Joel A. Tarr

Professor Emeritus, History, Heinz College, Engineering and Public Policy

Bio

History provides an essential context for understanding the development of many contemporary problems. Without an understanding of such historical background, many attempts at contemporary problem solving are doomed to failure. Joel Tarr is a historian whose research focuses on the history of urban technologies and urban infrastructure systems, as well as the development of environmental problems and policy. More specifically, he has written about the effects of transportation innovations, the uses of the telegraph in the urban context, and the development and impacts of water supply and waste water systems.

Tarr's environmental work has dealt also with air, water, and land pollution, and the cross-media problems created by technological choices and changing disposal practices. In addition, he has examined problems of industrial pollution. Tarr has also written about environmental policy formation on the local, state, and federal levels, and the roles of various professional groups in setting priorities. This research has dealt primarily with changing conceptions of risk in the face of new knowledge and new technologies, as well as societal value change. Much of his environmental and technology-related research has been done in collaboration with engineers.

In 1992 Carnegie Mellon University awarded Tarr the Robert Doherty Prize for Contributions to Excellence in Education, and in 2003 he was elected a University Professor. In 2008, the Society for the History of Technology awarded him its highest award, the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, presented to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the history of technology. In 2014 the American Society for Environmental History awarded him its Distinguished Service Award for 2015. His book, Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America, edited with Gabriel Dupuy, won the 1988 Abel Wolman Prize of the Public Works Historical Society; his book, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective, was named an “outstanding Academic Book for 1997” by Choice; his edited volume, Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region, received a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association of State and Local History in 2004; and, his co-authored book, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the 19th Century, was awarded Honorable Mention in 2007 for the Lewis Mumford Prize of the Society for City and Regional Planning History. He is co-editor with Martin V. Melosi of the University of Pittsburgh series, “The History of the Urban Environment.” He served as President of the Public Works Historical Society in 1982-83 and as President of the Urban History Association in 1999. He has served on National Research Council committees dealing with issues of urban infrastructure, public transit, water pollution, and the Human Dimensions of Global Change.

Education

• Ph.D., History, Northwestern University, 1963
• MA, History, Rutgers University, 1957
• BA, History, Rutgers University, 1956