DrJon Paul Faulkner

Dr Jon Paul Faulkner is a planning and environmental policy scholar at University College Dublin’s School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy. His research examines how places and planning systems respond to uneven and contested economic, environmental and sustainability transitions, and how spatial evidence, governance and planning can support more sustainable, equitable and place-based outcomes. His work spans regional and urban planning, spatial governance, rural and regional development, land-use change, environmental health and sustainability transitions. A central concern running through his research is the gap between policy ambition and implementation, and how competing demands on land, infrastructure, environment and communities are negotiated and translated into spatial outcomes.

Across these areas, Faulkner combines GIS and spatial analysis, quantitative and qualitative methods, policy analysis, stakeholder co-design, participatory approaches, sustainability indicators and decision-support tools. A common concern is translating evidence into planning-relevant strategies, frameworks and tools that help planners, policymakers and stakeholders navigate competing objectives under conditions of transition, conflict and uncertainty

Faulkner's present research includes CoBioEcon (first draft proposal writer), focusing on developing Ireland's first regional bioeconomy strategy, and including land-use analysis, spatial typologies and stakeholder co-design. His current role is also to coordinate and project-manage UCD’s contribution to the Horizon funded Consortium based Project ATMOSPOLIS (first draft proposal writer). This project links air/noise pollution, citizen-generated evidence, urban health and city decision-support. Faulkner's emerging BIOPLAN agenda examines why regions and planning systems differ in their capacity to coordinate complex sustainability transitions.

Faulkner has published extensively across planning, rural and regional studies, environmental management, sustainability and environmental health. His scholarship includes peer-reviewed papers in high-end journals such as Environmental Management, Science of the Total Environment, Journal of Rural Studies, European Planning Studies, Applied Acoustics, Sustainability and Cleaner and Circular Bioeconomy, alongside major policy-facing reports for the Government of Ireland, EPA Ireland and TII. 

In addition to his research, Dr Faulkner teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate planning programmes at UCD Dublin and Chang’an Dublin International College. His teaching spans comparative planning, rural and landscape planning, urban governance and transport, GIS, research methods, planning theory and environmental policy. He supervises MSc research and mentors doctoral work in spatial planning, regional bioeconomy transition and environmental health. He holds a PhD in Planning and Environmental Policy from UCD funded through a Walsh Fellowship scholarship award, and an MSc in Applied Social Research from Trinity College Dublin.