecting change for the public good.  Specifically for me, this includes understanding the nature of landscapes as coupled human and natural systems, how they hold meaning, how they change, and how human activities are sustainable (or not).  I am drawn to coastal, rural, and natural landscapes.  I am interested in working with communities impacted by exogenous and endogenous influences such as urban expansion, climate change, resource development, declining local economics, and economic development (including tourism).

Research Interests

My research and professional work focuses on the evolution of landscapes and the creation of landscapes and ecoregions as viable, dynamic, and sustainable.  My expertise is in the area of how processes shape landscapes and how intentional planning and design influence landscape trajectories.  I am particularly interested in ecoregional plans as the complement to urban megaregions as well as in the edge effects of growing megaregions on natural, rural, and coastal landscapes.  As an academic teaching in a professional degree, I am committed to both research and professional practice that has relevance to improving practice and to the challenges that my students will face in their professional careers.  My long-term professional goal is to advance the practice of ecological landscape planning, an activity that  is rooted in landscape architecture and environmental planning but draws from geography, ecological sciences, political science, history, art, and engineering among others.  Bridges, buildings, biodiversity, and beauty all need to exist in sustainable landscapes.  This has led to specific research projects on the North Carolina coast, highway infrastructure's effects on landscapes, green infrastructure strategies, the interplay between the two infrastructures, changing rural regions, and climate change adaptation strategies.

Notable Publications

• Hamin, E. M. & Marcucci, D. J. 2008.  Ad Hoc Rural Regionalism. Journal of Rural Studies, 24 (4), 467-477.
• Marcucci, D. J. 2000.  Landscape History as a Planning Tool. Landscape and Urban Planning, 49: 67-81.
• Marcucci, D. J., (Principal Investigator).  2011.  East Carolina University & Parsons Brinckerhoff, Mid-Currituck Bridge Study: Indirect and Cumulative Effects Technical Report.  Prepared for North Carolina Turnpike Authority.  (226 pages.)
• Marcucci, Daniel J., James D. Brinkley, Lauren M. Jordan. 2010. Five Concepts in Planning Theory Useful to Coastal Management" Proceedings of the 22nd National Conference.  The Coastal Society. Marcucci, Daniel J. and Lauren M. Jordan. 2010.
• Overlaying State and County Green Infrastructure Planning with Regional Transportation Planning.  Proceedings of Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning 2010.

Courses

• PLAN 5025:  Coastal Area Planning and Management 
• PLAN 5045:  Natural Resources Planning and Management
• PLAN 6020:  Seminar in Environmental Planning – Origins of American Environmentalism
• PLAN 6305:  Development Planning and the Environment