Greg Hise studies metropolitan economies and the politics of land use in order to better understand the social life of cities. After completing a doctorate in architectural history at UC Berkeley Hise joined the faculty at USC where he offered undergraduate surveys exploring histories of policy, planning, and Los Angeles and graduate seminars on qualitative methods, spatial theory, and urban environmental history. Since joining the History Department at UNLV in 2008 he has taught courses and colloquia examining urbanization in the Pacific World, the geography of Civil Rights, digital humanities, and philosophy of history.

Professor Hise is the author, co-author, or co-editor of five books. Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis (1997) received the Spiro Kostof Book Prize (Society of Architectural Historians) and the Pflueger Award (Historical Society of Southern California). He co-authored Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region (2000) with William Deverell with whom he co-edited Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Los Angeles (2005), and A Companion to Los Angeles (2010). In addition Hise has published more than twenty-five articles or book chapters examining residential and industrial development, municipal enterprise, regions and regionalism, architecture as state building, representations of cities in a digital age, and the pedagogical challenges of humanities education in professional schools. His current project, “Property Rights and Civil Rights,” is a history of residential segregation and the struggle to secure open housing in twentieth-century America. That story, told through the career of activist attorney Loren Miller, brings California to the forefront of a narrative that has been southern and northern in its geography. 

Professor Hise has served on the editorial boards of five journals (two current). He is Past-President (2007-09) of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) and has served on the boards and on prize committees of SACRPH, the Urban History Association, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Vernacular Architecture Forum. He is a frequent contributor to documentaries, historic preservation projects, and museum programs including co-curation of an online exhibit, "Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and Metropolitan Los Angeles", part of a multi-institutional effort to document "Los Angeles Architecture, 1940-1990." In 2011 SACRPH awarded Hise its Laurence Gerckens Prize to acknowledge sustained teaching excellence and educational leadership. Fellowship and grant support from the Huntington Library, the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, the Getty Foundation, and the Center for Historical Analysis (Rutgers University) has supported past and current projects.