Dr. Diane Jones Allen is living her American Dream as a Professor and Program Director for Landscape Architecture, for the College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington.  

"I'm really lucky to be at UTA,” Jones exclaimed, “and I mean, really lucky because community service, especially in having students to be able to work on real projects and communities.”

As Principal Landscape Architect with DesignJones LLC, she became elevated to Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2019. Design Jones LLC also received the 2016 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Community Service Award under her leadership. Diane also served on the Board of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF), serving as Vice President for Education for 2021.  Diane is part of one of two cross disciplinary teams that won 2020 SOM Foundation Research Prize focused on examining social justice in urban contexts.  

“Landscape architecture mitigates changing climate,” Allen explained. “We deal with floods and fires preventing those kinds of things and provide refuge for people. It also has social and cultural, implications. So that's what I loved about it.”

Her research and practice are guided by the intersection of environmental justice, identity, and sustainability in cultural landscapes, including “Nomadic” responses to “Transit Deserts,” places of increasing transportation demand and limited access, as discuss in her book “Lost in the Transit Desert: Race, Transit Access, and Suburban Form” published by Routledge Press in 2017.  Diane, co-edited “Design for Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity”, published by Island Press in 2017.  She was a 2021-2022 fellow for Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks working on her upcoming book on Maroon Landscapes. She is author of “Lost in the Transit Desert: Race, Transit Access, and Suburban Form” published 2017. In 2017, she served on the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resiliency, and in 2022 she served on ASLA’s Climate Task Force to develop the ASLA Climate Action Plan.

“Like being here at UT Arlington for me is the American Dream,” Jones stated. “I love landscape architecture, and I get to work with the faculty here to pass on this knowledge, to know that we're sharing this with young people that are going to go out and continue to share this knowledge and make a difference in the built environment.”

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