Glen Abrams, AICP, Watershed Program Manager, Philadelphia Watersheds
Heather Alhadeff, AICP, Senior Transportation Planner, Perkins & Will
Heather Alhadeff recently joined Perkins+Will’s Atlanta Urban Design practice as a Senior Transportation Planner. An accomplished transportation planner and recognized expert, Heather also brings her experience in land use planning, transportation engineering and urban design. She has deep public sector experience, including past roles as the City of Atlanta’s Director of Transportation Planning, Central Atlanta Progress’ Director of Transportation Management, Senior Planner at the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Federal Highway Administration. She specializes in resolving complex land use and multi-modal transportation situations through logical implementation and creating constituent consensus. She directed the creation and adoption of the Connect Atlanta Plan, Downtown Parking Plan and has worked on the Atlanta StreetCar, Regional On-Board Transit Survey, Columbus Public Involvement Plan, Multimodal Passenger Terminal and Express Bus Routing. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the PEDS Golden Shoe Award, Atlanta Bicycle Coalition Best Planning Initiative of the Year (2008) and Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 40 under 40 (2007).
Douglas C. Allen, ASLA, Senior Associate Dean and Professor, College of Architecture - Georgia Institute of Technology
Douglas Allen, ASLA is Professor and Senior Associate Dean in the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech where he teaches courses in urban history and urban design. He co-authored the book,Cambridge Massachusetts: the Changing of a Landscape (Harvard University Press, 1979) which won the Conservation Medal from the Victorian Society in America in 1980. He has also published “Memory and Place: Two Case Studies”, and “The Code of the City: Window into a Labyrinth”, both in Places Journal, “The Tanner Fountain”, in Peter Walker: Experiments in Gesture, Seriality, and Flatness (Rizzoli, New York 1991) and has numerous contributions to the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art (Oxford University Press, 2010) . He has lectured at Arizona State University, The Catholic University of America, Harvard University, Iowa State University, Temple University, The University of Texas (Austin), Tuskegee University, the University of Georgia, and Rice University. He has served as a jury member for the International AID Housing Competition in Hyundae, Korea, and on thesis reviews at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia. He has also served on professional awards juries for the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Landscape Architects. In 1987-88 he was Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. Professionally, he is a landscape architect with over thirty-five years of experience in the design and planning of commercial, residential, and institutional projects for both public and private sector clients. His projects include the development of a master plan for the University of Bir Zeit (West Bank, Israel,1983); Korean War Memorial (Baltimore, Maryland, 1987); The Augusta Riverfront Center Project (Augusta, GA. 1990-1992); and Veterans Memorial Park (with W. Jude LeBlanc) in Smyrna, GA. (2000-2002) His work includes several award winning projects, including the Perdue Garden (Atlanta, GA. 1983); Piedmont Arbors Condominiums (Atlanta, GA. 1986, with Taylor and Williams), The Dash Residence (Atlanta, GA. 1996 with Lane M. Duncan and Michael Gamble), and StudioPlex a mixed use development in Atlanta (with Brock + Green, Architects, 1999). The Perdue Garden was featured in the book, Contemporary Trends in Landscape Architecture; by Steven Cantor (Van Nostrand and Reinhold, New York, 1997). Other design work has appeared in Progressive Architecture, Builder Magazine, and House and Garden.
Robert Alminana, Principal, Hall Alminana Inc.
Robert Alminana, AICP, LEED AP, is a founding principal of Hall Alminana Inc., a consulting firm devoted to providing participatory planning, coding and design services with an emphasis on SmartCode. Mr. Alminana has managed, organized and participated in many urban revitalization and new neighborhood master plans and specific plans, urban and architectural design regulations, form-based codes and urban design improvements. Mr. Alminana holds an MArc from University of Miami and an MBA from Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris. He is the co-author, with Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, of “The New Civic Art, Elements of Town Planning” (Rizzoli, New York, October 2003).
John Anderson, Principal, Anderson Kim
John Anderson is a builder, developer, and urbanist. He has worked for the past ten years as the director of planning and design for New Urban Builders in Chico and Redding, where the firm has demonstrated sustainable neighborhoods can be built by California production builders.He is the author with Paul Crawford of the TND Code a form-based zoning code adopted by the City of Chico as part of the entitlement of Meriam Park, a 200 acre LEED-ND Pilot Project in SE Chico.John is a principal with Anderson|Kim Architecture + Urban Design.
Jennifer Ball, Vice President, Planning, Central Atlanta Progress/Atlanta Downtown Improvement District
M. Scott Ball, Senior Project Manager, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Currently based in Atlant, GA Scott Ball has managed several redevelopment efforts along the Gulf Coast for DPZ. Prior to his work with DPZ, Mr. Ball served as The Louisiana Road Home Program's Director of Rebuilding and Construction Assistance, in which capacity he helped start up Louisiana's storm recovery programs. Mr. Ball has been actively engaged in aging and community design issues, and authored the "Aging In Place Tool Kit" and "Lifelong Communities: A Regional Guide to Growth and Longevity" for the Atlanta Regional Commission. He also co-authored the "Land-use and Public Health Toolkit" for the National Association of Local Boards of Health.
Lyyne Barker, Program Director, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives-Local Governments for Sustainability (Respondent)
Jonathan Bartlett, Vice President , RCLCO
Jonathan Bartlett has been with RCLCO for seven years, and has worked around the United States from the firm’s Washington, DC, and Atlanta offices. He has advised developers of projects ranging from infill and adaptive reuse, to long-term, regional visioning assignments for clients such as Envision Utah, The University of Minnesota, and MeadWestvaco. Jonathan enjoys identifying and characterizing economic activity centers, and creating strategies to catalyze development around emerging and potential employment cores. He is spending the recession evaluating FDIC and bank-owned real estate, and preparing expert testimony related to failed master-planned communities. Jonathan hails from Hingham, Massachusetts, and originally ventured south to attend Washington & Lee University. He learned about the New Urbanism as an MBA student at the University of North Carolina, where he interned for Bob Chapman, principal of TND Partners, LLC. He serves on the Programs Committee of the Urban Land Institute’s Atlanta District Council, and is a member of the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association.
Annick C. Beaudet, Neighborhood Connectivity Division, City of Austin
Rob Bennett, Executive Director, Portland + Oregon Sustainability Institute
Scott Bernstein, Center for Neighborhood Technology
Scott leads Center for Neighborhood Technology’s work to understand and better disclose the economic value of resource use in urban communities, and helps craft strategies to capture the value of this efficiency productively and locally. He studied at Northwestern University, served on the research staff of its Center for Urban Affairs, taught at UCLA and was a founding Board member at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center. President Clinton appointed Scott to the President’s Council for Sustainable Development, where he co-chaired its task forces on Metropolitan Sustainable Communities and on Cross-Cutting Climate Strategies and to other Federal advisory panels on global warming, development strategy, and science policy. He helped write a climate change strategy for the 1st 100 days of the new Administration. Scott is a Fellow of the Center for State Innovation, works with governors, mayors and metropolitan organizations across the U.S., and most recently helped create the Chicago Climate Action Plan at the request of Mayor Richard M. Daley. CNT is a signer of the Charter of the New Urbanism and Scott is a member of the Urban History Association, which includes urbanists old and new.
Vinayak Bharne, Associate, Moule & Polyzoides
Vinayak Bharne leads the urban design efforts at Moule & Polyzoides in Pasadena, California. His projects include Civano, one of the first New Urbanist new towns with an advanced environmental protocol in Tucson, Arizona, the Arabian Canal neighborhood in Dubai, the beach town of Lago Mar in Panama, and the Del Mar Station in Pasadena. He teaches urban theory and design at the School of Policy, Planning & Development at the University of Southern California. His recent publications include “Towards an Infrastructural Urbanism in Yazd, Iran”, and “Beyond the Corbusian Cult: Reflections on Chandigarh’s Capitol”. A former contributing editor to the journal Urban Ecology, he the editor and co-author of the forthcoming book “Emerging Asia: Concomitant Urbanities & Urbanisms”.
Tegan K. Boehmer, Epidemiologist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Tegan Boehmer is a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She received a Master of Public Health (2001) and a Doctor of Philosophy (2005) degree from Saint Louis University School of Public Health. In 2003, she completed a two-year fellowship with the Association for Schools of Public Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During 2006–2008, Dr. Boehmer served as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Tri-County Health Department in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Boehmer is currently an epidemiologist with the Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch, National Center for Environmental Health, CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research interests include the impact of community design and transportation on population health, including respiratory and cardiovascular disease, physical activity, and obesity. She is currently conducting several research projects that examine the relationship between urban sprawl, exposure to traffic emissions, and air pollution-related morbidity and mortality.
Vickie Boothe, EE, MPH, Health Scientist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Ms. Boothe is a health scientist and environmental engineer with more than 23 years experience working in the public health and environmental fields. Currently, she serves as a Health Scientist in the Epidemiology and Analysis Program Office where she coordinates CDC’s activities in support of the County Health Rankings initiative and leads a multidisciplinary team charged with conducting a meta-analysis of the 148 published studies on health effects associated with proximity to traffic emissions. Previously, she served as the Healthy Communities Assistant Goal Team Leader where she led the development of CDC’s Healthy Transportation Initiative (HTI). The HTI is collaborative effort designed to holistically address transportation-related air pollution health effects, climate change emissions, motor vehicle injuries, and physical inactivity by encouraging healthy transportation choices in built and social environments that make those choices safe and easy. Previous positions at CDC include serving as an environmental engineer in the Environmental Health Tracking Branch of the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH). There, she led a multiagency, multidisciplinary collaborative team including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and three state health departments that developed the methods, tools, and data so that state and local health departments could easily assess the public health impact of exposures to air pollution. She also served in NCEH’s Veterans’ Health Activity, providing technical advice on Gulf War and Vietnam-related studies, and at ATSDR as a health assessor on Department of Energy sites. From 1986 until November of 2000, Ms. Boothe worked in EPA Region 9 and the Office of Air Quality, Planning and Standards where she developed and implemented national regulations for the control of criteria pollutants and air toxics. Her last position at EPA was in Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability where she was the National Lead for strategic planning for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation and the Office of International Activities, as well as EPA’s national coordinator for Healthy People 2010. Ms. Boothe has a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, a Bachelor’s Degree in Management/Marketing and a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from Georgia State University.
Thomas "Danny" Boston, Georgia Tech Economics Dept/ CEO of EuQuant
Stephanie Bothwell, ASLA, Principal, Urban & Landscape Design
Stephanie Bothwell is the principal of Urban and Landscape Design, located in Washington, DC. She is a city and town planner and a landscape architect. Her practice focuses on the creation of sustainable, beautiful and healthy landscapes such as the Long Beach, Mississippi Post Katrina Conceptual Plan Development. Recently, she has designed civic spaces as Consulting Town Landscape Architect for the new town of East Beach in Norfolk, Virginia, a brownfield redevelopment site; the neglected Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington DC; and consulted on policy and programs addressing the relationship between housing, open space and transportation. Ms. Bothwell was the founder and Director of the American Institute of Architects' Center for Livable Communities, where she worked with design professionals and local, state and federal officials to promote more sustainable building practices. She also organized and led teams of architects to provide post-disaster assistance. Later, consulting for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, she brought design, planning and health professionals together to collaborate on building a healthier world. Prior to that, she was Senior Landscape Architect for the City of Boston neighborhood open space, housing and transportation redevelopment programs. Earlier projects have included the creation of the new town of Baldwin Park at the Orlando Naval Training Center in Florida, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Clemente Park Revitalization Plan for Ft. Meyer, Florida, and the redesign plans for Washington, DC’s Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue. Since its inception in the early 90’s, she has worked extensively on HOPE VI projects and program development with HUD, during which she instituted training programs, conferences and partnerships. HOPE VI’s innovative and transformative program is currently being adopted and expanded by the new administration into the Choice Neighborhoods Program. She has won numerous prizes and has lectured extensively across the country on the role of landscape in the creation of community. Her writing and projects appear in various publications. She co-authored The Windsor Forum on Design Education, an exploration of the future of design education, and Restoring Community through Traditional Neighborhood Design: A Case Study of Diggs Town Public Housing for Fannie Mae Foundation Housing Policy Debate Journal. Ms. Bothwell is a Director and Treasurer of the Congress for the New Urbanism. She is also the co-founder and Board Chair of its DC Chapter, CNU-DC. CNU develops tools and advocates for walkable, mixed use and well designed sustainable communities. As a member of the Casey Tree Foundation Technical Advisory Committee and a director of Trees For Georgetown, and also as an advisor to the Trust for the National Mall, she has long striven to promote the greening of Washington, DC. Since receiving her Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Ms. Bothwell has served on the faculties of the Rhode Island School of Design, Radcliffe College, and the Boston Architectural Center, and for a number of years was Associate Professor of Architecture at Auburn University.
Jeff Bounds, Planning Consultant, Mississippi Renewal Coalition
Jeff Bounds is a planning consultant and a native of Gulfport. He has an engineering degree from MIT and was living in Boston at the time of Katrina. Since then he has moved home to help with rebuilding. Jeff has consulted for several Gulf Coast cities on the SmartCode, and shepherded the Gulfport SmartCode to citywide adoption in February 2007.
Jane Branscomb, Research Associate, Georgia Health Policy Center
Since 2005, Jane has provided research, writing, facilitation and other support to a range of Health Policy Center initiatives. Her current focus is on promoting a “health in all policies” mind-set among decision-makers and their constituents as a foundation for advancing population health and health equity. She is part of a team conducting a targeted, rapid health impact assessment of the proposal for redevelopment of the Fort McPherson property in Atlanta. Other recent projects include assessing the technical assistance needs and capacities of public health institutes nationally, and facilitating a stakeholder work group in the update of Georgia’s comprehensive cancer control plan. Jane’s prior experience includes executive leadership in the social justice nonprofit sector as well as research and development of engineering materials for advanced energy technologies.
Susan B. Brecht, President, Brecht Associates, Inc.
Susan B. Brecht, President of Brecht Associates, Inc., has over twenty-five years of experience in providing consulting services to the senior housing industry. She has been responsible for conducting studies and assisting clients in the planning and development of retirement communities throughout the United States. Brecht's authorship of the definitive book on planning retirement communities, Retirement Housing Markets: Project Planning and Feasibility Analysis (John Wiley & Sons 1991) established her as a leading national expert. Analyzing Seniors Housing Markets, an updated edition of this book, was published in April, 2002 by the Urban Land Institute. She has published numerous articles throughout her career, including several in the prestigious peer-reviewed Seniors Housing & Care Journal published by the National Investment Center (NIC) including “The Impact of Erickson Communities on Existing Markets” which received an Honorable Mention in the 2008 journal and Preparing for the Future: Trends in Continuing Care Retirement Communities which will appear in the 2009 Journal. She has served as an instructor at the Erickson School’s Executive Education program and has lectured at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. Brecht Associates, Inc. offers an array of market research services to clients who are involved in the senior housing and care industry. The firm works with organizations that are planning the development or expansion of all continuing care retirement communities assisted living, dementia care and nursing home communities. She is also involved in advising clients on a wide variety of home and community based services. In addition, Brecht Associates, Inc. works with lenders involved in retirement housing and assisted living financing. Brecht Associates, Inc. advises clients on strategies that reflect the organization's mission and objectives.
Charles Brewer, Managing Member, Las Catalinas Holding Company, LLC
Charles Brewer is an entrepreneur who founded two highly acclaimed companies in two completely different industries. Charles was the Founder and Chairman of Green Street Properties, which created Glenwood Park, a neighborhood-scale development which reclaimed a brownfield site located in the City of Atlanta. Glenwood Park received many awards including the Congress for the New Urbanism Charter Award 2003 for Neighborhood Design and The Urban Land Institute Atlanta Development of the Year Award 2006. Charles also was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of MindSpring Enterprises, one of the largest and most acclaimed Internet Service Providers in the United States in its time. Currently Charles is pursuing his third endeavor, as the Managing Member of Las Catalinas Holding Company, which owns a beautiful piece of coastal land in Costa Rica and plans to develop a resort town there. Charles is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College with a degree in Economics, and he received his MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He serves on the Board of Councilors of the Carter Center and on the Board of Directors of The Commerce Club.
Chris Brewster, Associate Vice President, Gould Evans Associates (Health & State Enabling Statutes)
Chris is a planner and an attorney at Gould Evans, Associate, with 15 years experience in local government planning and policy. Chris is a former city attorney and now consults with local governments on planning and urban design implementation strategies. He specializes in creating development regulations for sustainable, walkable neighborhoods and urban environments. Chris teaches Planning Law and Practices at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Planning and Urban Design program, focusing on multi-disciplinary approaches to planning law. His most recent professional involvement includes work with the Missouri APA Chapter updating the Missouri County Planning Statutes, and serving on the corresponding committee for LEED-ND through his membership in CNU. Chris is a contributing author in A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development, the first book on the legal aspects of New Urbanism and sustainable development.
Kelly Brooks, Stakeholder Relations Director, International Government Relations Group; The Coca-Cola Company: Haiti Hope and International Community/Economic Development
Scott C. Brown, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Walter Brown, Green Street Properties/EarthCraft Communities.
Eden Brukman , RA, Vice President, International Living Building Institute
Eden Brukman is the Vice President of the International Living Building Institute and the Research Director for the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. An architect and sustainable building advisor, she has focused her professional career on incorporating socially and environmentally responsible strategies into design and construction. Since 1996, her work has included research and implementation of sustainable policies, particularly related to building certification and the specification of appropriate building materials. Eden has consulted on dozens of green building projects nationally and internationally, authored articles for periodicals, and lectured at conferences, universities and professional development programs. She now dedicates her time to the development and international deployment of the Living Building Challenge.
Shaunna Burbidge, PHD, Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah
Dr. Shaunna K. Burbidge received her PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara in Geography (2008) emphasizing transportation studies, and is currently employed as a research assistant professor in the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah. Her current research foci include modeling the connection between the built environment and public health, active modes of transportation (walking and biking), Safe Routes to School policies, integrative community health, and other travel behavior topics. Dr. Burbidge currently serves as a board member for Be Healthy Utah where she chairs the Active Community Environments Workgroup and serves as a member of the Research Council. In 2009 Dr. Burbidge received the “Translating Research to Policy” Award from the Active Living Research arm of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for her work integrating public health and regional transportation planning in Utah.
Andrew Burleson, President, CNU Houston
Andrew is a professional urban designer and real estate consultant, and was elected President of CNU-Houston in 2009. His professional work is concentrated on the design, finance, and entitlement of pedestrian and transit-oriented real estate developments. He has a Master’s Degree in Real Estate Development and a Bachelor’s in Environmental Design. He has lived in various places around the world, mainly Illinois, Texas, and Italy – but now he lives in the Montrose District of Houston, Texas.
David Byrne, Artist and Musician
David Byrne is a musician, visual artist, filmmaker and cycling enthusiast. A co-founder of the band Talking Heads, he has also released several solo albums and garnered an Academy Award for his score to Bernardo Bertolucci’s film “The Last Emperor.” His art includes photography and installation works, and has been published in five books, most recently Arboretum. His latest projects include “Here Lies Love”, a musical collaboration with Fatboy Slim invoking the life of Imelda Marcos; a travelogue entitled “Bicycle Diaries”; and “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today,” Byrne’s second album with Brian Eno. In 2008, he designed a series of artistic bike racks to be installed throughout New York City. Mr. Byrne has had the opportunity to submerse himself in numerous cultural backgrounds, enjoying his experience from a cyclist perspective as chronicled in his new book entitled "Bicycle Diaries." Along with the array of David’s interests, his enthusiasm for traveling, bicycling and observing the urban fabric imparts awareness and invokes urgency for bringing about pedestrian geared change in an increasingly vehicular dependent society. Through his conviction of the importance of alternative modes of transportation, pedestrian scaled urban development, his thoughts on fashion, architecture, cultural isolation, music and art, David’s advocacy for urban place making and design is well-versed, passionate and creative.
Peter Calthorpe, author, CNU co-founder, and leading regional and community planner, Calthorpe Associates
A co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism and a Principal at Calthorpe Associates, Peter Calthorpe is a remarkably influential voice in the worlds of planning and sustainability, advancing the new urbanist vision that successful places—whether neighborhoods, villages, or urban centers—must be diverse in use and user, walkable and transit-oriented, and environmentally sustainable. His work has focused on how regional-scale planning and design can integrate urban revitalization and suburban renewal into a coherent vision of metropolitan growth.
Calthorpe remains one of the most sought after coordinators of regional planning. In Austin and other cities, he is lending his expertise on integrating transit-oriented development (TOD) into regional growth plans, bringing mass transit to the forefront of city development. His firm Calthorpe Associates is responsible for major regional design projects in Portland, Salt Lake, the Twin Cities, and Los Angeles. Calthorpe is now the Lead Planner for the “Louisiana Speaks” planning initiative, and his firm is helping advise the Louisiana Recovery Authority on how southern Louisiana can recover from Hurricane Katrina while restoring wetlands and other ecologically sensitive areas.
During the Clinton Administration, Calthorpe provided guidance for HUD's Empowerment Zone and Consolidated Planning Programs as well as the HOPE VI program to rebuild failed public housing projects. His international work has demonstrated that community design with a focus on environmental sustainability and human scale can be adapted throughout the globe.
Calthorpe has written influential works such as Sustainable Communities with Sim Van der Ryn, The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream. His latest book, The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl with William Fulton, explains how regional-scale planning and design can integrate urban revitalization and suburban renewal into a coherent vision of metropolitan growth.
A past student of the Yale School of Architecture, Calthrope has taught at U.C. Berkeley, University of Washington, University of Oregon, and University of North Carolina. Calthorpe has received numerous honors and awards, including appointment to the President's Councils for Sustainable Development and, most recently, the Urban Land Institute’s JC Nichols Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
DeWayne Carver, Senior Project Manager, Hall Planning & Engineering, Inc
DeWayne Carver, AICP, CNU, is a transportation planner with Hall Planning & Engineering, Inc (HPE.) DeWayne is also a League Cycling Instructor (LCI) certified by the League of American Bicyclists, and a bike commuter and tourist. DeWayne's professional practice includes transportation planning and street design for New Urbanist projects, including new towns as well infill and greyfield redevelopment.
Shannon Chance, AIA, Associate Professor of Architecture, Hampton University
Shannon Chance, PhD, AIA, LEED-AP, is a tenured associate professor of architecture at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. She recently completed a PhD in Higher Education Administration at the College of William and Mary. Shannon is busy researching environmental sustainability and the cognitive development of architecture students. She advocates for life-span communities and sees visitable housing as a public health issue.
Sonia Chao, Director, Center for Urban and Community Design
Ray Christman, Executive Director , Livable Communities Coalition of Metro Atlanta
Raymond Christman has had a 30 year career working at senior levels in both the private financial services industry and for non-profit and governmental organizations concerned with affordable housing and urban economic development. Ray worked for nearly fifteen years in the Federal Home Loan Bank system. He served as chairman of the Pittsburgh Federal Home Loan Bank and as President and CEO of the Atlanta Federal Home Loan Bank. Prior to his career in banking, Ray worked for several organizations involved with Pittsburgh’s and the state of Pennsylvania’s redevelopment and economic rebuilding efforts, including service as head of the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority and as Secretary of Commerce for Pennsylvania. He also was President of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, a leading regional trade association and economic development organization. Ray currently is executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition of Metro Atlanta, a smart growth advocacy and policy development organization that works to implement sustainable development practices and principles in the metropolitan Atlanta region. Ray has a Business degree from Florida State University and a Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Pittsburgh. He is active in civic and charitable affairs, particularly in the fields of affordable housing and community development. He is past chair of The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, and the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. Ray also serves on the board of Enterprise Community Partners, a national affordable housing and community development non-profit.
Dave Cieslewicz, Mayor, City of Madison
Dave Cieslewicz (chess-LEV-ich) was first elected mayor of Madison in April 2003, and re-elected in April 2007. As mayor, he has focused primarily on public safety and provision of quality basic services for Wisconsin's fastest-growing city. Under his stewardship, the city implemented Madison Measures, a performance measurement and benchmarking system to frame policy discussions, make budget decisions and illustrate the success of city programs, resulting in Madison becoming one of the few cities in America with a "Aaa" bond rating; built Madison's first public swimming facility, the Goodman Pool, after 60 years of disucussion, and unified the City and County Health Departments, after 15 years of debate on that issue. Mayor Cieslewicz's Emerging Neighborhoods Fund provides early resources to help neighborhoods address the root causes of crime and poverty before they become more serious, and provides grants for youth centers, job training and other activities. Cieslewicz was one of the first U.S. mayors to sign the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement to reduce Madison's greenhouse gas emissions. He has developed the "Building a Green Capital City" plan for sustainability, purchased the city's first hybrid diesel-electric buses, and created a new position in city government focused solely on sustainability issues. Before becoming Mayor, Cieslewicz was the co-founder and first executive director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, a non-profit research and advocacy organization focusing on land use and transportation. Before that he was Director of Government Relations for The Nature Conservancy, which followed his service as chief of staff in a state senate office and work for the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. Born in 1959 and raised in West Allis, Wis., Cieslewicz is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. About once a month you can find him playing Sheepshead with friends at the Memorial Union. He lives in the Regent neighborhood on Madison's west side with his wife Dianne and their dog Calvin.
Jim Constantine, Looney Ricks Kiss
Jim joined Looney Ricks Kiss in 1998 as the director of planning and research for the Princeton office. With expertise in urban design, master planning, historic preservation, community relations and qualitative research, Jim oversees planning and community relations for numerous Smart Growth, Traditional Neighborhood Development and New Urbanism projects. He has worked as a licensed professional planner in more than 25 states and Canada. Jim is a Rutgers University graduate and resides in Princeton.
Christina Corley, Program Manager, Earthcraft Communities
Jaime Correa, Founding Partner, Jaime Correa and Associates
Jaime Correa is founding partner of Jaime Correa and Associates, a collaborative practice involved in urban design, town planning and architectural design projects of many types and scales. He is responsible for teaching and coordinating the world-renowned program in Suburb and Town Design at the University of Miami, where he is the Knight Professor in Community Building. He has been widely published and is the recipient of numerous urban planning awards stretching four continents—including the First Chinese Government Award to an American design firm outside China, a Progressive Architecture Award, a citation to represent the United States in the Bienal de Arquitectura in Chile, and numerous APA and AIA awards. He has lectured at the Bauhaus/Dessau, Harvard, Notre Dame, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and Columbia. He holds a Master degree in Architecture with a Certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a certificate in Classical Architecture and Medieval Iconography from Cambridge University in England. He is a collaborator of the Town Paper, the New Urbanism Comprehensive Report and Best Practices Guide, the New Urban News, and other national publications. He was a co-founder of Dover Kohl and Partners and Correa Valle Valle and Partners. His work with these firms was covered in seminal books such as Peter Katz’s New Urbanism: toward an architecture of community, The CNU Council Reports and the New Civic Art. His professional practice includes the design and coding of more than one hundred new towns, inner city neighborhoods, districts, corridors, regions, blocks and streets, university campuses, etc. His firm is currently working with the City of Miami lakes, the City of Hialeah (Annexation Master Plan and Design Guidelines), the City of Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency (West Atlantic Land Development Regulations) in Florida, the town of Miami Lakes and the Baoshan community in China.
Stephen Coyle, AIA, LEEP AP, Owner, Town-Green
Stephen Coyle, AIA, LEED AP, Town-Green and The National Charrette Institute – Steve, architect, urbanist, and planner, is founder and principal of the design firm Town-Green (www.town-green.com), and co-founder of the National Charrette Institute (NCI), a non-profit organization that trains professionals in the art and practice of collaborative planning (www.charretteinstitute.org). He and his colleagues design and repair buildings, neighborhoods and towns throughout the country and Southeast Asia. A contributing author of the Charrette Handbook, he just authored Resilient Communities: Making Places Healthy and Whole, that will be published by John Wiley & Sons. With John Anderson, Paul Crabtree, and Martin Dreiling, Steve co-founded Townworks + DPZ, a multi-disciplinary firm in collaboration with that extraordinary Miami firm. With the State of California, Steve pilots the Emerald Cities program that develops sustainable community plans for local communities.
Paul Crabtree, President, Crabtree Group, Inc
Paul Crabtree is President of Crabtree Group, Inc – a Civil Engineering and Town Planning firm formed in 1999 with offices in Salida, CO and Ventura, CA. Mr. Crabtree has a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Washington University in Saint Louis, MO and a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Hamline University in Saint Paul, MN. Mr. Crabtree holds Registration as a Professional Engineer (Civil) in several states. Mr. Crabtree is a Member of the National Society of Professional Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers, Congress for the New Urbanism (where he heads the Stormwater Task Force, authored the SmartCode Regional Watersheds Module, and is a member of the Transect Codes Council), Local Government Commission, American Planning Association, Urban Land Institute; and a 5-year member of the City of Ojai, CA Planning Commission. Crabtree Group Inc clients include municipalities, counties, private, and non-profit organizations. Crabtree Group, Inc orchestrated the 1st SmartCode adoption in CO in 2009. www.crabtreegroup.net
David Crossley, President, Houston Tomorrow
David Crossley is president and founder of Houston Tomorrow, where his focus is on urban growth issues as they relate to quality of life. Houston Tomorrow has led the Livable Houston/Smart Growth Initiative in the Houston Gulf Coast region since its founding as the Gulf Coast Institute in 1998. He is a founding member of CNU-Houston. Houston Tomorrow leads the Food Policy Group initiative in Houston.
Andrew Dannenberg, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Associate Director for Science, Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Andrew Dannenberg is the Associate Director for Science in the Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services in the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. He oversees activities in NCEH related to examining the health aspects of community design including land use, transportation, urban planning, and other issues related to the built environment. As part of this work, he organized a workshop of external experts to help develop a scientific research agenda to examine the impact of community design and land use choices on public health. His current research into model zoning codes that promote health and the use of health impact assessments is a part of this agenda. In addition to his work at the CDC, Dannenberg serves as an adjunct professor of epidemiology and of environmental and occupational health at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. Prior to joining the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, Dannenberg was director of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service and other public health training programs. Previously, he served as Preventive Medicine Residency director and as an injury prevention epidemiologist while on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and as a cardiovascular epidemiologist while working at the National Institutes of Health. Dannenberg received a medical degree from Stanford University and a master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University, and completed a family medicine residency at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Janine de la Salle, Director, Food Systems Planning, HB Lanarc Consultants Ltd.
Janine was born and raised in Armstrong, a small agricultural town in the interior of BC. There, she worked on an organic farm that grew medicinal herbs and food crops that were sold in local markets and used. After travel and study, Janine became part of the legions of people studying urban agriculture and searching for ideas and solutions for how to bring these systems into the North American context. Janine is now one of Western Canada’s leading professionals in the theory and practice of sustainable food and agriculture systems and is the Director of the Food and Agriculture System Planning practice at HB Lanarc Consultants. With a master of arts in international development in food security and urban agriculture and over 6 years of experience in the non-profit and private sectors, Janine brings food security and sustainability into focus for decision-makers working with communities, non-profit organizations, local governments, and developers to create food and agriculture system strategies, planning and design opportunities for food, and progressive food policy. She recently worked with one of America’s leading architecture and design firms to develop an innovative, agriculture focused development concept for a high-profile site in the Vancouver area. She also completed an urban agriculture strategy for the highest-rated LEED ND certified 2010 Olympics Athletes’ Village, a food and agriculture policy set for the City of Edmonton, and a plan for an urban farm park. Janine teaches and speaks about sustainable food and agriculture systems, is a long-standing member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council and is a co-editor and contributor to a newly published book: Agricultural Urbanism, Handbook for Building Sustainable Food and Agriculture Systems in 21st Century Cities.
Audrey de Nazelle, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology
Audrey de Nazelle PhD, joined CREAL as a postdoctoral research fellow in September 2007. Her expertise is in air pollution modelling, environmental policy, exposure assessment, and health risk assessment. She obtained her Doctorate in 2007 from the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she conducted cutting-edge transdisciplinary research on the built environment and health, involving space-time geostatistical modelling and travel behaviour and exposure simulation. While a student at UNC, she received Graduate Fellowships at the Climate Change Policy Partnership (Duke University), Active Living by Design (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), and the Center for Transportation and the Environment (NC State University). She received the “Student of the Year Award” from the US Department of Transportation University Transportation Centers, and was elected member of the Delta Omega Honor Society in Public Health. She is the principle investigator of the Barcelona commuter study.
William de St. Aubin, Principal, Sizemoregroup
William J. de St. Aubin, (Bill) is a Senior Principal at Sizemore Group, LLC and is an expert on Sustainable New Urban Development and Design in suburban retrofits. Bill combines best LEED and LEED-ND practices with Marketing Analysis to create healthier communities from a physical, social and fiscal standpoint. He is a founding and board member of the Atlanta Chapter of the Congress for New Urbanism. Bill brings over 25 years of experience leading successful designs involving complex, multi-use suburban environments. His process involves collaboration in an open forum with multi-disciplinary teams, user groups and community members. His goals are to assure that projects and studies are completed within the constraints of the market and that solutions are achieved to the highest aspirations possible of both the client and the community. The results are communities that provide a sense of heritage, civic pride, and unity. In addition, the results were often the catalysts for the ultimate sustainable redevelopment of entire communities.
James E. Dills, MUP, MPH, ORISE Fellow, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Diseasr Control and Prevention
James Dills is a research fellow with the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the CDC in Atlanta. His work focuses on health effects of built environments, particularly in respect to physical activity and chronic disease. Part of this work includes developing capacity for Health Impact Assessment (HIA) in the US through trainings, partnerships, and evaluation. He has worked extensively with walkability analysis and has presented on the topic at the American Public Health Association annual meeting and other national conferences. He has also worked for a non-profit pedestrian advocacy group in Atlanta and the Georgia Division of Public Health. He has graduate degrees in public health from Emory University and in urban planning from the University of Louisville.
Hank Dittmar, Chief Executive, The Prince's Foundation
Hank Dittmar has been Chief Executive of The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment since January 2005. Until 2008 Mr. Dittmar was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the CNU, and remains on its board. Mr. Dittmar has over twenty years of progressively responsible international experience in urban design and development and urban and transport policy. Prior to assuming the post with The Prince's Foundation, Mr. Dittmar was President and CEO of Reconnecting America http: . Mr. Dittmar was appointed by President William Jefferson Clinton to the White House Advisory Committee on Transportation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the President's Council on Sustainable Development's Metropolitan Working Group, which he served as Chair. He is a Senior Research Associate at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment and was outstanding Alumnus of the Graduate School of the University of Texas in 2008. He is based in London.
Michael Dobbins, Georgia Institute of Technology
Shaun Donovan, U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
On January 26, 2009, Shaun Donovan was sworn in as the 15th United States Secretary for Housing and Urban Development. He has devoted his career to ensuring access to safe, decent, and affordable housing and he will continue that effort in the Obama Administration. Secretary Donovan believes that America's homes are the foundation for family, safe neighborhoods, good schools, and solid businesses. He has a strong commitment to make quality housing possible for every American. Secretary Donovan previously served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). He created and implemented HPD's New Housing Marketplace Plan to build and preserve 165,000 affordable homes, the largest municipal affordable housing plan in the nation's history. His work at HPD included the New York City Acquisition Fund, an award-winning collaboration with foundations and banks to finance affordable housing; an innovative inclusionary zoning program; an ambitious supportive housing plan; and the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, one of the earliest responses to the foreclosure crisis. Before his service as HPD Commissioner, Secretary Donovan worked in the private sector on financing affordable housing, and was a visiting scholar at New York University, where he researched and wrote about the preservation of federally-assisted housing. He was also a consultant to the Millennial Housing Commission on strategies for increasing the production of multifamily housing. The Commission was created by the United States Congress to recommend ways to expand housing opportunities across the nation. Secretary Donovan rejoins HUD after his previous service in the Clinton administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing, where he was the primary federal official responsible for privately-owned multifamily housing. At that time, he ran housing programs that helped 1.7 million families access affordable housing. He also served as acting FHA Commissioner during the Clinton/Bush presidential transition. Prior to his first service at HUD, he worked at the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) in New York City, a non-profit lender and developer of affordable housing. He also researched and wrote about housing policy at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and worked as an architect. Secretary Donovan holds a B.A. and Masters degrees in Public Administration and Architecture from Harvard.
James Dougherty, Director of Design, Dover, Kohl & Partners
James Dougherty, AICP, CNU, ASAI is the Director of Design at Dover, Kohl & Partners, an internationally-recognized town planning and urban design practice based in Coral Gables, Florida. James began working with Dover, Kohl in 1996 and has since participated in over 100 charrettes within the United States and abroad. James works closely with Victor Dover and Joe Kohl to establish the design direction of projects in the office. He participates in all aspects of the office’s projects including public involvement, development of master plans, regulating plans and form-based codes. He creates many of the office’s three-dimensional illustrations using a blend of hand-drawn and computer techniques.
Victor Dover , Principal , Dover, Kohl & Partners
Urban designer and town planner Victor Dover, AICP, is a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism. As principal-in-charge of Dover, Kohl & Partners, a leading new urbanist town planning firm based in Coral Gables, Florida, Dover has won multiple CNU Charter Awards, including one for the widely praised town of I’On in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Dover-Kohl took home two awards from the CNU XV awards ceremony in Philadelphia, one for a traditional-neighborhood-based citywide plan for fast-growing Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the other for a brownfield redevelopment in Antigua, Guatemala, a joint submission with Castillo Arquitectos.
Dover has led more than 100 charrettes and spearheaded planning in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, following Hurricane Katrina. Dover played a major role in establishing CNU’s first and largest chapter, CNU Florida, and served as the organization’s founding chair. He has taught courses as a visiting professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture, his alma mater, and also at the Mayors Institute on City Design. He was also a member of the founding board for the National Charrette Institute and has been instrumental in forming the Form-Based Codes Institute.
Peter Drey, Architect /Urban Designer, Peter Drey Design
Over a diverse career working in Atlanta, Washington, New Orleans and abroad, Peter Drey, AIA, ASLA, LEED AP has developed expertise in the art of designing buildings and composing landscapes into greater ensembles that result in rich urbanism -- complexes, districts, neighborhoods and towns. In all of these places, unique local features serve as the springboard for design ideas underpinning new facilities that are planned to enhance the lives of people who experience them. He excels at orchestrating all of the components of the modern city -- buildings, landscape, art, sculpture, transportation and infrastructure -- into a greater whole that is beautiful, economical, and environmental. Peter has led an independent architecture and urban design practice in Atlanta for over 16 years. His firm produced some of the region's best examples of urbanism, including master plans for Emory Village and the Birmingham Civil Rights District, a sweeping plan for the City of Albany, Georgia's interface with the vital Flint River in South Georgia, public plazas and courtyards in Asheville, North Carolina, and a plan for Charleston, South Carolina, that redefines the gateway into the peninsula from the West. He has also worked on architecture, planning, and landscape designs in Asia and Europe.
Andrés Duany, Principal, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Andrés Duany is a founding principal at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ). DPZ is widely recognized as a leader of the New Urbanism, an international movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. In the years since the firm first received recognition for the design of Seaside, Florida, in 1980, DPZ has completed designs for close to 300 new towns, regional plans, and community revitalization projects. This work has exerted a significant influence on the practice and direction of urban planning and development in the United States and abroad. The firm’s method of integrating planning with accompanying design codes is being applied in towns and cities for sites ranging from 10 to over 500,000 acres throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. DPZ has received numerous awards, including two State of Florida Governor’s Urban Design Awards for Excellence. Seaside has been documented in over 800 articles and books and was described by Time Magazine as “the most astounding design achievement of its era.” The projects of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company have focused international attention on urbanism and its postwar decline. DPZ was instrumental in the creation of the Traditional Neighborhood Development Ordinance (TND), a prescription for pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use, compact urban growth, which has been incorporated into the zoning codes of municipalities across the country. The firm has developed a comprehensive municipal zoning ordinance called the SmartCode, prescribing appropriate urban arrangement for all uses and all densities. Andrés Duany has delivered hundreds of lectures and seminars, addressing architects, planning groups, university students, and the general public. His recent publications include The New Civic Art and Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. He is a founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Established in 1993 with the mission of reforming urban growth patterns, the Congress has been characterized by The New York Times as “the most important collective architectural movement in the United States in the past fifty years.” Andrés received his undergraduate degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University, and after a year of study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, he received a master’s degree in architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. He has been awarded several honorary doctorates, the Brandeis Award for Architecture, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Medal of Architecture from the University of Virginia, the Vincent J. Scully Prize for exemplary practice and scholarship in architecture and urban design from the National Building Museum, and the Seaside Prize for contributions to community planning and design from the Seaside Institute.
Eric Dumbaugh, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University
Eric Dumbaugh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. He holds a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Georgia Tech, joint Master's degrees in Civil Engineering and City Planning, as well as a Bachelor's degree in English Literature. His ongoing research examines strategies for integrating mobility, traffic safety, and community livability into a holistic, context-based approach to roadway and community design.
Ellen Dunham-Jones, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Georgia Institute of Technology
Ellen Dunham-Jones is an award-winning architect and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she teaches contemporary architectural theory and urban design and researches alternatives to sprawl. As co-author with June Williamson of Retrofitting Suburbia; Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Wiley & Sons, 2009) her work has received significant media attention in The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, Newsweek.com, Christian Science Monitor.com, Sustainable Infrastructure.com, OnEarth, Harvard Business Review, Urban Land, Planning, Architectural Record and was featured in Time Magazine’s March 23, 2009 cover story, “10 ideas changing the world right now.” The American Association of Publishers chose the book for a PROSE award, winning the 2009 architecture and urban planning category for professional and scholarly excellence. Dunham-Jones has published over 50 articles including pieces in Harvard Design Magazine, Places, Design Book Review, and Lotus International; as well as chapters in Architecture, Ethics And Globalization, The Green Braid, Writing Urbanism, New Urbanism and Beyond, Sprawl and Suburbia, What People Want, Worlds Away, The Windsor Forum on Design Education, and Dimensions of Sustainability. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism, the editorial board of the Journal of Urbanism, and the executive board of CNU-Atlanta.
George Dusenbury, Executive Director, Park Pride
George Dusenbury is the Executive Director of Park Pride, a nonprofit organization that works for more and better parks all over Atlanta. Since 2004, George has led Park Pride’s focus of building and strengthening relationships with geographically diverse neighborhood organizations and community groups. Under George’s leadership, Park Pride launched its successful Community Micro Grants & Community Grants programs—providing Capital Improvement Project grants, for parks, of $1,000 to $50,000. He also brought on staff to build and strengthen “Friends of the Park” groups and in 2005 started the Park Visioning program to work with communities on developing conceptual master plans for Atlanta’s neighborhood parks. Through its advocacy efforts, Park Pride also encourages increased City budgeting and higher maintenance standards for parks and promotes the creation of more parkland, including the new greenspace that will be added to the City as part of the BeltLine plans. These steps are all part of George’s vision that Park Pride get neighborhoods more involved in their parks and better educate residents about the park and greenspace issues that confront all communities. Before joining Park Pride, George worked for Congressman John Lewis for ten years, both in Washington, DC and Atlanta, where he served as District Director. He also spent a year working as a policy analyst on water issues for the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a Washington, DC think tank that works closely with Members of Congress. He holds a B.A. of English from Cornell University and a J.D. from Emory University School of Law. George and his wife, Courtenay, have two children, George and William, and live in Candler Park.
Geoff Dyer, Director of Canadian Operations, PlaceMakers, LLC; Principal and Urban Designer, T-Six Urbanists Inc, Placemakers LLC
Geoff Dyer is a senior urban designer and principal for Calgary-based T-Six Urbanists Inc., and a partner and director with U.S.-based Placemakers LLC. Geoff has gained considerable international experience with some of North America's foremost urban design firms and world renowned urban designers. He undertakes progressive planning and form-based codes projects throughout North America using the Transect-based SmartCode regulatory system. Geoff holds a Master in Urban Design from the University of Calgary, is a Knight Fellow in Community Building from the University of Miami, and was a CNU Charter Award recipient in 2005, and is CNU Accredited professional.
Chinyere O. Ekechi, JD, Public Health Analyst, Division of Environmental Public Health
Philip Erickson, AIA, President, Community Design + Architecture
Philip Erickson, AIA is an architect, urban designer, and planner with over 20 years of experience in the integration land use and transportation patterns, neighborhood and community planning, and economic and social sustainability. The scale of his work, throughout the United States, ranges from definition of region to the detail of place-making. A primary focus of Phil’s practice is in the reshaping and revitalization of older strip-commercial arterial streets into mixed-use corridors that provide opportunities for shopping, employment, and housing in a more pedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented environment following the principles of the New Urbanism. This is work is two-fold. One element is focused on the redesign of these auto-oriented streets into multi-modal thoroughfares, while on the other hand working with communities to establish plans for changing land use patterns and revitalizing these corridors to be vibrant parts of the city. CD+A has worked on corridors around major arterials, including state and federal highways, in several Bay Area communities, Seattle, Upstate New York, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Tucson, Arizona. Phil was the lead urban design contributor to the recently published ITE Proposed Recommended Practice – Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities. Phil also led CD+A’s in preparing the San Francisco Streetscape Master Plan, this work utilized urban design, landscape design, and green stormwater management strategies to create guidance for remaking San Francisco’s streets to serve integrated transportation and infrastructure functions while allowing for the realization of streets as a key civic space for all San Franciscans. Phil is a licensed architect in California with Masters Degrees in City and Regional Planning and Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the President of the AIA East Bay Chapter and is also a member of the following organizations: the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Urban Land Institute, TransForm (Advisory Council Member), and the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Currently, he is the land use and urban design leader for the Grant Road Improvement Project in Tucson, Arizona where we have utilized community education and participation process to achieve consensus for the expansion and realignment of a 5-mile arterial roadway into a multi-modal boulevard.
Christa Essig, MPH, Public Health Analyst, National Center for Environmental Health and Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, CDC
Christa Essig, MPH, works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a liaison between the National Center for Environmental Health and Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity on food system issues related to nutritional and environmental health. In the Nutrition Branch she contributes to address nutrition environment and policies and is a member of the Built Environment Work Group to integrate food access and healthy food environment issues in to the Healthy Community Design Initiative. Christa has a Bachelor's degree in food science and human nutrition and a Masters in public health in global environmental health. She has worked as a nutritionist for WIC, researched food deserts, pesticide exposure, and other food system environmental health effects, and also worked as a community organizer starting farmers markets, farm-to-institution programs and promoting community and school gardens. Currently, she is on a 6 month detail at the United States Department of Agriculture, Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, to increase inter-agency communication and collaboration on food, nutrition, and obesity programs.
Doug Farr, President and Founding Principal, Farr Associates Architecture & Urban Design
Doug Farr, AIA is the founding principal of Farr Associates, an award-winning architecture and planning firm identified by the New York Times as “the most prominent of the city’s growing cadre of ecologically sensitive architects.” Having a mission to design sustainable human environments, Farr’s niche is in applying the principles of LEED at the scale of the neighborhood and in designing green buildings exclusively for urban contexts. Farr Associates was the first firm in the world to design three LEED-Platinum buildings (Christy Webber Landscapes, the Chicago Center for Green Technology and the Center for Neighborhood Technology), which stand as models of urban architectural sustainability. An architecture graduate of the University of Michigan and Columbia University, Doug’s work has been featured in Architectural Record, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the PBS documentary “The Green Machine.” Doug is on the board of the Congress for the New Urbanism, serves on the BioRegional Development Group board of directors, on the Energy and Climate TAC of the Star Community Index, and was the founding chair of the LEED Neighborhood Development project (LEED-ND). Based on the firm’s pioneering sustainable design practice and his insights gained from chairing LEED-ND, Doug authored Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature. This planning best seller visualizes Sustainable Urbanism—the growing sustainable design convergence that integrates walkable and transit-served urbanism with high-performance infrastructure and buildings—as the normal pattern of development in the United States by 2030.
Martin Felsen, AIA, Architect, UrbanLab
Martin Felsen is the founder of UrbanLab, a collaborative office, based in Chicago, practicing architecture and urbanism. UrbanLab has developed a reputation for its innovative solutions to the problems of both public and private communities. UrbanLab undertakes work of different sizes and scales, from urban interventions to small residences, but its primary interest is in forward-looking projects that speculate on a more sustainable and resourceful tomorrow. Martin was recently appointed the director of Archeworks, Chicago’s alternative design school, where students create design solutions for social and cultural concerns. He also teaches city design and theory as an Associate Studio Professor in the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Frances Ferguson, National Real Estate Programs, NeighborWorks America
Stephen Filmanowicz, Communications Director, Congress for New Urbanism
Jonathan Ford, PE, Principal, Morris Beacon Design
Dedication to traditional neighborhood design and a belief in interdisciplinary collaboration led Jon to found Morris Beacon Design, LLC, a New Urbanist civil engineering consulting firm. As a New Urbanist civil engineer, Jon believes walkable neighborhood planning and design results in healthy, vibrant communities in balance with nature. He is a 2006 Knight Fellow in Community Building at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture and is co-founder and past President of the New England Chapter of the CNU. Jon and his family live in Providence, Rhode Island, where almost all of their daily travel is by foot or bicycle.
Lawrence Frank, Ph.D., AICP, CIP, ASLA, Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Urban Transportation Systems, Institute for Resource and Environment, University of British Columbia
Dr. Frank is the Bombardier Chairholder in Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, Senior Non-resident Fellow of the Brookings Institution, and President of Urban Design 4 Health. He specializes in the interaction between land use, travel behavior, air quality; and health and the fuel consumption and climate change impacts of urban form policies. He has been studying the effects of neighborhood walkability on travel patterns and sustainability for 20 years. Dr. Frank works directly with local governments to help translate results from research into practice based tools that provide direct feedback on the health and environmental impacts of alternative transportation and land development proposals.
Shirley Franklin, Former Mayor of Atlanta
Shirley Franklin was elected the first woman mayor of a major southern city in 2002 and served two-terms until 2009. The mayor is term limited in Atlanta During her eight years, the city experienced unprecedented population growth and afforded Franklin the opportunity to partner and collaborate with many local and regional leaders in addressing urban policy challenges which included urban planning, economic development and infrastructure. Aside from her role as a public official, her community service spans over 35 years in Atlanta and includes her active participation in the arts, homelessness and higher education. She currently holds the position of the William and Camille Cosby Professorship at Spelman College in Atlanta, co chairs the Regional Commission on Homelessness, serves as Vice Chair of the Center of Civil and Human Rights and serves on the board of the United Nations Institute For Training and Research (UNITAR). Franklin holds a Bachelors of Arts from Howard University and a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Howard Frumkin, M.D., Dr.P.H.,, Special Assistant to the CDC Director for Climate Change and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Howard Frumkin is Special Assistant to the Director for Climate Change and Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC’s Climate Change program (www.cdc.gov/climate change) works to identify and understand the adverse health impacts of climate change, ranging from heat waves to infectious diseases, and to prevent or control these impacts. Dr. Frumkin is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist, and epidemiologist. From 2005 to 2010 he directed the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR) at the CDC. During his tenure NCEH/ATSDR created its Climate Change and Healthy Community Design programs; launched training programs for college students, doctoral students, and post-docs; expanded its Biomonitoring and Environmental Health Tracking programs; and launched its National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures. Previously, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Emory Medical School. Dr. Frumkin previously served on the Board of Directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), where he co-chaired the Environment Committee; as president of the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics (AOEC); as chair of the Science Board of the American Public Health Association (APHA), and on the National Toxicology Program Board of Scientific Counselors. As a member of EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, he chaired the Smart Growth and Climate Change work groups. He currently serves on the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine. In Georgia, he was a member of the state’s Hazardous Waste Management Authority, the Department of Agriculture Pesticide Advisory Committee, and the Pollution Prevention Assistance Division Partnership Program Advisory Committee, and is a graduate of the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership. In Georgia’s Clean Air Campaign, he served on the Board and chaired the Health/Technical Committee. He was named Environmental Professional of the Year by the Georgia Environmental Council in 2004. His research interests include public health aspects of the built environment; air pollution; metal and PCB toxicity; climate change; health benefits of contact with nature; and environmental and occupational health policy, especially regarding minority communities and developing nations. He is the author or co-author of over 180 scientific journal articles and chapters, and his books include Urban Sprawl and Public Health (Island Press, 2004, co-authored with Larry Frank and Dick Jackson; named a Top Ten Book of 2005 by Planetizen, the Planning and Development Network), Emerging Illness and Society (Johns Hopkins Press, 2004, co-edited with Randall Packard, Peter Brown, and Ruth Berkelman), Environmental Health: From Global to Local (Jossey-Bass, 2005 and 2010; winner of the Association of American Publishers 2005 Award for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing in Allied/Health Sciences), Safe and Healthy School Environments (Oxford University Press, 2006, co-edited with Leslie Rubin and Robert Geller), and Green Healthcare Institutions: Health, Environment, Economics (National Academies Press, 2007, co-edited with Christine Coussens). Dr. Frumkin received his A.B. from Brown University, his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.P.H. and Dr.P.H. from Harvard, his Internal Medicine training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge Hospital, and his Occupational Medicine training at Harvard. He is Board-certified in Internal Medicine and Occupational Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Collegium Ramazzini and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
Danielle Gallet, Infrastructure Strategist, Center for Neighborhood Technology
Norman Garrick, Associate Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of Connecticut
Norman Garrick, associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Connecticut and director of UCONN’s new Center for Smart Transportation, specializes in the planning and design of urban transportation systems, including transit, streets and highways, and bicycle and pedestrian facilities. As the Transportation Task Force co-chair, Garrick has been an essential member of the CNU/ITE urban thoroughfares project. At a critical point in the project, Garrick tirelessly reviewed comments on the manual and incorporated the advice in a productive way. Garrick holds a Ph.D. and MSCE from Purdue University, and a BSCE from the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. With a career that bridges academic study and engineering practice, Garrick is an effective leader in transportation reform.
Robert Gibbs, President, Gibbs Planning Group
Nationally recognized, Robert Gibbs is considered a leading urban retail planning consultant by some of the most respected mayors, architects and real estate developers in America. Profiled in the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Urban Land Institute, and the Wall Street Journal, Gibbs is said to have “an urban planning sensibility unlike anything possessed by the urban planners who usually design downtown renewal efforts”. Charleston's Mayor Joseph P. Riley describes Gibbs's work as “The Bible for the future of our historic district”. A speaker at the first Congress for the New Urbanism in 1992 and 10 other CNU's since, Gibbs has been a pioneer and leader in this movement to implement the environmentally sustainable principles of Traditional Town Planning and Smart Growth as an antidote to the alienating, formless sprawl of suburbia. During the past 25 years, Gibbs has been active in developing innovative yet practical methods for applying modern trends in commercial development to more than 300 town centers and historic cities around the World. Gibbs has contributed to numerous books and gives frequent lectures including teaching an executive Urban Retail Planning session at Harvard's School of Architecture for the past 12 years. Gibbs has consulted for the cities of: Alexandria, Atlanta, Cambridge, Charleston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Naples, Portland and Seattle. Gibbs has also consulted with many new urban towns including: The Kentlands, The Glen, Rosemary Beach and Seaside. GPG has also consulted for the Universities of Brown, Johns Hopkins, Miami, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Mr. Gibbs serves as GPG’s president and over sees operations, planning and research.
Lucy Gibson, Principal, Smart Mobility, Inc.
Lucy Gibson is a traffic engineer and transportation planner with her Vermont-based, firm, Smart Mobility. She works in New England and across the country assisting local and regional governments and organizations in planning efforts to create more multi-modal transportation systems to serve more sustainable communities. She has worked on a number of projects involving the re-design or scaling down of major freeways or arterials across the country, Her practice focuses on using sound engineering principals, appropriately applied to urban settings, and has contributed to many successful outcomes of context-sensitive transportation designs.
William A. Gilchrist, FAIA CNU, Senior Associate , AECOM
William Gilchrist, FAIA, CNU, is an urban designer and architect whose career has spanned both the public and private sectors. He has been a steadfast advocate of the interdisciplinary nature of designing cities, engaging a range of related disciplines in urban design solutions. He is a trustee of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), Chair of its Public Private Partnership Council, and former Chair of the Hines Jury and serves on the ULI Awards for Excellence Jury. Along with Jonathan Barnett, he has instructed the professional training course for Urban Design at APA. He chaired the AIA Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team and was the first Chair of AIA’s Committee for Design Assistance. Bill has appeared on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Bill has participated on Ford Foundation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development expert panels. Internationally, he has consulted in Ukraine and Romania. He serves on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Architecture Department Visiting Committee and the Board of the Remaking Cities Institute for Carnegie Mellon University. In 2006, he was elevated to the College of Fellows of the AIA, where his submittal was noted as best in category for an architect in public service.
Raymond L. Gindroz, Co-founder and Principal, Urban Design Associates
Raymond L. Gindroz, a co-founder and principal emeritus of Urban Design Associates, has pioneered the development of participatory planning processes for neighborhoods, downtowns and regional plans. An internationally recognized advocate and veteran practitioner of “architecture as city-building,” Ray leads UDA’s efforts to revitalize cities by transforming inner city neighborhoods and public housing projects into traditional mixed-income neighborhoods and by working with downtowns to attract new development including residential, commercial and civic uses. Ray also initiated the revival and application of Pattern Books in neighborhood building. Ray is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a past chair of the Committee on Design. He was chair of the Inner City Task Force of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and is currently a member of its board of directors. He is also chair of the board of the Seaside Institute, a co-founder of the Seaside Pienza Institute, a member of the board of the Institute for Classical Architecture/Classical American, the advisory board of the Charles Moore Foundation, the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence, and the Western European Foundation. Recently, Ray was awarded the Seaside Prize for Innovation and Revitalizing Inner City Neighborhoods and Transforming Public Housing Projects into Mixed Income Neighborhoods. For more than 20 years, he taught urban design at the Yale University School of Architecture. An engaging, popular speaker in both the U.S. and Europe, Ray has also published prolifically throughout his career, most recently as a principal author of The Urban Design Handbook and The Architectural Pattern Book (both published by W. W. Norton & Company). Ray earned Bachelor and Master of Architecture degrees with honors from Carnegie Mellon University and a Diploma from Centro per gli Studi di Architettura, A. Palladio, Vicenza, Italy. He received the John Stewardson Award and a Fulbright Grant for study in Italy early in his career and continues to travel extensively to sketch and study urban space. His drawings have been exhibited in the U.S., France, and Italy. His drawings and writings are published annually in a series of books entitled “Pages from a Sketchbook.”
Renee Glover, President and CEO, Atlanta Housing Authroity
Renée Lewis Glover joined the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) as CEO in September 1994. Since that time, she has been widely acknowledged for her business leadership and strategic approach to community redevelopment. At AHA, Glover pioneered master-planned, mixed-finance, mixed-income residential development where families of all socio-economic profiles live next to each other in the same amenity-rich community. Glover has been nationally recognized for her role in transforming U.S. urban policy. By introducing mixed-income communities into our cities, she has improved not only housing, but also public schools, transit access and employment opportunities. In fact, the model Glover created at AHA is now used as the redevelopment blueprint by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Renée Lewis Glover has received numerous recognitions over the years. Glover is being honored with the Turner Broadcasting Downtown Community Service Award in March 2007. On December 17, 2005, the “Masked” Award was presented to Ms. Glover by the United Negro College Fund, Inc. and the African Heritage Foundation, in appreciation for her support of UNCF and the 22nd Anniversary Mayor’s Masked Ball. In July 2003, Renée Glover was chosen by the Atlanta History Center as one of Atlanta’s Defining Women. She was named Public Official of the Year 2002 by Governing Magazine. In June 2002, a collaboration among the Center for American Women and Politics, the Ford Foundation and the Council for Excellence in Government recognized Glover as one of the top ten American women in government. Glover has also been featured in Atlanta Women Speak, an anthology of speeches from Atlanta’s political and corporate leadership. She was also honored with the Dan Sweat Community Leadership Award from the Urban Land Institute in 1998. Prior to joining the Atlanta Housing Authority, Glover was a corporate finance attorney in Atlanta and New York City. She received her Juris Doctorate from Boston University, her Master’s degree from Yale University and her Bachelor of Arts from Fisk University. Tarcha.Blount@atlantahousing.org
David Goldberg, Communications Director, Transportation for America
Doris Goldstein, Law Office of Doris S. Goldstein
Doris Sussman Goldstein is an attorney whose practice focuses on new urban development. Since 1986, Ms. Goldstein has represented Seaside and has been closely involved with every aspect of Seaside’s development, including its homeowner associations, town center and mixed-use buildings, school and chapel. Through her ongoing experience with that community and dozens of other New Urban communities in Florida and across the country, as well as her frequent speaking and writing, she has worked to define the legal issues and best practices for communities that blend commercial and residential uses and to explore the legal issues inherent in private, public and quasi-public spaces. She is the co-author, with Dan Slone, of A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Planners, Developers and Architects (Wiley 2008). A graduate of Harvard Law School, she has been a member of the Florida Bar since 1982 and is a member of the Bar’s committee on condominiums and planned developments. She is AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell and is included in the 2009 and 2010 editions of The Best Lawyers in America.
Alexander Gorlin, Principal, Alexander Gorlin Architects
Alexander Gorlin studied at The Cooper Union School of Architecture before receiving a Master of Architecture degree from Yale University. He opened his practice in 1986 after returning from a Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Gorlin has since created an internationally recognized firm that is distinguished by its commitment to applying Modernist design principles to projects across the social spectrum. Alexander Gorlin Architects currently works with private clients, developers, community organizations, religious congregations and schools throughout the country. The firm has received numerous accolades including two American Design Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum and four Design Excellence Awards from the American Institute of Architects. Architectural Digest magazine has named the firm to its AD100 list of leading designers for each of the past four years Gorlin is a respected architectural critic and scholar. He is the author of two books on contemporary architecture, The New American Town House and Creating the New American Town House, and has written extensively for periodicals such as Architectural Record, Metropolis, and Architectural Digest. Gorlin is the subject of an architectural monograph, Alexander Gorlin: Buildings and Projects, with essays by Vincent Scully and Paul Goldberger. He became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 2005.
Jane Grabowski-Miller, RLA, ASLA, CNU-A, Vice President of Planning & Urban Design, Erdman Development Group
Jane Grabowski-Miller is the Vice President of Planning & Urban Design for the Erdman Development Group. Her most recent project has been as Project Director and Town Architect for Middleton Hills, the first New Urbanist project in Wisconsin, master planned by DPZ in 1993. She has guided the project through entitlements, design refinement, lot sales, the design review process, and management of the Neighborhood Association... She lectures frequently, using the project as a case study on the development of Traditional Neighborhoods and incorporating retail development into neighborhoods. Ms. Grabowski-Miller was a contributing editor to the book Safescape: Creating Safer, More Livable Communities Through Planning and Design. Jane has over 20 years of experience in master planning, urban design, landscape architecture and management of the development and design review process. Prior work experience while at The Architects Collaborative included master planning and landscape architecture for a new town in Saudi Arabia and a Fine Arts Campus at the University of Baghdad. As the Facilities Planner for Boston-Logan International Airport, she contributed to a 1.5 billion dollar modernization program which included management of design guidelines, design review, and community coordination. While an undergraduate, she was a grant recipient from the National Endowment for Humanities related to the research and community education of historic districts. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Middleton Hills Neighborhood Association and various committees in the Village of Shorewood Hills. Previous Board positions include the Neighborhood Design Center, the Boston Architectural Center and Preschool for the Arts.
Vincent Graham, President, I'On Group
Vince Graham describes himself as born into a family of inquisitive contrarians who believe that if the majority of people agree with you, you're probably wrong. From this dissenting tradition he endeavors to build and renovate wise living environments, which enable aesthetic, economic, and social value to evolve and flourish. Starting with Newpoint in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1991, Vince has participated in founding the Village at Port Royal, Broad Street, Hammond's Ferry, I'On, Morris Square, and Mixson in South Carolina, and East Beach in Virginia. Vince grew up in Georgia, graduated from the University of Virginia, and lives in the historic beach town of Sullivan's Island, at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.
Charles Green, Health Communication Specialist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Charles Green, MA, MFA is a Health Communication Specialist for the Healthy Community Design Initiative in CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services. A 23-year veteran in health communications, Mr. Green has been with CDC for more than 10 years. He served as campaign manager for CDC’s award-winning Choose Your Cover skin cancer education campaign, and Team Lead for NCEH/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Office of Communication Science. Charles’s awards include Public Relations Society of America’s Golden Anvil and Outstanding Young Professional Awards, CDC Communications Roundtable Award, and CDC’s NCEH/ATSDR Honors Awards. He is a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), is the first CNU-accredited New Urbanist by the University of Miami School Of Architecture and is local executive co-chair for CNU 18’s “New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places”
David Green, AIA, LEED® AP, Associate Principal, Senior Urban Designer, Perkins + Will
David Green focuses on large-scale urban design and planning projects for the firm. He has been involved in the execution of hundreds of projects in the past twenty years ranging from the adaptive re-use of multiple historic structures to multi-thousand acre urban design and planning projects. His work and research focuses on issues of development, particularly within an urban framework, and the creation of a strategy for sustainable cities that includes aspects of public policy implementation, criteria for implementation of development controls and design guidelines as well as strategic infrastructure implementation. Before joining Perkins+Will, David was a principal at Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architecture and prior to that, David was a founding partner at the award winning firm Brock Green Architects and Planners, an Atlanta firm he co-founded in 1995 and recipient of the American Institute of Architects’ Silver Medal in 2003. He was the recipient of the AIA Georgia Bronze Medal in 2008 for his work in community planning. David has been a member of Georgia Tech College of Architecture Faculty since 1992 where he teaches architecture and urban design and is currently appointed Professor of the Practice of Architecture. He lectures widely on issues of urban design, planning and architecture.
Scotty Greene, Atlanta’s Former Executive Director , Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID)
Former Executive Director, Atlanta’s Buckhead Community Improvement District(CID) 2000-2009. CID mission: enhance quality of life in Atlanta’s Buckhead area through public-private financing, transportation and land use planning. Led, coordinated community effort to fund and implement $54 million award winning Peachtree Boulevard Project; the largest, multi-mode, urban context sensitive roadway re-design project in a developed urban corridor ever in the state of Georgia. Over 30 years of experience in government, law, neighborhood and economic development. B.A., political science Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi. Law Degree, University of Alabama. Inter-governmental liaison for two mayors of Birmingham, Alabama; David Vann and Richard Arrington. Member of the Louisville Board of Aldermen; Chairman of Economic Development and Public Works committees. Partner , The Integral Group of Atlanta 1997-2000; developer/owner of mixed income, mixed use and assisted living housing.
Tim Griffin, Director, St. Paul on the Mississippi Design Center
Jacky Grimshaw, Vice President for Policy, Center for Neighborhood Technology
Jacquelyne D. Grimshaw works with the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago where she directs the Center's policy initiatives. Formerly as the manager of the Center’s transportation and community development programs, was responsible for research in these areas. She developed the Center's capacity to conduct computer modeling programs and community development activities. She has extensive experience developing consensus in support of less-polluting transportation options and initiating programs that assist the revitalization of inner-city neighborhoods. Grimshaw previously served as the Deputy Director for Economic Development for the Treasurer of the City of Chicago and directed the Chicago Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. She was a member of the President's Council for Sustainable Development's Energy and Transportation Task Force and the Advisory Board of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. She is currently a Director of the Chicago Transit Authority. Grimshaw holds a bachelor's degree from Marquette University and completed graduate studies in Public Policy at Governors State University.
Kenneth J. Groves, AICP, Director, Planning & Development, City of Montgomery, Alabama
Bryan Hager, Crager Hager Farm
Bryan Hager is a vegetable farmer in Carroll County who sells his produce locally. Before farming Bryan worked on development and transportation issues in the Atlanta region. Bryan has extensive knowledge of agriculture, environment, land use and development issues from public, civic and business perspectives. Bryan’s current focus is on improving the sustainability of America’s farming and food system by involving new people in growing food, selling food grown locally and using local resources to grow the food.
Roseanne Haggerty, President & Founder , Common Ground
Rosanne Haggerty is the President and Founder of Common Ground Community H.D.F.C., Inc., a New York City-based non-profit organization dedicated to finding innovative solutions to homelessness. Common Ground was founded in 1990 and has developed and operates a range of housing facilities serving formerly homeless and low income households located in New York City, the Hudson Valley and Connecticut, and has now expanded to Los Angeles, New Orleans and Washington DC. In addition, Common Ground operates programs designed to prevent homelessness among vulnerable individuals and groups and to assist long-term homeless adults in accessing housing. It provides services directly and as a consultant to government and not for profit groups. Common Ground’s innovative work has been recognized with national and international awards including the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, the Peter Drucker Award for Non Profit Innovation, and the World Habitat Award through the United Nations and Building and Social Housing Foundation. Haggerty is an Urban Advisor to the Urban Land Institute, a board member of the Center for Urban Community Services, the Citizen’s Housing and Planning Council, the Times Square Alliance, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and Quest Diagnostics, and is a Life Trustee of Amherst College. Haggerty was a Japan Society Public Policy Fellow, an Adelaide Thinker in Residence, is an Ashoka Senior Fellow and the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. Prior to founding Common Ground, Ms. Haggerty held the position of Coordinator of Housing Development at Brooklyn Catholic Charities, operating in Brooklyn and Queens. She is a graduate of Amherst College and is completing studies for PhD in sociology at New York University.
Laura Hall, Principal, Hall Alminana, Inc.
Laura Hall is a founding principal of Hall Alminana Inc., a San Francisco firm that provides participatory planning, coding and design services to communities and developers. A graduate of UC, Berkeley, Ms. Hall has a strong background and practice in the social, psychological and cultural aspects of urban design and how they get expressed in plans and codes. Ms. Hall was the project director for one of the first adopted SmartCodes in the U.S., in Petaluma, California. She also helped craft the SmartCode for Sonoma Mountain Village, the first community in North America endorsed by the prestigious international One Planet Communities Program.
Greg Heath, Guerry Professor and Head, Department of Health & Human Performance,, University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Greg’s training is in physiology, nutrition, and epidemiology. He received his Masters of Public Health and Doctor of Health Science degrees from Loma Linda University in California and completed his post-doctoral training in applied physiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. A former Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, he worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for over 20 years. Dr. Heath has spent most of his professional career devoted to understanding and promoting physical activity and exercise for the enhancement of health and the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. He has published widely in the scientific literature. Dr. Heath is a Fellow in the American College of Sports Medicine, and American Heart Association’s Councils on Epidemiology and Prevention and Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism.
Ari Heckman, HM Ventures LLC
Ari Heckman and Jonathan Minkoff formed HM Ventures in 2008 to exploit perceived dislocations in the investment real estate market. HM Ventures pursues value-add investment and repositioning opportunities, with a primary focus on long-term, strategic investments that generate above average annual return on equity. HM Ventures will consider investments in markets and locations with clearly understood, stable anchors, such as universities, governments, mass transit hubs, superior employment centers and other unique, immutable attributes. Ari S. Heckman is a co-founder and principal of HM Ventures, a New York-based real estate investment firm. He is also the principal of ASH Co., a boutique design-build firm specializing in interior construction and design of private residences in Manhattan. Ari was previously the Director of Development at Cayuga Capital Management (CCM,) a real estate investment and development company based in New York. At CCM, Ari was responsible for the development of over 150,000 square feet of residential, retail and commercial space, including the landmark 44 Berry adaptive reuse project in Williamsburg. Previously, Ari worked under Arnold “Buff” Chace in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was responsible for the continued development of a new retail corridor in that city’s historic downtown. Ari graduated with highest honors from the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. He is a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Urban Land Institute.
Dougal Hewitt, Senior Vice President , Bon Secours Richmond Health System
Herman Howard, Hellmuth Obata + Kassabaum
erman H. Howard is a Part-Time Instructor, Non-Tenured at Georgia Insituite of Technology. Currently he is in his second year of a sabatical. Previously for the past five years he taughrt architectural design studios at the 2nd, 4th and graduate levels. His studio's espically those at the 4th and Graduate levels usually dealt with architectural problemsset within urban fabrics, located mainly within the Atlanta area. Currently, as an employee of Hellmuth Obata + Kassabaum, inc (HOK) in their Atlanta, GA office, Herman collaborates with a number of different Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects and Urban Designers from around the world. The HOK Planning Group (HPG) is made up of very unique and talented indivuadlas that are devoted to an innovative, collaborative pratice focused on improving the quality of people's lives. As the planning arm of one of the largest Architectural firms in the world HPG is well positioned to be involved in a number of very exciting projects. As the Studio leader for the Atlanta Urban Design Group, Herman has had the opportunity to be involved in a number of different projects that would include but not be limited to the following: A 1,000 acre mixed-use development at the edge of downtown Houston, TX - a 500 acre New American Town just outside of Shangai, China - and the Re-Vision/Master Plan for the 488 acre Fort McPherson in Atlanta, GA. In the past Herman Howard has worked on award winning project throughout the United States and around the world that would include but not be limited to the following: The Proctor & Gamble Headquarters in Cinn., Ohio / Canary Wharf, London, England / The Ronald regan Center in Washington D.C. / The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington Cobb Freed & Partners. He was also very instrunmental in the discovery of the African Burial Ground of Lower Manhattan. He received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Souther California in 1981 and a Master of Science in Architecture from Columbia University in 1984. firms with a number of different award winning fiirms that would include; Kohn Pedersen Fox / Skidmore Owings & Merrill / Pei. His work has been published in a number of different monographs and publications. He has been married for 18 years and he and his wife are the proud parents of 4 sons.
Xavier Iglesias, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Richard Jackson, Professor and Chair, Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA School of Public Health
Six years after publishing their remarkable book on the health impacts of sprawl, the three authors -- each distinguished leaders in the impact of the environment on health -- will speak to the new opportunities advancing design, research, and policy on healthy placemaking. Dr. Howard Frumkin and Dr. Richard Jackson have both served as Director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still with the CDC, Dr. Frumkin is honorary chair of CNU 18 and working on health and climate change. Dr. Jackson led the California Department of Public Health, chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health and is chair of environmental health sciences at UCLA . Director of the seminal SMARTRAQ study and numerous others, Dr. Lawrence Frank is a landscape architect and holds the Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation Systems at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia.
John Jacob, Coastal Community Development Specialist, Texas Sea Grant, Texas A&M University
Daron Joffe, CFO, Chief Farming Officer, Farner D Organics
Daron ‘Farmer D’ Joffe is an organic/biodynamic farmer, environmental educator and social entrepreneur. He is the founder and president of Farmer D Organics, creators of farms and products for the earth and its people. Over the past fourteen years, Farmer D has founded and managed a number of organic farms all over the country. Farmer D’s signature products includes Farmer D Organics Biodynamic Blend Organic Compost and Planting mix made from Whole Foods Market spoils and is available for sale at Whole Foods Market’s throughout the Southeast and at Farmer D Organics retail garden centers in Atlanta. In 1998, Farmer D was selected as the Biodynamic Rookie Farmer of the Year and was one of only eight recipients nationwide to receive the 2003-2005 Joshua Venture Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs. He was also selected as one of the top 20 brightest talents under 40 years of age by Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles Magazine in February 2006 and as one of the Top 40 under 40 by Georgia Trend Magazine in October 2006. In 2008, Farmer D Organics received the Spirit of Innovation Award for “Most Sustainable Business” by the Savannah Economic Development Authority’s Creative Coast and was recently selected as the Best of Atlanta ‘Resource for Urban Farmers’ by Atlanta Magazine. For more about Farmer D go to www.farmerd.com and to watch Farmer D’s ‘In the Field’ Internet TV series, go to the Mother Nature Network at www.mnn.com/mnntv/in-the-field.
Shyam Kannan, Vice President of Research & Development , RCLCo
Bio: Shyam joined RCLCO in 2003 and learned the science and craft of real estate consulting within the firm. With a strong background in urban issues and sustainable development, Shyam focuses on real estate strategies for urban revitalization, mixed-use and transit-oriented development, and green or sustainable development. Shyam’s experience in both the public and private sectors of urban real estate development give him insights not often found in the real estate consulting profession. He has worked on community plans, large-scale urban investments, and individual buildings in both capacities, and knows the challenges and paths to success in both realms. Shyam believes that thoughtful and creative analytics grounded in the economics of placemaking should go hand-in-hand with rigorous attention to process, so that public stakeholders and private-sector clients alike are jointly involved in creating lasting legacies. Shyam is responsible for keeping RCLCO on the cutting edge of real estate knowledge. As Director of Research and development, he leads RCLCO's research endeavors on green and sustainable development, the importance of Gen Y, and changing consumer preferences for homes and communities. Shyam is a frequent speaker, moderator, and panelist. He has written articles published in Urban Land and Land Development Magazine, and has been featured in the LA Times, Money Magazine, Builder Magazine, and Builder and Developer magazine. He has been a featured speaker at Urban Land Institute events, West Coast Green, Big Builder, and Greenbuild
Doug Kelbaugh, FAIA, Professor at Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, University of Michigan
Douglas S. Kelbaugh FAIA, Professor and former Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, received a B.A. Magna Cum Laude and M.Arch from Princeton University. From 1977 to 1985 he was principal in Kelbaugh+Lee, which won 15 design awards and competitions. He then served as Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was principal in Kelbaugh, Calthorpe and Associates. He was editor of The Pedestrian Pocket Book in 1989 (which jumpstarted TOD) and Writing Urbanism in 2008, and the author of Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design, and Repairing the American Metropolis: Beyond Common Place.
Katharine Kelley, President and CEO, Green Street Properties
Katharine Kelley is President and CEO of Green Street Properties, a subsidiary of Jamestown. Green Street is a national green consulting and development firm, and is probably best known for its development of the award winning Glenwood Park mixed use development in Atlanta. Katharine has led the development of over $600 million of properties during more than 16 years of experience in the real estate development business. Previously, Katharine was Senior Vice President and one of three regional development officers at Post Properties, where she managed the development of 12 multifamily and mixed-use properties, comprising a total of over 4,000 multifamily units. In particular, she led the team that developed the flagship, $120 million Riverside by Post mixed- use development, which gained national recognition as an early leader in new urbanist development. Prior to Post, Katharine worked with The Landmarks Group, where she developed and marketed retail space for the $600 million Promenade mixed-use development in Midtown Atlanta. Prior to Green Street, she honed her entrepreneurial skills as a Co-founder and President of internet company Blue Rock Avenue, located in Atlanta and New York. Katharine is an Atlanta native and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina. She received a Master of Science in Real Estate Development from Columbia University and an MBA from Harvard University. Katharine served for several years on the City of Atlanta Zoning Review Board and the UNC Johnston Honors Advisory Board. She currently serves on the Atlanta Habitat for Humanity Advisory Board, the Board of Directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Board of Trustees of The Westminster Schools. Katharine is a member of the Urban Land Institute and is a LEED Accredited Professional.
Marina Khoury, Partner, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Marina Khoury is an expert in sustainable urbanism, TND's and form-based codes and speaks on issues related to creating affordable, sustainable, walkable communities. A licensed architect, she is a Partner at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company (DPZ) and the Director of Town Planning who leads the metro Washington D.C. office. Khoury manages new towns and urban redevelopment plans in the United States, Canada, Middle East and Europe. She is also the DPZ project director for Miami 21, the comprehensive rewriting of the City of Miami's current zoning code into the largest-known application of a form-based code.
Jee Mee Kim, Vice President/Director of Planning, Sam Schwartz Engineering
As Director of Planning and Design, Jee Mee Kim oversees a staff of planners and urban designers and specializes in transportation planning and analysis, environmental planning, and public involvement efforts. During her nearly 10 years at SSE, Kim has directed award-winning transportation planning studies, often requiring significant public feedback and agency coordination. These studies have resulted in designs that reduce and redesign roadway space, accommodate non-auto modes, and add new public and open space. Prior to joining SSE, Kim worked as a community organizer in New York City's Asian immigrant neighborhoods in addition to working at the Urban Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has a Bachelors of Arts in History at the New School for Social Research, a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting from Parsons School of Design, has completed coursework from the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and holds a Masters of Urban Planning from New York University.
Kevin Klinkenberg, Principal, 180 Degrees Design Studio
Since 1994, Kevin Klinkenberg, principal of 180 Urban Design & Architecture has explored his passion for walkable communities. A Fellow with the Knight Program in Community Building through the University of Miami and the Knight Foundation and a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) since 1997, Klinkenberg seeks the balance between the practical and the visionary in projects of all scales, from individual sites to neighborhoods to entire regions. With 16 years of professional experience, Klinkenberg has become a Midwestern authority on planning and urban design, sitting on committees for the Mid America Regional Council, the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City and the Housing Choices Coalition. He is a frequent speaker on urban design, and in 2003, wrote a column for the Kansas City Star under Midwest Voices.ˇ His many volunteer activities include serving as 2010 president of AIA/Kansas City. Klinkenberg is also a faculty member for the Form-Based Codes Institute and the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Architecture & Urban Design. He is a Registered Architect in Missouri, Nebraska and California and co-founded 180 Urban Design in 2000.
Chris Kochtitzky, MSP, Associate Director for Program Development, Div. of Emergency & Environmental Health Services , CDC's National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH)
Chris Kochtitzky is currently the Associate Director for Program Development in NCEH’s Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services (DEEHS), the Division which houses CDC’s Healthy Community Design Initiative, the Healthy Homes Program, and the Environmental Health Services Program. Chris has held several leadership roles at CDC, including Deputy Associate Director of the National Center for Environmental Health's (NCEH) Office of Planning Evaluation and Legislation, Associate Director for Policy in NCEH’s Division of Emergency & Environmental Health Services, and Deputy Director of the CDC’s Division of Human Development & Disability. He has also served as a coordinating lead for cross-agency work in healthy communities, healthy transportation, and healthy homes.
Joseph Kohl, Co-founder, Dover Kohl & Partners
Joe Kohl is a founding partner of Dover, Kohl & Partners. He is recognized nationally as an innovator in urban design and graphic communication. He pioneered the firm's use of computer imaging simulations and authored many of its illustrated land development regulations. He holds degrees from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the University of Miami.
Thomas Kronemeyer, Senior Associate Principal, Community Design + Architecture
Thomas Kronemeyer is an Associate Principal with the Oakland based urban design and planning firm Community Design + Architecture (CD+A). His experience includes a broad variety of planning and design projects for multi-modal transportation corridors, transit facilities, and walkable communities. His work focuses on the successful integration of urban design, land use, and transportation planning with an emphasis on pedestrian- and transit-oriented design. Mr. Kronemeyer holds Master Degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in City Planning and Landscape Architecture as well as a Landscape Architecture engineering degree from the University of Hannover, Germany. For the past two years, Mr. Kronemeyer has been leading CNU’s initiative for Sustainable Transportation Networks.
Mike Krusee, Representative , Texas House of Representatives
Mike Krusee has represented District 52 of the Texas House of Representatives since 1992. An established leader on issues related to the rapid growth of the Central Texas region, Representative Krusee serves as Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, and is a member of the Executive Council of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO). His passionate interest in quality urban planning and design led him to a seat as a board member of the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) in 2005. In his role as Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, Representative Krusee has ushered in landmark improvements for both the Central Texas region and the entire State of Texas. His authorship of House Bill 3588, an omnibus transportation statute, is now widely held as one of the most comprehensive and visionary in Texas history; the legislation is now a national model for state transportation funding. Mike has been honored by many business and family organizations, including the Texas Association of Businesses and Chambers of Commerce, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, The Free Enterprise PAC, the Texas Eagle Forum, and the Free Market Foundation, for his commitment to conservative principles and free enterprise. A former litigation paralegal, he works for a document retrieval company with offices throughout the state. His five children were all educated in the Round Rock Independent School District.
James Howard. Kunstler, Author
James Howard Kunstler says he wrote The Geography of Nowhere, "Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work." Home From Nowhere was a continuation of that discussion with an emphasis on the remedies. A portion of it appeared as the cover story in the September 1996 Atlantic Monthly. His next book in the series, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, published by Simon & Schuster / Free Press, was a look a wide-ranging look at cities here and abroad, an inquiry into what makes them great (or miserable), and in particular what America is going to do with it's mutilated cities. His recent book, The Long Emergency, published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in 2005, is about the challenges posed by the coming permanent global oil crisis, climate change, and other "converging catastrophes of the 21st Century." Following that, Mr. Kunstler wrote a novel, World Made By Hand, set in America's post-oil future, to illustrate the points made in The Long Emergency. It was published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in 2008. He is currently writing a sequel to that novel. Mr. Kunstler is also the author of eight other novels including The Halloween Ball, An Embarrassment of Riches, and Maggie Darling, A Modern Romance. He is a contributor to the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Op-Ed page, where he has written on environmental and economic issues. Mr. Kunstler was born in New York City in 1948. He moved to the Long Island suburbs in 1954 and returned to the city in 1957 where he spent most of his childhood. He worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. He has no formal training in architecture or the related design fields. He has lectured all over the US, in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. He lives in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York
Parry La Gro, Principal, Kathy Helm Associates
Parry La Gro is a principal of Kathy Helm Associates, a national healthcare design firm. He has held executive positions in tertiary acute care hospitals with responsibilities for operations in clinical and anatomical laboratories, medical records, quality assurance, information systems, telecommunications, engineering and housekeeping, construction and design, and property management. He is currently completing graduate work in architecture, investigating models for health care delivery.
Michael Lander, Lander Group
Michael Lander, 57, is founder and president of the Lander Group, a Minneapolis-based real estate development firm specializing in urban infill projects. He has been active in the planning, design, and development of commercial, residential, and mixed-use real estate projects in California, North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. Since relocating to Minneapolis in 1990, the Lander Group, alone and in partnerships with other firms, has developed and sold many successful infill residential projects and completed substantial renovations of mixed-use commercial buildings. Lander is a member of the Urban Land Institute, the Congress of the New Urbanism, T4America/LOCUS, and the Minnesota chapter of the AIA. He serves on the public policy committee of the Builders' Association of the Twin Cities and the Board of Directors of Transit for Livable Communities. He is a licensed real estate broker and general contractor in Minnesota, and holds the CCIM designation from the National Association of Realtors. He is a past president of the Minnesota/South Dakota CCIM chapter. Lander is a native of Grand Forks, North Dakota. He has gained over 35 years experience in the real estate development field since studying liberal arts at Arizona State University and the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He has two daughters.
Kathryn Lawler, External Affairs Manager, Atlanta Regional Commission
Kathryn Lawler is the external affairs manager for the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Metropolitan Planning Organization and Area Agency on Aging for the greater Atlanta area. She provides to support to the different divisions of the agency including transportation, land use, environment, workforce, local government support and aging. Her primary responsibility is to form strategic partnerships with federal, state and local governments, public and private organizations to transform the region into a more livable community for people of all ages and abilities. Prior to this role, she was a consultant working with local governments, foundations and community based coalitions, interested in effectively organizing to better prepare for the rapidly growing older adult population. As a consultant, she was the project manager for the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Lifelong Communities Charrette. Ms. Lawler received a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree from Harvard University.
Brian M. Leary, President and Chief Executive Officer, Atlanta Beltline Inc.
Robert LeBeau,, AICP, Senior Principal Planner, Land Use Division, Atlanta Regional Commission
Karen Lee, Deputy Director, NYC Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene
Kay Lee, The Center, Covington
Tad Leithead, Chair, Atlanta Regional Commission
Jean-Francois LeJeune, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Miami
Bill Lennertz, Executive Director, National Charrette Institute
Bill Lennertz, AIA, is the Executive Director and lead faculty member of the National Charrette Institute. First as Director of the Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) Boston office in 1986, and from 1993-2002, as a partner with Lennertz Coyle & Associates, Bill has directed over 150 community planning charrettes. For the past nine years Bill has conducted NCI trainings for top from such organizations as the Environmental Protection Agency, US General Services Administration, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fannie Mae Foundation, Parsons Brinckerhoff, the US Navy Facilities Architecture Branch and multiple city planning agencies. He is a co-author of The Charrette Handbook published by the American Planning Association. He is also co-editor and essayist of Towns and Town-Making Principles, a monograph on DPZ, and a contributor to the Charter of the New Urbanism. Bill teaches the NCI courses at several universities including Harvard, where he received his Masters of Architecture in Urban Design.
Karen Leone de Nie, Research Manager in Community and Economic Development, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Matthew Lewis, Assistant Director of Development Services, Planning Department of San Marcos TX
Matthew Lewis is a City Planner that has the passion for creating great places. He currently holds the position as the Assistant Director of Development Services for the City of San Marcos, Texas. Before joining San Marcos he was the Community Development Director for the City of Hutto, Texas, where he implemented a three time award winning SmartCode, in just four short months. Matthew is a CNU Accredited Professional and is active in the CNU Central Texas Chapter, serving as a Co-Chair on the education committee. He earned a degree in Geography: Urban & Regional Planning from Texas State University in 2003. Matthew is currently in the process of recoding San Marcos with the use of the SmartCode and is anticipating (with fingers-crossed) adoption of the code within the month. Matthew’s planning efforts have been recognized by several agencies throughout Texas, including Envision Central Texas, Texas & Central Texas APA & Texas State Student Planning Organization.
Joanna Lombard, Professor, University of Miami
Joanna Lombard, RA CNU, is a University of Miami professor who’s conducted research projects and led design studios the past few years that have focused on healthcare with respect to community design.
Gianni Longo, Principal, ACP Visioning & Planning
Mr. Longo is an architect and founding Principal of ACP Visioning + Planning. For the past two decades, he has pioneered the development of programs designed to involve citizens in the decision making process. Mr. Longo designed the creative public involvement strategies for Imagine New York: Giving Voice to the People’s Visions, one of the largest public participation efforts to help plan the redevelopment of the World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan. Imagine New York received the national American Vision Award by the American Planning Association. Mr. Longo is the author of several books. His latest, Visioning and Visualization: People, Pixels, and Plans was published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Thomas E. Low, AIA, LEED, Director of Town Planning, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Tom Low is the Director of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s Charlotte, North Carolina office, which he opened in 1995. Tom received his Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, and gained ten years of experience in architectural practice in Charlotte after completing his degree. In 1989, disenchanted with the making of architectural form detached from the principles of urbanism, he enrolled in the University of Miami for a Master’s Degree in Architecture with a specialization in New Urbanism. As a student, he completed research grants on early twentieth-century town centers, and the “Traditional Neighborhood Development Ordinance,” a trademark of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. and a crucial element in the firm’s principles. Since that time, Tom has managed and completed over one hundred projects over almost two decades with DPZ winning awards from the American Institute of Architects, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Protection Agency for Smart Growth Achievement. Tom is actively involved with projects, research, and education throughout the Carolinas. Tom lectures on town planning, early twentieth-century planning history, sustainability and urbanism, and school design. He has taught at the University of Miami School of Architecture, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte School of Architecture, the College of Charleston, Clemson University, North Carolina State University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Through grants he received from the John Nolen Foundation he has completed a symposium on John Nolen’s work in the southeast and a book on John Nolen’s planning techniques. He is currently in his fourth year as Chair for the Charlotte Region Civic by Design Forum, and has led forums on school design starting the Katrina Inspired Learning Cottage Initiative. In 2007, he also started the Light Imprint Initiative, developing a framework for environmentally-sensitive engineering techniques in line with New Urban community design principles.
Mike Lydon, The Street Plans Collaborative
Mike Lydon is the founding Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative. Before launching TSPC in 2009, Lydon worked for Smart Growth Vermont, the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, and Ann Arbor’s GetDowntown Program. From 2006 - 2009 Lydon worked for Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company. As a planner, writer, and activist, Mike’s work has appeared in or been featured by CNN Headline News, Planetizen, Next American City, New Urban News, Planning Magazine, Streetsblog, the Miami Herald, and The Village Voice, among other publications. Mike collaborated with Andres Duany and Jeff Speck in writing the recently published Smart Growth Manual. Mike remains a regular contributor to Planetizen and is a founding co-editor of A Living Urbanism, a creative journal chronicling the ever-changing built environment. Most recently, Lydon was selected as one of thirty four Urban Vanguards for the Next American City, a magazine created for and by a new generation of urban thinkers and leaders. A founding member of the New England Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and a steering committee member of the Next Generation of New Urbanists, Lydon remains active in both local and national planning, design, and smart growth advocacy issues and speaks regularly on the topics of smart growth, new urbanism, and active transportation.
Michelle Marcus, Research Scientist, Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development, Georgia Tech.
Michelle Marcus is a specialist in health promotion and environmental health. At the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development (CQGRD), she conducts Health Impact Assessment, researches links between the built environment and human health, and assists the Healthy Places Research Group. Through collaboration with decision-makers, planners, and community members, she uses her research to create a more healthful environment. Michelle received her Master of Public Health from the Institute of Public Health at Georgia State University in 2008, and holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Cornell University. She serves on the Atlanta BeltLine Tax Allocation District Advisory Committee and on the board of directors for Citizens for Progressive Transit.
Wesley Marshall, PhD, PE, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Colorado Denver
Wes is currently a professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver specializing in transportation planning, safety, and sustainability as well as urban design, congestion pricing, and parking. Recent research involves defining and measuring the street network and an empirical study considering the role of street patterns, connectivity, and network density in road safety and sustainability. The parking research includes analyzing mixed-use centers in small New England cities, investigating the effects of parking on urbanism, and a reassessment of on-street parking. Having spent time with the UConn Center for Transportation and Urban Planning, Sasaki Associates, and Clough, Harbour and Associates, Wes is a native of Watertown, Massachusetts, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and he received his doctorate from the University of Connecticut. Wes is also a recipient of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship and the Charley Wootan Award for best TRB paper.
Josh Martin, Land Use & Communities Program Director , South Carolina Coastal Conservation League
Josh Martin, AICP, CNU-A is the Program Director of Land Use and Communities for the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League in Charleston, South Carolina. Prior to joining the Coastal Conservation League, Martin was the City of Charleston’s first Director of Planning, Preservation, and Economic Innovation under the leadership of Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Martin began his professional planning career in 2001 with the Town of Bluffton, South Carolina in the capacities of Senior Planner, Community Development Director, and Town Manager. Most recently, Martin has been very involved in the suburban retrofit initiative as it relates to alternatives to highway construction, water quality of fragile Lowcountry ecosystems, creative revenue sources for counties and municipalities, and the concept of proactive retrofit (which was feature in the book, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson). Martin has been consistently active in the Congress for the New Urbanism, American Planning Association, Next American City, ULI, and the Seaside Institute.
Christopher McCahill, Graduate Student, University of Connecticut, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Christopher McCahill is a PhD student at the University of Connecticut where he has completed four years of graduate work in Transportation & Urban Engineering. He is the recipient of a New England University Transportation Center fellowship. His current research focuses on urban transportation systems, the relationships between transportation and land use, and the environmental impacts of transportation systems.
Marcy McInelly, AIA, Associate Principal, SERA Architects
Marcy McInelly has practiced architecture and urban design for more than 25 years in New York City and Portland, Oregon. In 1995, she founded Urbsworks, a Portland-based firm, and redirected her expertise to the often-neglected space between buildings. In 2006 she merged her company with SERA Architects. Marcy’s portfolio consists of town plans, infill and redevelopment strategies, zoning and form-base codes, public involvement, and the integration of transit and transportation facilities into communities. Award-winning projects include the Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan, the Roseway Vision Plan, the New Columbia HOPE VI community and school, and NorthWest Crossing. In 2004, Marcy was appointed to chair the Transportation Task Force of the Congress for the New Urbanism. This is the group that initiated the joint ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) and CNU street design manual for context sensitive design, and the Neighborhoods and Transportation Networks initiatives. Marcy served as an appointed member of the Portland Planning Commission from 1997 until May of 2002 and she is a founding member of the Portland metropolitan region Coalition for a Livable Future, a network of 60 non-profit and community-based organizations working together for regional growth management. She is a graduate of the University of Oregon's School of Architecture and Allied Arts.
Michael Mehaffy, Managing Director, Sustasis Foundation
Michael Mehaffy is a strategic consultant, researcher, author and lecturer in sustainable urban development. Michael is on the editorial boards of three international urban journals and on boards or advisory boards of a number of other built environment NGOs, urban research projects and government panels. He is an adjunct professor and/or guest lecturer at a number of institutions in Europe and North America. He directed creation of two influential new pilot curricula in sustainable urbanism in Europe. He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed papers, professional articles and book chapters. Among the award-winning projects for which Michael has played key roles are Orenco Station, described in the New York Times as “perhaps the most interesting experiment in New Urbanist planning anywhere in the country;” Pringle Creek, a pilot community in Salem, Oregon with the highest-scoring LEED home in the US; and work on the US Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
Susan Mendheim, President & CEO, Midtown Alliance
Susan Mendheim has successfully led the efforts of Midtown Alliance for the past 28 years, shepherding wide-sweeping changes that have helped transform Midtown Atlanta from a blighted, crime-ridden area into a vibrant community and model for new urbanism and economic growth. As President and CEO, Susan guides the Alliance in its mission to improve and sustain the quality of life in Midtown. Under her direction, the Alliance launched a community-wide planning effort in 1997 called Blueprint Midtown, heralded as a catalyst for Midtown’s renaissance and spurring over $1.5 billion in private investment in Midtown since its inception. In 2000, the Alliance formed a Midtown Improvement District (MID) to fund the Blueprint’s major initiatives. These include an $82 million streetscape construction program, a 24/7 public safety force, an area maintenance program, and a transportation management association, all of which are planned and implemented by the Alliance. On a personal note, Susan is an Atlanta native, an Emory University graduate, and the mother of two daughters, Kristin and Elizabeth.
Dee Merriam, CDC Community Planner
Dee Merriam is a Landscape Architect working as a Community Planner at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA. Her work group, Health and the Built Environment, looks at the relationship between community design and public health. Because over 20% of the US population self report little or no physical activity and such inactivity contributes to obesity and chronic disease; the CDC is concerned about how community design encourages or deters active lifestyles. Dee works with local governments, planning professionals, developers, and national organizations to promote policies that improve both the design of and access to community spaces. In 2001 Dee was honored to be elected Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects. She earned her Master's in Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia and is now taking course work in the Georgia Institute of Technology City and Regional Planning program.
Michael G. Messner, General Partner, Seminole Capital
Michael Messner has more than 30 years’ investment experience on Wall Street. For the past 13 years he has co-managed Seminole Capital Partners, LP, a billion dollar equity investment fund. In addition, Michael is the co-founder with his wife, Jenny, of The Speedwell Foundation and believes that a major urban/suburban park investment program by the federal government is needed to solve this nation’s excess developed real estate problem.
Paul Milana, AIA, Partner, Cooper, Robertson & Partners
Paul Milana, AIA, Partner, is an architect and urban designer with over 20 years of experience at Cooper, Robertson & Partners, leading the design of new mixed-use, transit-oriented, and infill communities and resort villages. He is the project architect and town planner of WaterColor and WindMark Beach in Florida, two new resort towns along the Florida Panhandle coast. He has directed various design efforts for the town of Celebration, Florida, including neighborhood planning and residential and office building designs, as well as mixed-use, residential, and civic building designs for WaterColor, Florida, WindMark Beach, Florida, and Bay Meadows in San Mateo, California. He has directed work on new mixed-use communities and resort villages in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Oregon, the Caribbean, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Brazil, and Russia and infill and transit-oriented communities in California and Texas. He recently directed a regional smart growth plan for 78,000 acres near Charleston, South Carolina. His work with academic institutions includes master plans and building designs for The University of Texas System, Trinity University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His resort work includes the architectural design and planning of Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort, the Disneyland Expansion Plan in Anaheim, California, and Disney's Beaver Creek Mountain Lodge in Colorado. Mr. Milana is an active member of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Urban Land Institute, where he served as the leader of annual course in Town Planning for the ULI Real Estate School. In addition, Mr. Milana has served as moderator, panelist, and speaker at ULI events across the country. His design for New Town in James City County, Virginia was selected as the winner of an international competition. He received his degree in architecture from the University of Notre Dame.
Christina Miller, LEED AP, Designer, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Christina Miller is a town planner at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) in Miami. A LEED Accredited Professional, Ms. Miller has managed projects to be compliant with both Florida Green Home and LEED-H standards and had significant involvement with the development of the LEED-ND Pilot program. Christina has taken a lead in DPZ's green research initiatives, in particular Agricultural Urbanism, and currently is working on the incorporation of these sustainable design elements into form-based codes; she is also a member of Miami Dade County's Climate Change Action Task Force Built Environment Adaptation Committee. For Miami 21 (the re-scripting of the City of Miami's Code) team, she focused on transforming the existing thoroughfares of the city into more walkable, bikeable and transit-ready corridors. Before returning to graduate school, Ms. Miller spent several years employed in different aspects of urbanism, including on the construction of Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti and for the New London Development Corporation, now well known for Kelo v. New London. Following, she worked for Shulman and Associates, a multi-disciplinary firm specializing in sustainable design and historic preservation, where she became familiar with the climate adaptation techniques of early-mid century modernism. While originally trained in economics, she now holds masters degrees in architecture and urbanism from the University of Miami, where, among other distinctions, she was chosen a Knight Scholar; she has subsequently has taught several drawing and design studios. She was recently published in Miami Modern Metropolis, a collection of academic writings focusing on various stages of the Miami’s development, edited by Allan Shulman.
Ceasar C. Mitchell, President, Atlanta City Council
Latetia Moore, Epidemiologist, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Nutrition Physical Activity, and Obesity
Paul Moore, PE, Principal, AECOM Design + Planning
Cheri Morris, President, Morris & Fellows
Cheri Morris is President of Morris and Fellows, which develops, leases, owns and manages upscale mixed-use communities. Recent developments include Vickery Village in Forsyth County and Woodstock Downtown, in the City of Woodstock. She was also on the team that created a three-block dining, retail and entertainment district known as Luckie Marietta in downtown Atlanta. Her projects have been awarded the “Development of Excellence” by the Urban Land Institute, cited as “Development of the Year” by the Atlanta Regional Commission , received the CNU International Charter Award for Best Neighborhood District, and named “America’s Best Smart Growth Community” by the National Homebuilders Association, and “America’s Neighborhood” by Better Homes and Gardens Magazine, Prior to becoming a developer, Morris ran a retail planning firm which guided developers, institutions and city governments on strategic planning, development, design, merchandising, leasing and marketing. Her client list included names such as The Rockefeller Foundation, AT&T Pension Fund, Bass Brothers Enterprises, Equitable and Prudential. Over the years, her firm worked on some of the western hemisphere’s most noteworthy properties including Colonial Williamsburg, Georgetown Park in Washington D.C., Toronto’s Eaton Centre, Tyson’s Corner, The Summit and Rosemary Beach. Morris served on the teaching faculty of the International Council of Shopping Centers for over 20 years. She has been a frequent speaker for such groups as ICSC, Urban Land Institute and the Atlanta Regional Commission, and has been a keynote speaker at national and international retail conventions, including the first International Congress of Shopping Centers in Rio de Janeiro, and the World Congress of Shopping Centers in Vienna, Austria. Morris has contributed to several prestigious media outlets, including Shopping Centers Today, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The Journal of Property Management, and Shopping Center Business. Active in civic planning, the arts and sustainable development, Morris has served on the Fulton County Stormwater Advisory Task Force, the Southface Eco-Office Task Force, the Citizens Advisory Committee for the City of Sandy Springs Comprehensive Plan, and several LCI committees in Metro Atlanta. She was the first Chair of the City of Sandy Springs’ Design Review Board, is on the Boards of the Sandy Springs Conservancy, and ART Sandy Springs, and chairs the Urban Design Committee of the Chamber of Commerce. Cheri is married to Terry Morris, who retired in 2008 as President of GMAC Real Estate, the world’s fifth largest residential brokerage firm, with 100 offices coast to coast generating $18 billion in annual sales. The couple has two grown children and three grandchildren, all of whom reside in Sandy Springs, Ga.
Andrew Mortensen, Senior Transportation Planner, Transpo Group
Andy has 26 years experience in multi-modal transportation planning, specializing in policy development and local implementation of complete streets and sustainable transportation systems. He is the Program Manager for Transpo Group’s ViaCity connectivity solutions. His experience in policy implementation for pedestrian plans includes development of data collection routines and reporting to meet ADA Title II transition plan requirements, and development of quality of service measures for connectivity.
Steve A. Mouzon, AIA LEED, Principal , The New Urban Guild
Steve Mouzon is a principal of the New Urban Guild in Miami. The New Urban Guild is a group of architects, designers, and other New Urbanists dedicated to the study and the design of true traditional buildings and places native to and inspired by the regions in which they are built. Involving a number of designers brings authenticity to a place that simply cannot be achieved when all buildings are designed by a single hand, no matter how talented that hand may be. The Guild was instrumental in the creation of the Katrina Cottages concept, and continues to foster the movement, including sponsoring the website (www.katrinacottages.com
Karen Mumford, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota, MOrris
Lisa Nisenson, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Coordinator, Nisenson Consulting
Lisa Nisenson has worked for almost 20 years in environmental protection and smart growth. She undertook urban planning as a citizen activist, an interest that grew as her neighborhood adopted aggressive sustainability goals. As a policy analyst for the U.S. EPA, she expanded her work to include federal policy on watershed planning, transit oriented development, community planning and climate change policy. For the past three years, Ms. Nisenson has worked with a wide array of clients, including the California Water Board, the California Ocean Protection Commission and for US EPA developing Post-Construction guidance for Stormwater rules. She is currently the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Coordinator for Sarasota County, with responsibility for aligning economic development, planning and energy policies and programs.
John O. Norquist, President and CEO, Congress for the New Urbanism
John Norquist's work promoting New Urbanism as an alternative to sprawl and antidote to sprawl's social and environmental problems draws on his experience as big-city mayor and prominent participant in national discussions on urban design and school reform. John was the Mayor of Milwaukee from 1988-2004. Under his leadership, Milwaukee experienced a decline in poverty, saw a boom in new downtown housing, and became a leading center of education and welfare reform. He has overseen a revision of the city's zoning code and reoriented development around walkable streets and public amenities such as the city's 3.1-mile Riverwalk. He has drawn widespread recognition for championing the removal of a .8 mile stretch of elevated freeway, clearing the way for an anticipated $250 million in infill development in the heart of Milwaukee. A leader in national discussions of urban design and educational issues, Norquist is the author of The Wealth of Cities, and has taught courses in urban policy and urban planning at the University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and at Marquette University. Norquist served in the Army Reserves from 1971 to 1977, earned his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He represented Milwaukee's south and west sides in the Wisconsin Legislature. He chaired the National League of Cities Task Force on Federal Policy and Family Poverty and served on the Amtrak Reform Council. He is married to CNU Board Member Susan Mudd. They have two children, Benjamin and Katherine.
Nathan Norris, Director of Implementation Advisory, PlaceMakers, LLC
Nathan Norris is the Director of Implementation Advisory with PlaceMakers, L.L.C., a multi-disciplinary firm that helps developers and municipalities plan, design and sell places designed according to traditional town planning principles that are embodied in the SmartCode. His primary role within PlaceMakers is to advise developers and cities on how to successfully implement plans that generate economic, environmental and social rewards. Nathan is an attorney, real estate broker and the Director of Marketing & Design for a billion dollar traditional neighborhood development in Pike Road, Alabama called the Waters. Nathan regularly speaks to organizations and groups interested in the SmartCode and placemaking as an economic development tool.
Steve Nygren, Founder/Managing Partner, Serenbe
Steve’s early career in the hotel and restaurant industry, was with Stouffers Food Corp., and in 1972, he opened the Pleasant Peasant, which was the beginning of a restaurant corporation that grew to 34 restaurants in eight states by the time he departed in 1994. Steve and his wife, Marie, moved to a farm in South Fulton County with their three daughters and in 1996 opened Serenbe Bed and Breakfast on their 900 acre farm. As development pressure to the area became apparent, he became concerned about the value of his real estate holdings and the quality of life his family enjoyed in a rural setting on the edge of Atlanta. That concern motivated him to lead a group of neighboring landowners to investigate options for development. The group now known as the Chattahoochee Hill Country, working with local governments, preservation groups and developers passed the largest land use change in recent history on 40,000 acres in Fulton County with corresponding overlay regulations in 2002. Today he is the Managing Partner of Serenbe, the corporation developing the first hamlet in this overlay district combining new urbanist principles, environmental design, agriculture and land preservation. For more information on Serenbe, you may visit www.serenbe.com.
Leslie Oberholtzer, Principal And Director of Planning, Farr Associates
Leslie Oberholtzer is a Principal and the Director of Planning at Farr Associates, an architecture, planning, and preservation firm in Chicago. With extensive background as a landscape architect and smart growth planner, she concentrates professionally on promoting sustainable urbanism through such practices as well designed, walkable neighborhoods; availability of alternative transportation and housing choices; supporting local businesses; and preservation of community history and tradition. She authored the first form-based code adopted in the State of Illinois and continues to focus on coding as a key implementation tool for sustainable communities. A registered landscape architect in Texas and Illinois, Leslie has a Master’s Degree in Community and Regional Planning and is a USGBC LEED Accredited Professional. In addition to her work at Farr Associates, she is a member of the LEED-ND corresponding committee and served on the LEED-ND pilot focus group. She also serves on the EPA’s model code workshop team, the planning committee for the Friends of the Chicago River, and the Eco-Andersonville committee of the Andersonville Development Corporation. She contributed to the book Sustainable Urbanism and recently co-authored the Sustainable Urbanism modules for the SmartCode.
Daniel Parker, MSP, Sustainability Director, Division of Environmental Public Health, Florida Department of Health
Daniel Parker is the Sustainability Director for the Division of Environmental Public Health in the Florida Department of Health. He has been instrumental in shifting department focus to include land use and climate change by completing a multi-agency agreement on smart growth in 2008, and urging the Florida Department of Health to become the first public health partner in the USEPA's Smart Growth Network. In his 12 years with the department, he is most proud of the over $20 million dollars of local improvements accomplished through the statewide PACE EH community assessment initiative, and the five land use planners and two graduate planning interns that now reside within the Department of Health network. He has a Masters degree in Urban Planning from Florida State University and is a Planning Commissioner for Tallahassee-Leon County.
Daniel Parolek, AIA,, Principal , Opticos Design, Inc.
Daniel Parolek is an architect and urbanist who is committed to creating and reinforcing walkable, sustainable places and designing buildings that reinforce them. He is at the forefront of the practice of Form-Based Coding, which is a revolutionary alternative to zoning regulations that has proven to be highly effective in encouraging and incentivizing more sustainable development patterns. He is coauthor of the first comprehensive book on the topic "Form-Based Codes: A guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities, and Developers," which was publish by Wiley in 2008 and has been called "the definitive handbook" on the subject. He is also a founding board member of the Form-Based Codes Institute and the founding principal of Opticos Design, Inc., a firm that applies the principles of sustainability at the regional, city, and building scale. This work currently includes integrating Form-Based Codes into the Development Code Updates for the cities of Livermore, CA and Flagstaff, Arizona (SmartCode), and Beaufort County, South Carolina, the creation of a new transit-oriented town center for Hercules, California that is LEED-ND Stage 1 Gold Certified, and the design of an award-winning, affordable, green housing project in Santa Fe New Mexico. Opticos is one of 12 Bay Area founding B Corporations with a commitment to a triple bottom line of social, environment, and fiscal responsibility. Daniel has a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Urban Design from the University of California at Berkeley. Daniel is an avid biker, supporter of local businesses, and an advocate of local, organic foods.
Neal Payton, AIA, LEED AP, CNU A, Principal, Torti Gallas and Partners
Neal I. Payton, AIA, LEED-AP is a Principal at Torti Gallas and Partners, Inc. Before arriving in California, he co-directed Torti Gallas¹s Urban Design efforts out of their Silver Spring, MD office. His work centers on Urban Design and Town Planning at a variety of scales including inner city revitalization, inner suburban infill and refill, transit oriented development in emerging development areas as well as regional plans for counties and metropolitan areas. Mr. Payton's urban design efforts have been honored nationally with AIA Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design and several Charter Awards from the Congress for the New Urbanism. Among his current projects Mr. Payton is working on a new TOD on a 150-acre site in Leander, Texas (outside of Austin) and collaborating with G.B. Arrington¹s firm, Parsons Brinkerhoff, in planning for the Wilshire Blvd subway (the Subway to the Sea) in Los Angeles. Mr. Payton holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters of Architecture from Syracuse University. Prior to joining Torti Gallas, Mr. Payton served as a professor of architecture and urban design at a number of universities including The University of Virginia, Washington University in St. Louis, Rice University and The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
John Peponis
John Peponis is a professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and practices architecture in Greece working with Maria Kokkinou and Andreas Kourkoulas Architects. His research addresses the social, cultural, organizational and cognitive functions of architecture and urban design, with an emphasis on appropriate quantitative descriptions of space and form. These are used to test research hypotheses and to evaluate and develop design choices. He received his Ph.D. at University College London where he was a member of the team that originally developed “space syntax” and serves on the steering and refereeing committees of space syntax symposia since their inauguration in 1997. He has published extensively, including papers in Environment and Planning (B): Planning and Design, The Journal of Architecture, Ekistics, Environment and Behavior. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration, the Ministry of Research in Greece, the Georgia Tech Foundation, and Steelcase.
Julio Cesar Perez Hernandez, President, Cuban Chapter of C.E.U. and I.N.T.B.A.U.
Julio Cesar Perez is a practicing Cuban Architect, Urban planner and Urban Designer, Professor and Author of the book Inside Cuba published by Taschen Editions, 2006, and of A Master Plan for XXI Century Havana, a comprehensive urban plan for the future development of the capital of Cuba that aspires to both the preservation of the heritage and to the creation of new urban and economic values, registered at the Libarry of Congress in Washington DC. Julio Cesar Perez became the one and only Cuban Loeb Fellow in history at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design School during 2001-2002 in Advanced Urban and Environmental Studies and he received his degree from the School of Architecture of Havana, Cuba in 1982, where he has was an Adjunct Professor from 1998 to 2006. His work includes the design and building of private homes and public buildings and the master planning of new communities and neighborhoods that have got him several awards. He has lectured widely in the USA, Europe, Canada, Bermuda and Cuba. He has taught and lectured for Harvard University GSD, MIT, The Boston Architectural Center, and McGill University in Montreal, Carleton University in Ottawa and at the University of Toronto, Cornell University, Florida International University, at the University of Southern California in LA and also at the National Building Museum in DC, among other institutions. He’s served in juries in Harvard University GSD, MIT, California College of Arts and Crafts, Cornell University, at the University of Miami, and in Cuba. In Europe he has been guest lecturer in several international conferences organized by both CEU and INTBAU (in Portugal, UK, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, and Norway). He has also lectured widely in Spain where he has successfully presented an urban project for the Historic Center of Aranjuez in 2008. His works - built and in progress - and projects have been exhibited in Cuba and also in Harvard University GSD and have been published by the New York Times, Progressive Planning, Taschen Editions, Alinea Editrice, Caleidoscopio Ediçao The Journal of the Royal Institute of the Architects in Ireland, Arquitectura Cuba, Arquitectura y Urbanismo, and Caribbean Design magazine.
Andrea Pinabell, Director, Sustainable Cities Institute
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Principal , Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is the dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture, where she has taught since 1979. Plater-Zyberk received her undergraduate degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University and her Master’s of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. She is a founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism. She is a founding principal of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Town Planners and Architects (DPZ). DPZ is a leader in the national movement called the New Urbanism, which seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. The firm’s award winning method of integrating master planning with design codes and regulations is being applied in over 200 regions, towns and cities throughout North America as well as in Europe and Asia. She co-authored the book Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, and The New Civic Art.
Scott Polikov, Principal, Gateway Planning Group
Scott Polikov of the Gateway Planning Group, Inc. works with communities to reestablish their connections with place. Town planner and civic entrepreneur, Scott started his professional life in law, practicing with the Washington, D.C. firm, Patton Boggs. Returning to Texas, he was recruited to run the state’s Alternative Fuels Program and to serve on the boards of his local transit authority and MPO. Scott was alarmed to see the MPO approving multi-billion dollar regional transportation plans with virtually zero regard for land use and urban form. Scott channeled his frustration, establishing a national planning and urban design practice through the marriage of place-making and the economics of transportation. His firm’s work has been featured in ULI’s Urban Land and APA’s Planning Magazine. Gateway Planning’s awards include the Form-Based Codes Institute inaugural Driehaus Award for Best Code. Scott serves as an associate member of the Citistates Group, founded by Neal Peirce, and he serves on the National Board of Directors of CNU.
Shelley Poticha, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Senior Adviser for Sustainable Housing and Communities
Shelley Poticha is the Senior Advisor for Sustainable Housing and Communities at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Poticha has also been a Co-Chair at Transportation for America since its launch in 2008, president and CEO of the national nonprofit Reconnecting America since 2004, and former executive director of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Throughout her career, Poticha has become a national leader for the reform of land-use and transportation planning and policy and has helped stimulate a national conversation about the role of transportation in shaping communities and making them more sustainable and affordable. Shelley has co-authored several books, including The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development, Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the 21st Century, and The Next American Metropolis, as well as the Charter of the New Urbanism.
Stephan G. Poulakos, Director of Town Development
Stephen Poulakos has emerged as a specialist in the implementation of new resort town villages based upon principles of new urbanism & landscape design sensitivity. With a bachelor of landscape architecture from Auburn University, he has provided landscape design, development and construction supervision for several private estates, the Relais & Chateau Tennessee mountain resort of Blackberry Farm, Draper Lake Coastal Village & most notably, Seaside, Florida's sister community, Rosemary Beach, Florida where he served for 6 years as Assistant Design Director & Design Review Committee member. Currently, Stephen serves as the Director of Town Development for Seabrook, Washington, a new beach town located on the Pacific Northwest's historic Olympic Peninsula. After joining Seabrook's town planner, Laurence Qamar, and Casey Roloff, Town Founder, in 2004, Stephen brought his practical "on-the-ground" experience from Rosemary Beach and other NW Florida villages to ensure that Seabrook takes its own place in the ranks of America's regionally-inspired authentic beach towns based upon context sensitive design principles. Committed to eco-sensitive design, material reclamation, land stewardship, and open-space preservation, he has helped guide the town's vision by serving as the architectural review board chair, a WA State Scenic Byway steering committee member, and most importantly lead designer of numerous neighborhood parks & community amenities that include a National Park-inspired signage program and design of the 2010 COASTAL LIVING Magazine -'Ultimate Beach House' landscape. Seabrook, like many similar new urban resort towns, has already begun to positively impact an already emerging stretch of the Pacific NW coast as a place to emulate, inspire, and to visit.
Kenneth E. Powell, MD, MPH
Kenneth E. Powell, MD, MPH, is a public health and epidemiologic consultant. He was an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 25 years and with the Georgia Department of Human Resources for 8 years. The relationship between physical activity and health has been an important theme during his career. He initiated the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s epidemiologic work in the area by leading a consolidation of the scientific literature and setting the public health research agenda. He served on the Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Committee on Physical Activity, Health, Transportation, and Land Use and the Committee on Progress in Preventing Childhood Obesity for the Institute of Medicine; and is a member of the Physical Activity Work Group for the Task Force for the Guide to Community Preventive Services. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Epidemiology, and American College of Sports Medicine.
Shannon Powell, COO, Midtown Alliance/Midtown Improvement District
Russell S. Preston, Design Associate, Cornish Associates
Russell Stanton Preston, as developer, architectural designer and urbanist, works to improve our built and natural environment. He is a past Knight Scholar at the University of Miami, and a recipient of the Noel Blank Design Award from the University of Notre Dame. Russell is design director for Cornish Associates in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a member of the board of directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism and is president of the CNU New England chapter. Russell is an editor of “Living Urbanism”, a publication on contemporary urban design practice, and writes about creating authentic places at www.russellpreston.com. He is a LEED accredited professional and a working artist.
Joni Priest, Planner, Nashville Metro Planning Department
Joni has served in the Nashville Planning Department’s Design Studio since 2005, focusing on the regeneration of Nashville’s urban corridors and neighborhoods through planning and zoning efforts. By creating, refining and implementing various form-based codes, Joni has overseen the transformation of neighborhoods as diverse as Music Row, West End Park and Lenox Village. After providing design guidance for the update of the Downtown Community Plan in 2007, Joni has been project manager of the creation of the Downtown Code – a form-based code to implement the vision of the Downtown Community Plan. This new zoning code codifies the community vision of a sustainable, walkable, mixed-use Downtown by custom-tailoring the zoning of each of fourteen neighborhoods in Downtown. The Downtown Code was unanimously approved by the Metropolitan Nashville Council in February 2010. Joni received her undergraduate degree in Architecture and her Master of Architecture from Judson University.
Caleb Racicot, Senior Principal, Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates
Caleb Racicot is a community planner specializing in public involvement, community design, codes, community retail strategies, and the use of area studies as catalysts for place making. Mr. Racicot has worked in both the public and private sector and is an effective consensus builder. Prior to joining TSW in 2001, he practiced planning in Atlanta with the City of Atlanta Bureau of Planning. While with the City, Caleb worked on a variety of projects including urban design studies, zoning initiatives, land use plans, community facilitation, and Geographic Information Systems. He holds a Master of City and Regional Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Caleb’s recent projects include: Hapeville Main Street Town Center LCI; Highway 278 LCI Corridor Study; Avondale Estates Downtown Master Plan, Buford Town Center LCI Study, Central Martinez Area Study, Cascade Acres Design Standards, Ponce/Moreland Corridor Study, and the Woodstock Downtown Zoning Code.
Matt Raimi, Principal, Raimi + Associates, Inc.
Matt Raimi, AICP, is the sole principal of the land use planning firm Raimi + Associates, Inc. in Berkeley, California. His work focuses on creating more livable and sustainable cities by promoting public dialogue on land use, environmental, public health and transportation issues. Matt has over a dozen years of experience in planning and has managed numerous comprehensive plans, open space plans and site planning projects across California. He has also spoken extensively on applying the principles of new urbanism to comprehensive plans, incorporating public health concerns into the planning process, and promoting sustainable development at the local level. He is the author of several books and reports including Understanding the Relationship Between Public Health and the Built Environment (USGBC, 2006), Once There Were Greenfields (NRDC 1999) and Five Years of Progress: 110 Communities Where ISTEA is Making a Difference (STPP, 1996).
Victoria Ranney, Co-Founder, Prairie Crossing; President, Prairie Holdings Corporation. , Prairie Crossing; Prairie Holdings Corp.
Vicky Ranney is President of Prairie Holdings Corporation, which is developing Prairie Crossing, a green New Urbanist and transit-oriented community forty miles north of Chicago. With 400 homes clustered in villages and neighborhoods, over 60% of the site is preserved in natural areas and the organic Prairie Crossing Farm. Ms Ranney was previously an associate editor of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, the leading 19th c. American landscape architect and planner. She edited the California volume (Johns Hopkins University Press) and wrote Olmsted in Chicago. She is on the board of the Liberty Prairie Foundation in Illinois and Wes Jackson’s Land Institute in Kansas, which is developing perennial food grains grown in polycultures, on the model of the prairie. She graduated from Harvard University and began her career as a teacher in California, Mississippi and Uganda. She lives in Grayslake, Illinois, with her husband George, co-founder of Prairie Crossing.
Robin Rather, CEO, Collective Strengths
Robin Rather is an independent consultant specializing in market research and strategy for a range of business, non-profit and governmental clients and is a recognized advocate for sustainability and related policy issues. Her company, Collective Strength, is based in Austin. Working alongside regional planning experts, Rather's approach to citizen research goes beyond just generating data and reports. She is well known for analytical skills that reach farther into the "mindset" of diverse community segments and goes on to synthesize these often wide ranging viewpoints into cohesive planning priorities. Her approach also provides a way to benchmark attitudes and perceptions about regional plans as they evolve over time. Rather has recently served as a lead consultant on projects that involve renewable energy strategies, water conservation, the future of healthcare, non-point source pollution, community values, citizens' definitions of a healthy economy, and corporate trends. She also conducted one of the first major surveys of US sustainability experts on global trends and recently traveled to Beijing as part of a delegation meeting with environmental, academic and policy leaders in China.
Joseph P. Readdy, AIA, Architect, JRA
Joseph has a 30-year career in design, architecture, and urban design. Joseph’s projects range in scale from regional- and city-scale projects to individual design projects as small as the building, the room, and the object. Large scale projects include: regional plans, city plans, urban design; campus design; and hospital and healthcare facility master plans, Architectural projects include: hospitals and medical office buildings; wineries, restaurants, retail stores, and food-service facilities; residences; and “one-of-a-kind” projects – Center for Extreme Ultra-violet Astrophysics at U.C. Berkeley or C-141 Flight Simulator, Travis Air Force Base, Fairfield, California. Industrial design projects include:furniture design; interior design for the British Air Concorde; and surgical equipment – Arthroscopy stand surgical support equipment. Graphic design projects include: corporate identity graphics for Nissan Motor Corporation of America; graphic marks and logotypes; and typefaces. Joseph is a member of the American Institute of Architects and is registered to practice architecture in Oregon and California. He is also certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. He is a LEED accredited professional. Projects that Joseph has completed have won numerous awards including: New Columbia, HOPE VI, Portland, Oregon: ACEC Engineering Excellence, 2006; Northwest Construction Magazine - Best Urban Planning, 2006; National Association of Home Builders - Best in American Living Awards for Best Smart Growth Neighborhood, Gold Award, 2006; Portland Chapter AIA, Mayor’s Award for Excellence, 2007; U.S EPA Award for Smart Growth Achievement, 2007; and Learning by Design, Grand Prize for Design Excellence, 2007 PDC Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design, Portland, Oregon: AIA/ COTE Award with special recognition, 2005; EDRA Places Award, 2005; ASLA Honor Award for analysis and planning, 2005; and AIA Honor Award 2006 2900 Medical Office Building, Redwood City, California, San Mateo Chapter AIA Award for design, 1995 Children’s Inpatient Psychiatric Hospital, Camarillo State Hospital, Camarillo, California, AIA Award for design, 1990 West County Justice Center, Point Richmond, California, AIA Award for design, 1987 Joseph contributes to his community through service on several panels including: Rose Quarter Stakeholder Advisor Committee, 2009 – 2010 Local host committee for the Project for Transportation Reform 2009 Summit, Portland, Oregon, 2009 Metro Regional Transportation Task Force, 2008 AIA Urban Design Panel 2005 – present (chair 2009) MTAC Metro Technical Advisory Group 2005 – present Joseph is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture, Portland State University where he introduced a graduate-level seminar on Urban Design Methods in 2008. Joseph is a graduate of Washington State University where he studied architecture and regional planning.
Kasim Reed, Mayor of Atlanta
Mayor Kasim Reed was inaugurated as Atlanta’s 59th Mayor on January 4, 2010. He won the election on a platform that includes improving public safety, creating new opportunity for the city’s youth, ensuring fiscal responsibility and providing greater customer service to residents. Mayor Reed was raised in the Cascade community of Atlanta. He was educated in Fulton County's public schools, where he graduated from Utoy Springs Elementary School and Westwood High School (now Westlake High School) and went to Howard University, where he received his undergraduate and law degrees. With 11 years in the Georgia State Legislature, Reed has a well-established track record of legislative excellence. He was first elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 1998 as State Representative for District 52. In the House, Kasim Reed served two terms as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Education Committee and Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Committee. Kasim Reed continued his successful leadership in the State Senate, where he served from 2002-2009. While there, Reed served as the Vice Chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus and was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Higher Education Committee, Ethics Committee, Transportation Committee, and the State and Local Government Operations Committee. Mayor Reed is a former partner at Holland and Knight LLP, an international law firm with offices in Atlanta. In addition to his professional pursuits, Mayor Reed has demonstrated a remarkable commitment to bettering his community at every stage in his life. As an undergraduate member of Howard University's Board of Trustees, he created a fundraising program entitled the "Independence Initiative," which The New York Times reported helped higher education "stand up to adversity." Since its inception, this initiative has contributed more than $10 million to Howard University's endowment. In June 2002, Kasim Reed was appointed as Howard University's youngest General Trustee. Reed served as campaign manager for former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin's first and second campaigns. Following her election in November 2001, Mayor Franklin selected Reed to serve as one of two Co-Chairs for her transition team. In this capacity, Mayor Reed chaired the search committee for selecting Mayor Franklin's senior cabinet-level staff. Mayor Reed's civic leadership and service has been nationally recognized in publications such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Ebony and Black Enterprise. He was selected as one of Georgia Trend magazine's "40 under 40 Rising Stars" in 2001, as one of the Fulton County Daily Report's "Lawyers on the Rise" and as one of "10 Outstanding Atlantans" in Outstanding Atlanta. Kasim Reed is a member of the Leadership Georgia Class of 2000 and a General Trustee of Howard University and Board Member of the National Black Arts Festival and Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund.
Robert Reed, Sustainable Communities Design Director , Southface (Moderator; EarthCraft Communities)
Max Reim, Principal and Co-Managing Partner, Live Work Learn Play LLP
Max Reim is the Co-Founder and Principal of Live Work Learn Play LLP, a cutting edge group of developers, consultants and deal-making specialists in envisioning, planning, developing, “work outs” and Targeted Leasing and Casting TLCtm of large-scale commercial mixed-use legacy projects. Max specializes in the creation of urban villages and waterfront redevelopments, as well as the revitalization of cities and downtowns, along with the development or redevelopment of college towns & university districts, resort towns, and large-scale mixed-use New & Old Urbanist projects. Max has developed, revitalized or “worked out” over 100-large-scale projects in seven different countries where there are currently over ninety million people living, working, learning or playing annually. Currently, Max is working on four university towns or college districts, several waterfront redevelopments, two citywide revitalizations, and many other large scale urban and resort mixed-use “work outs” and development projects across North America. Max was also a former World Vice President of Intrawest Corporation, where he led the commercial planning, portions of the development and management of mixed-use resort villages and recreationally based towns throughout North America and Europe, such as Whistler Creekside British Columbia, Mont Tremblant Quebec, Mammoth California, Lake Las Vegas Nevada, and Sandestin Florida. Over the past 25-years, Max has built and operated hundreds of restaurants, lounges and hotels with his family or colleagues, as well as being an integral leader in acquiring, developing, financing, programming, leasing and managing over $2 Billion dollars of mixed-use assets. Max has been a regular guest speaker for the Congress of New Urbanism, The Seaside Institute, Urban Land Institute, several University Business, Architecture and Urban Planning schools, SCUP and many public and private organizations. Max’s life mission is simply to “Create Enduring Community Vitality and Help to Improve the Quality of People’s Lives.”
Milt Rhodes, Director, New Urban Water Works
Milt Rhodes is the Director of the Office of Planning and Environmental Sustainability for the Town of Bluffton, in Bluffton, SC. He is a planner and an urbanist. Milt previously worked as Planning Director for the NC Smart Growth Alliance, was a Project Director for the town planning firm, Dover, Kohl & Partners, and started New Urban Water Works, a Raleigh, North Carolina firm that specializes in integrating sound rainwater best-management practices with the demands of good urban placemaking and sustainable urbanism. Milt has degrees in Geology, Urban Planning and Architecture and was a 2002 Knight Fellow in Community Building at the University of Miami. Milt Rhodes, AICP Director, Office of Planning and Environmental Sustainability Department of Growth Management 843.706.4529 - Office 843.540.2183 - Mobile 843.706.4515 - Fax
Jaquelin T. Robertson, FAIA. FAICP, Founding Partner, Cooper Robertson & Partners
Jaque Robertson, former Dean of The School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, has led the firm's design work on many award-winning architectural and planning projects. These include new communities at Daniel Island, South Carolina; New Albany, Ohio; Celebration and WaterColor, Florida; and Val d’Europe, France; a waterfront park, county courthouse, and the Visitor Reception and Transportation Center in Charleston, South Carolina; the Henry Moore Sculpture Garden in Kansas City; the Institute for the Arts & Humanities at the University of North Carolina; and Sony’s Imageworks offices in Culver City, California. He also prepared master plans for Monticello, Virginia and the Battlefield Museum and Visitor Center at Gettysburg and has designed many award-winning private houses. Architectural Digest magazine has named him one of "The AD 100," Architectural Digest magazine’s select list of the top 100 architects and interior designers whose work has been featured in Architectural Digest over the past several years. Mr. Robertson was a founder of the New York City Urban Design Group, the first Director of the Mayor's Office of Midtown Planning and Development, and a City Planning Commissioner. In 1975, he spent three years in Iran, directing the planning and design of the country’s new capitol center Shahestan Pahlavi. Throughout his career he has lectured widely and taught at many respected institutions including Yale. He received the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture in 1998, the Seaside Institute Prize in 2002, and the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture in 2007. The "Jaquelin T. Robertson Visiting Professorship in Architecture," an Endowed Professorship at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, is named in his honor. Mr. Robertson holds a Bachelor of Arts (1954) and a Master of Architecture (1961) degree from Yale University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.
AJ Robinson, President, Central Atlanta Progress/Atlanta Downtown Improvement District
Ken Rose, Associate Director of Policy, CDC
Ken Rose currently serves as the Associate Director of Policy for CDC’s environmental public health programs. At CDC, he is responsible for coordinating environmental public health policy, including Congressional relations, performance measurement, and strategic engagements. Mr. Rose joined CDC in 1997 as a Presidential Management Fellow and has worked at all levels in the organization. Until 2003, he was a lead public health analyst for the agency’s youth HIV prevention program. Before accepting his current position, he served as the CDC Acting Deputy Chief of Staff and as a senior policy analyst focused on avian flu. He holds a Masters in Public Administration degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), and a Bachelor of Arts degree in international trade from Auburn University. While attending UAB on a Housing and Urban Development Fellowship, Mr. Rose worked as the special assistant for the Director of Planning for the City of Birmingham and received the Outstanding Graduate Student Award in the UAB Department of Government. Before joining CDC, he worked as the Associate Vice President for Planning at the United Way of Central Alabama. While at United Way, he organized the Central Alabama Task Force for Self Sufficiency, a community wide planning effort to prepare the City of Birmingham for the implementation of welfare reform – the effort eventually grew to become a key support system for mothers entering the workforce for the first time. Mr. Rose lives in the city of Atlanta and has served many community leadership positions, including positions with the East Atlanta Community Association, Neighborhood Planning Unit-W, the Atlanta Planning Advisory Board, and Southstar Community Development Corporation. He is a member of Martha Brown United Methodist Church, and volunteers as a soccer coach in the Atlanta Youth Soccer Association.
Catherine Ross, Ph.D, Director, Center for Quality Growth & Regional Development and ULI Fellow, Georgia Tech
Dr. Catherine Ross is an internationally recognized expert on transportation and urban planning solutions for megaregions and has extensive experience in both the public and private sector. She is the director of Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development (CQGRD) and the Harry West Professor. She also serves as vice president of Euquant, Inc. an Atlanta-based economic and planning consulting firm. In July 2009, she was selected to advise the Obama Administration on the first-ever White House Office of Urban Affairs, led by Adolfo Carrion. She is the editor of MegaRegions: Planning for Global Competitiveness (Island Press, 2009) and the co-author of The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next Century (1997). For 20 years, Dr. Ross has conducted research on transportation and urban planning and how to make cities, neighborhoods and regions safer, healthier places for all to live. She has authored more than 300 reports, articles, books and monographs. Her research provides solutions to numerous problems including global warming, affordable housing, traffic congestion, keeping local jobs in a global economy, air quality and childhood obesity. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy-China, the Federal Transit Administration and many city, state and local governments throughout the country. Dr. Ross served as the first Executive Director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), an innovative regional state agency created by the Georgia Legislature in 1999 to help 13 counties out-of-compliance with clean air standards develop new transportation plans and initiatives to help them meet or exceed federal requirements. She was recently made a member of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). Dr. Ross is an Urban Land Institute Fellow and a National Science Foundation Advance Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been widely recognized for the quality of her work and was the recipient of the “Find the Good and Praise It Award” presented in 1998 by Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater for her work on the National Personal Transportation Survey Team. Dr. Ross served on the Executive Committee of the National Academy of Science, Transportation Research Board and on the board of the Eno Foundation and the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). She served as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences and has held several other national leadership positions including President of the National Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). Dr. Ross is also a member of the AAA Auto Club South Board of Directors. Dr. Ross was owner of Catherine Ross & Associates for 25 years and has held a number of leadership positions at Georgia Tech, including vice provost for academic affairs, associate vice president for academic affairs, co-director of the Transportation Research and Education Center, and director of the College of Architecture 's doctoral program. She started as an assistant professor in the Graduate Planning Program in 1976, became an associate professor in 1984, and a full professor in 1990. Ross earned a bachelor's degree from Kent State University in 1971, followed by a master's degree in regional planning from Cornell University in 1973. She earned her doctorate in city and regional planning from Cornell in 1979 and did post-doctorate work at the University of California, Berkeley. She speaks regularly to conferences around the world from Beijing to New York. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia in the U.S.A.
Harrison Rue, Principal, ICF International
Harrison Rue is a Principal with ICF International, with expertise in sustainability & climate change, integrating transportation & land use, green building & infrastructure, and public participation. As Executive Director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, he worked with interagency partners to develop sustainable solutions to regional issues. As Founding Director of the Citizen Planner Institute, he led hundreds of workshops on sustainability and New Urbanism throughout the US. Rue was VP of the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, served three terms on EPA’s National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology, was on the Virginia Governor’s Commission on Climate Change, and is a Founding Board Member of EarthCraft Virginia. Rue authored EPA’s Growing Smarter, Living Healthier: A Guide to Smart Growth and Active Aging, is leading interagency outreach for FHWA’s Gulf Coast Phase 2 Climate Adaptation Study, and is developing FHWA/FTA’s Livability in Transportation and Environmental Justice Guidebooks.
Candace Rutt, Health Psychologist, CDC
Dr. Candace Rutt received her doctorate in applied health psychology at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2003. Since finishing her doctorate she has been working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focusing on built environment and Health Impact Assessment (HIA) research. She has been involved in numerous HIAs ranging from walk to school programs, farmers markets, urban redevelopment projects, and natural resource development projects.
Steven Ryherd, Principal, Arpeggio Acoustic Consulting, LLC
Mr. Ryherd has a passion for acoustics relating to the built environment and community noise. As a principal at Arpeggio, his consulting focuses on noise control and architectural acoustics in the building industry with a broad background in building systems engineering. Mr. Ryherd holds a Master’s degree in Applied Acoustics from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and a Master’s degree in Architectural Engineering from the University of Nebraska. Mr. Ryherd is a LEED accredited professional (LEED AP) and a member of the Acoustical Society of America with involvement in the technical committees on architectural acoustics and noise.
Bill Sadler, Graduate student in Master of Urban & Regional Planning, University of Colorado Denver
William Sadler is a spring 2010 graduate of the Master of Urban & Regional Planning (M.U.R.P.) program at the University of Colorado Denver, where he concentrated his coursework and research on the health impacts of street design and land use regulations. For the past year-and-a-half, William has also been an intern with the Community Planning and Development office at the City and County of Denver, where he has been working on the Living Streets Initiative, Denver’s effort to implement a complete streets policy that also addresses adjacent land uses and building design to create more vibrant and engaging multimodal transportation corridors. William holds a law degree (J.D.) from the University of Minnesota Law School and a bachelor of arts (B.A.), summa cum laude, in economics from Boston College.
Edward Schock, Mayor, City of Elgin
Edward Schock has served on the City Council since 1993, and as mayor since 1999. Mayor Schock is a former U-46 teacher and school administrator who retired in 2003 after 33 years of service. Mayor Schock earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Bradley University and a Master of Arts from Roosevelt University.
Sam Schwartz, President and CEO, Sam Schwartz Engineering
Samuel I. Schwartz is President and CEO of Sam Schwartz Engineering (SSE), a multi-disciplinary consulting firm specializing in traffic and transportation engineering. Prior to starting the firm in 1995, Mr. Schwartz was Sr. VP responsible for transportation engineering, infrastructure, and planning at Hayden|Wegman Consulting Engineers, Inc. from 1990 to 1995. He served as Chief Engineer/First Deputy Commissioner for the NYC Department of Transportation from 1986 to 1990, where he was responsible a $350 million expense budget, and a $700 million capital budget. He also served a term as New York City’s Traffic Commissioner from 1982 to 1986. He was also a professor of engineering at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art from 1990-2003. He coined the term “gridlock” and is widely respected for his congestion relief strategies. He pens three newspaper columns on traffic and contributes to books on transportation.
Francis Scire, Senior Leasing Executive, Simon Property Group
A 1988 graduate of Providence College with a degree in Business Administration, Francis Scire has over 20 years of successful entrepreneurial business experience, with a comprehensive knowledge of operations management, financial and auditing services, sales, negotiating, leasing and marketing. Mr. Scire has extensive experience working with a spectrum of retail tenants including national and regional, restaurant, independents, start-up and guerrilla retail. During his career, Francis has specialized in the retail and residential real estate development industry. From 2002 until 2006, Francis worked on the award winning New Urbanist project, Mashpee Commons as well as the revitalization of the city core of downtown Providence. He has spent the past 4 years as a Senior Leasing Representative for Simon Property Group. Francis is based in Simon’s New England office and is responsible for the leasing and asset management of four traditional shopping centers totaling over three million square feet. In addition to retail leasing work, in September 2000, Francis co-founded and directed the Alternative Exhibit Space, Studio Soto in Boston; and in 2002 he co-founded and directed the not for profit cooperative art gallery THE SPACE AT ALICE, located in Downcity Providence.
Beverly Scott, General Manager/CEO, MARTA
Greg Searle, Respondent, Bioregional North America, One Planet Communities
Greg is responsible for building partnerships to create One Planet Communities in Canada and the United States. Greg is an experienced international consultant, facilitator, and entrepreneur, and an expert on sustainable lifestyles. He is the lead author of the Green Living Manifesto. Greg has lead teams in developing Sustainability Action Plans and Green Lifestyle programs, setting the most ambitious targets for green communities yet seen in North America. Greg lived at the BedZED eco-neighborhood in London, UK while studying the long-term impacts of the sustainable lifestyles program that operated there. He applied this learning in helping create an "eco-lifestyle" reality TV show, Wa$ted, now in its second season on Discovery's Planet Green channel. He managed an on-location team that provided ecological footprint reduction science and tactics that helped 10 over-consuming American families achieve as much as a 30% reduction in their ecological footprints. Greg has provided presentations and keynote speeches at over 50 conferences around the world, on subjects including lessons learned from building and operating the BedZED urban eco-village, fostering sustainable lifestyles, green building, and the remarkable findings of ecological footprint analysis as a development planning tool. HisGreenBuild 2006 presentation in Denver, Colorado was rated by 98% of attendees as Excellent (68%) or Above Average (30%). He has been a guest lecturer on sustainability at Ryerson University (Toronto) and Texas A&M University. Greg has been invited to address such prestigious bodies as the US Senate sub-committee on Knowledge Management (2004), and the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) Quadrennial Congress in Amman, Jordan (2001). (See speaking enagements) Greg previously served as a consultant to the United Nations (FAO - Rome), the World Conservation Union (IUCN - Brussels), the International Development Research Centre, and Industry Canada. As an entrepreneur, Greg co-founded Tomoye Corporation in 1999, a leading, award-winning knowledge management software company, serving as Chief Technology Officer until 2005. Greg invented Tomoye's enterprise software, and continues to serve Tomoye as an owner and Director. Greg graduated with distinction in Political Science at the University of Guelph, with a specialization in Rural Extension Studies and International Development. He has lived in London, Rome, and Boston, and consulted extensively in Brussels and Washington D.C. He currently lives 20 minutes northwest of Ottawa in one of Canada's greenest municipalities, Chelsea, Quebec, on the banks of the beautiful Gatineau River in a log cabin that he is eco-retrofitting.
Steven Semes, Academic Director of the Rome Studies Program, University of Notre Dame School of Architecture
Steven W. Semes is Academic Director of the Rome Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. He is the author of The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and Historic Preservation (2009), The Architecture of the Classical Interior (2004) and, as a contributor, Classical Architecture: A Handbook to the Tradition (in preparation) and The Elements of Classical Architecture (2001), all published by W. W. Norton & Co. His many articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Traditional Building, Period Homes, American Arts Quarterly, and the National Trust Forum Journal. He also publishes a blog, “The View from Rome,” at http://traditional-building.com/Steve_Semes, and his own website may be visited at www.thefutureofthepast.net. He was educated at the University of Virginia and Columbia University and currently resides in Rome.
Rebecca Serna, Executive Director, Atlanta Bicycle Coalition
Rebecca Serna is the Executive Director of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to improving conditions for bicycling in metro Atlanta. Rebecca has an M.S. in Urban Policy Studies from Georgia State University, and spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Bogotá, Colombia studying transportation innovations. Rebecca is a daily bike commuter whose family recently went car-free -- she and her husband blog about the experience at carfreeatlantafamily.wordpress.com.
Pam Sessions , Founder, Hedgewood Properties
Pam Sessions has worked in residential and mixed-use construction for twenty-five years. She is the Founder and Co-owner of Hedgewood Properties, Inc., and Hedgewood Realty. These companies designed, developed, built and sold mixed use neighborhoods that include Vickery, Woodstock Downtown, Manget in Marietta and Seven Norcross as well as homes in Glenwood Park and Serenbe to mention a few. Pam received her BFA from the University of Georgia. She is a past president of the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association. Pam is on the board, and past chair, of Southface Energy Institute, the Chair of ANDP, (Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership), on the executive committee and board of LCC, (Livable Communities Coalition), serves as one of the three governor’s appointees on the Transit Planning Board, (TPB), and the subsequent Transit Implementation Board (TIP). She also serves on the Advisory Council and Environmental Committee of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Pam also serves as a paid board member of the civil engineering firm Jordan Jones & Goulding, Inc. Pam served as the founding chairperson of the Greater Atlanta Home Builder’s Earth Craft House Program, a “green” building initiative. Earth Craft House is a blueprint for healthy, comfortable, affordable homes that reduces energy and water bills, improves indoor air quality and protects the environment. Pam and Hedgewood have received numerous awards including their recognition by Professional Builder Magazine as the “2003 National Builder of the Year” and the Argon Award presented by Southface Energy Institute and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce for their commitment to environmental business strategies and practices. Pam and her husband Don Donnelly are parents to a teenage son and daughter.
Samuel Sherman, Partner , Sam Sherman Assoc. LLC; New Urban Ventures LLC
Sam Sherman has worked in the residential construction industry for 26 years and has supervised and managed the construction of more than 1100 homes in the suburban counties of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. He has worked for medium size regional home builders as well as larger national home builders such as Ryland Homes. In January 2003, Sam left the suburban housing industry and started his own firm, Sam Sherman Associates LLC, to pursue development opportunities in the City of Philadelphia. He was also a partner in the firm New Urban Ventures. Sam is a proponent of New Urbanist planning and development techniques and develops projects that aid in rebuilding urban neighborhoods that have suffered from fifty years of disinvestment and population loss. New Urban Ventures is currently working on an urban infill, neighborhood master plan in the area of 10th & Green St. that incorporates New Urbanist design principles. Construction of Phase I, consisting of 53 townhomes, 6 live/work units including 6000 sq. ft. of retail space; is now under way. The project, named Spring Arts Point, is certified by the Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance as a smart growth community and recently received the Bronze Award from 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania that recognizes excellence in design and sustainability. In 2006, Sam partnered with The Hankin Group to begin development of one and one half acres of vacant land on the north side of Center City Philadelphia. The project in now in the planning stages and will contain 96 residential units. He served as President of the Building Industry Association (BIA) of Philadelphia from 2008-2009 and acts as a representative on the Pennsylvania Builder’s Association Government Affairs Committee as an advocate for Philadelphia. He also serves as a national legislative representative for BIA to the National Association of Home Builders; lobbying for policies that are of benefit to our urban centers. Sam was also a board member of Neighborhoods Now! While serving on the board, the organization help write Philadelphia’s Transit Oriented Development ordinance which was passed by City Council in November of 2009. He is a board member of The Congress for the New Urbanism and co-chaired the local CNU host committee for CNU XV held in Philadelphia in 2007. In 2008, Mayor Michael Nutter appointed Sam to the chairmanship of the Philadelphia Historical Commission.
Doug Shoemaker, Mayor's Office of Housing, City and County of San Francisco
Terry Shook, Founding Partner and Principal, Shook Kelley Architects
Terry Shook, FAIA, is a founding partner and principal of Shook Kelley, a Perception Design firm specializing in strategic consulting services, including branding, architecture, and communication design. Clients past and present of the firm are broad in scope, including such cultural stalwarts as varied as Kraft, Whole Foods, Colonial Williamsburg, and Harley-Davidson, as well as a range of corporate development entities. Mr. Shook leads a planning and design group, with an emphasis on urban retail design and main street development, and the creation of new communities in both the suburbs and within urban cores. As one of the nation's top experts in district branding, he has been recognized as being a vanguard in the movement to return meaning to the urban environment. Mr. Shook is an annual lecturer in the Professional Development Program at Harvard University, and speaks regularly for the Urban Land Institute and other organizations on topics relating to urban design.
Daniel K. Slone, Esquire, Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
As a consultant and legal counsel, Dan represents developers, design professionals, green businesses and localities around the world, advising them on traditional neighborhood development, conservation development, eco-industrial projects, distributed generation, financing, green product development and business matters. He assists developers of sustainable new towns and innovative utility projects. He also represents localities developing innovative regulatory approaches. He represents professionals providing “green” services and the developers and manufacturers of innovative products. Dan has been counsel for the U.S. Green Building Council (developers of the LEED® green building rating system) since the turn of the century and for the Congress for the New Urbanism since it began. Among his other public interest clients are the Seaside Institute and the World Green Building Council. He serves on the boards of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, the National Charrette Institute, the Form Based Codes Institute and the Inger and Walter Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences. Dan has worked for two decades on Traditional Neighborhood Development projects in most regions of the country. Having worked on smaller infill, as well as large-scale projects with thousands of homes and several million square feet of commercial space, he represents both developers and localities. For developers, he helps obtain environmental and land use entitlements, drafts code provisions to propose to the governing locality, drafts the community code imposed through the covenants and restrictions, drafts homeowner association documents, and performs other tasks. Dan’s team has developed green real estate documents as well as green homeowner association documents. For localities, he helps identify code provisions that interfere with New Urban or sustainable projects, and crafts codes that encourage or require New Urban or more sustainable developments with practical flexibility for the development community. Dan has been the legal team leader for the land use and entitlement process for several new towns widely recognized as part of the cutting edge for the application of New Urban and green development principles. He has worked for the Department of Energy and FEMA in relocating flooded towns in the Midwest; worked with the State of Mississippi on Katrina recovery; and assisted in various aspects of the development or permitting of other new communities in California, Iowa, Virginia, Florida, Arizona, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut and other states. He speaks nationally on removing or overcoming legal impediments to innovative and responsible development, as well as implementing the Smart Code and other form-based code approaches. Dan’s team also helps green manufacturers determine what they can say about their products and help large-scale land owners monetize environmental attributes of their properties such as carbon credits and stream restoration credits. Dan’s law degree is from the University of Michigan, and he has degrees in Philosophy and Political Science from Birmingham-Southern College. In the summer of 2008 Dan and co-author Doris Goldstein co-wrote A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Planners, Developers and Architects, published by John Wiley & Sons which is available through on-line book sellers. In 2007 ULI published Developing Sustainable Planned Communities which includes Dan’s chapter on “Maintaining Sustainability.”
Eleanor Smith, Director, Concrete Change
Eleanor Smith is the founder and central organizer of Concrete Change, an Atlanta-based grassroots group working to increase housing justice and integration through widespread change in home design. In 1986, she defined and began advocating nationally for a basic, universal level of home access, for which she adopted the term "Visitability." In former years, she worked for twenty-five years as a teacher and counselor. She has used a wheelchair since age three. 1989, she began working full time as a disability/housing rights activist, helping advocates across the country with Visitability initiatives in their locales and challenging individuals, institutions, and organizations who make designs, build houses and create policy. In 1997, she received a HUD national Best Practices award for bringing Visitability principles and practice into HUD programs. She served as co-chair of the CNU Visitability/Accessibility Task force, formed in 2006.
Heather Smith, Planning Director, Congress for the New Urbanism
Heather is an urban planner responsible for supporting the CNU member Initiatives and planning the annual Congress program. She joined CNU in January 2005. Before joining CNU, she coordinated the Metropolis Plan activities for Chicago Metropolis 2020, a regional planning organization. Prior to working in Chicago she received an American Planning fellowship to advance sustainable development and planning issues in the United States Senate. Heather holds a masters degree in urban planning and previously worked for the New York City Department of City Planning. Heather enjoys biking to work, sailing, swimming, and kayaking in her free time.
John Robert Smith, President and CEO, Reconnecting America
Lee Sobel, Real Estate Development and Finance Analyst, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation
Lee Sobel is the Real Estate Development and Finance Analyst in the US EPA’s Development, Community & Environment Division (the Smart Growth program). Mr. Sobel’s work focuses technical assistance, outreach and education, and research and policy, related to real estate development that achieves smart growth goals and outcomes. Prior to joining the EPA, Mr. Sobel was a Senior Associate in the Miami office of CB Richard Ellis’ Investment Property Group, selling shopping centers and retail property throughout Florida. Mr. Sobel has been an active commercial real estate and mortgage broker in Florida for over eight years. Mr. Sobel is the author of Greyfields Into Goldfields; Dead Malls Become Living Neighborhoods, and co-author of This Is Smart Growth and Getting To Smart Growth II. He has a law degree from Thomas M. Cooley Law School, and is a resident of Maryland. Mr. Sobel can be contacted at 202.566.2851 and sobel.lee@epa.gov.
Dan Solomon, Principal, WRT Solomon E.T.C.
Daniel Solomon is an architect and urban designer whose 35-year career combines achievements in professional practice with academic pursuits of teaching and writing. His projects have been published in architectural journals worldwide and have been recognized with more than eighty awards. The main focus of his work has been residential architecture and the interaction between housing and urban design. From this base his work has expanded in several directions including large-scale urban planning, regulatory structures that govern urban design and residential, commercial and institutional architecture. He is the author of many articles and three books: ReBuilding , Global City Blues and Cosmopolis. Daniel Solomon's commitment to urban repair and the construction and reconstruction of urban neighborhoods extends beyond his project work; he was one of the co-founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, an organization whose principles have helped shape the contemporary practice of community design.
Sandy Sorlien, Director of Technical Research, Center for Applied Transect Studies
Sandy Sorlien is the Director of Technical Research at the Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS), a think tank that promotes understanding of the built environment as part of the natural environment, through the planning methodology of the rural-to-urban Transect. CATS supports interdisciplinary research, publication, tools, and training for the design, coding, building and documentation of resilient transect-based communities. Since 2004 Sandy has been the managing editor of the model SmartCode, which won a Charter Award last year, and has edited the transect-based Modules since 2007. As a photographer of urbanism, she is working on a book about Schuylkill River Towns, including her home town of Philadelphia.
Rob Spanier, Vice President, Live Work Learn Play LLP
Rob Spanier is the Vice President of LiveWorkLearnPlay, a cutting edge international mixed-use development, leasing and advisory firm with offices in Austin, Montreal and Toronto. With over 75 years of combined experience, LiveWorkLearnPlay focuses on large-scale mixed-use real estate projects, working with private developers, municipalities, landowners, college/universities, Public-Private Partnerships and financial institutions in bringing their projects to life. Rob has over a decade of international hands-on experience in large-scale mixed-use project deal making, having helped develop over 30 projects in North America, Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean. During his 5-year tenure as a senior executive with Intrawest Corporation, Rob was instrumental in helping to create world class mixed-use destination resort towns; heading their international leasing team to complete over 300 mixed-use non-traditional retail, restaurant, entertainment, hospitality and service-based deals. As the Vice Chair for mission Advancement, Rob sits on the Board of Directors of The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Toronto District Council. Rob is also actively involved with The Seaside Institute, The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) and the National Town Builders Association (NTBA). Rob is a regular guest speaker throughout North America through his various affiliations and other commitments. Rob is passionate about life and helping to provide places where people can connect to people, and to their environments; creating places where memories are born and will last forever.
Jeff B. Speck, CNU-A, AICP LEED-AP, SPECK & ASSOCIATES LLC
Jeff Speck is a city planner and urban designer who, through writing, lectures, and built work, advocates internationally for smart growth and sustainable design. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he directed the Mayors' Institute on City Design and created the Governors' Institute on Community Design. Prior to joining the Endowment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co. He is the co-author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream as well as The Smart Growth Manual.
Peg Staeheli, President and Principal, SvR Design Company
BIO: Peg Staeheli, ASLA, LEED® AP, is president of SvR Design Company, a landscape architecture and civil engineering firm specializing in integrated and environmentally responsible design. SvR’s areas of practice include green infrastructure, complete streets, civic buildings, mixed-use development, housing, parks, and restoration. She works with public and private clients on planning, selecting, and funding capital improvement projects and development. Peg is a registered landscape architect with 31 years of experience; she holds a degree in landscape architecture from Washington State University. Peg has presented on sustainable approaches encouraging a shift in our industry at various venues including APWA, Stormcon, the National Low Impact Development Conferences, and the Society for Ecological Restoration.
Frank Starkey, President, Longleaf Development Co.
Frank Starkey Bio for CNU 18 202 Session E: Resuscitate, Reposition and Regenerate – Development Strategies to Survive the Recession Frank co-founded Longleaf, a 568-acre, TND 25 miles Northwest of Tampa. Construction began in 1998 and the project is half complete, with over 400 homes, 50,000 square feet of commercial space, a preschool, elementary school and a church. Frank has been intimately involved with many aspects of development: planning, entitlement, Code writing and implementation, builder program, engineering, permitting, construction, product development, marketing, Development District, Restrictive Covenants, Homeowners Association, Architectural Review, and dealing with angry residents. From 2005 until the market when to hell, Frank and his brother Trey planned and entitled a 2,500 acre Development of Regional Impact on their family’s ranch land adjacent to Longleaf. The Starkey Ranch plan calls 4300 homes and 750,000 square feet of commercial in beautiful compact neighborhoods on half the site; the remainder to be preserved as Wilderness. His recent focus has been on managing and repositioning Downtown Longleaf to survive and thrive through The Great Recession and into The Long Emergency, The New Normal, or whatever comes next. One of many new skills he has learned is how to run a coffeehouse. Frank holds undergraduate and professional architecture degrees from Rice University, is chair of The Seaside Institute, and President of National Town Builders Association.
Edward Steinfeld, Professor of Architecture and Director, Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access, Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access, School of Architecture and Planning, SUNY/Buffalo
Dr. Steinfeld is a registered architect and design researcher with special interests in universal design, accessibility and design for the lifespan. At SUNY/Buffalo, he is a Professor of Architecture and Director of the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access. He also directs the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Universal Design and the Built Environment which is housed at the IDEA Center. Dr. Steinfeld has published extensively and received many awards for his research and design work, including a Distinguished Professor Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture for 2003. His current work includes leading the development of a Pattern Book on Inclusive Design of Urban Housing. The need for this book emerged through several years of dialogue between disability rights advocates and the CNU community.
Nancy Stoner, USEPA Office of Water and Watersheds
Galina Tachieva, Partner, Duany Plater-Zyberk
Galina Tachieva is an expert on urban redevelopment, sprawl retrofit, sustainable planning and form-based codes. As a partner at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Architects and Town Planners (DPZ), Tachieva directs and manages the design and implementation of projects in the United States and around the world. She is currently working on a forthcoming book, the Sprawl Repair Manual, to be published in the summer of 2010 by Island Press. She is the primary author of the Sprawl Repair Module, a special application to the SmartCode, which enables the transformation of sprawl types into community patterns. Galina is the leader of the CNU Sprawl Retrofit Initiative, a founding member of the Congress for European Urbanism, a board member of the New Urban Guild Foundation, and is certified by the US Green Building Council as a LEED-accredited professional.
Emily Talen, PhD AICP, Professor, , School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University
Emily Talen is a Professor in the School of Planning and the School of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University. She holds a Ph.D. in urban geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Ohio State University, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. A forthcoming book, The Design of Diversity (Architectural Press, 2008), explores the urban design requirements of socially diverse neighborhoods in Chicago.
David Taylor, Senior Vice President, HDR Inc.
Dhiru Thadani, AIA, Architect + Urbanist
Dhiru A. Thadani, AIA is an architect and urbanist. Since 1980 he has practiced architecture and urbanism in Asia, Europe and North and Central America. Dhiru was born in Bombay, India and moved to Washington, D.C. to attend the Catholic University of America from 1972-1978 where he received his undergraduate and graduate education in architecture. During his thirty-three years in Washington, D.C. he has taught, practiced, and has worked to place architecture and urbanism in the public eye. Since its formation in 1993, Dhiru has been a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), and was appointed to the Board in 2005. From 2000 to 2005, he served as Chair of the CNU's Design Task Force, and has undertaken and completed many initiatives. Dhiru has been involved in new developments, urban retrofits, neighborhood revitalization, and infill densification. His goal has been to create neighborhoods that are walkable, and contain a diverse range and balance of workplace and housing. In addition, these new developments support regional planning for open space, and architecture that is responsive to the culture, climate and context. For the past twenty years, Dhiru has been the lead designer for several real estate developments in first and third world countries. The developments range in scale from government-sponsored autonomous new towns for 500,000 inhabitants to smaller resort communities for 900 residents, as well as small-scale residential infill interventions in revitalizing neighborhoods. He is the author of The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary, to be published by Rizzoli in Fall 2010, and Co-editor of Léon Krier: The Architecture of Community, published in 2009 by Island Press.
Amanda Thompson, Planning Director, The City of Decatur
"Amanda Thompson is the Planning Director for the City of Decatur, Georgia. She oversees the planning, building, and inspection functions for the city as well as staffing several resident boards and commissions. In her five years with the city she has led the performance measurement program, implemented a mixed use zoning district, created an Environmental Sustainability Board and implemented two local historic districts. She was the project manager for the award winning Decatur Community Transportation Plan adopted in 2008, which is the first transportation plan in the nation to utilize a rapid Health Impact Assessment and the first plan in Georgia to measure bicycle and pedestrian levels of service. Amanda has presented the on the topics of alternative transportation, aging in place, and healthy communities at the Transportation Research Board, ProWalk ProBike, American Planning Association, and the International City County Management Association conferences. Amanda has a BA in International Relations from Agnes Scott College and a Masters in Public Administration from Georgia State University. She is actively involved in the International City/County Management Association as a member of Leadership ICMA class of 2010. Prior to her career in local government she was a dance instructor and performer. When she is not in Decatur, she can be seen on stage with Zoetic Dance Ensemble, a professional contemporary dance company based in Atlanta. Amanda Thompson is the Planning Director for the City of Decatur, Georgia. She oversees the planning, building, and inspection functions for the city as well as staffing several resident boards and commissions. In her five years with the city she has led the performance measurement program, implemented a mixed use zoning district, created an Environmental Sustainability Board and implemented two local historic districts. She was the project manager for the award winning Decatur Community Transportation Plan adopted in 2008, which is the first transportation plan in the nation to utilize a rapid Health Impact Assessment and the first plan in Georgia to measure bicycle and pedestrian levels of service. Amanda has presented the on the topics of alternative transportation, aging in place, and healthy communities at the Transportation Research Board, ProWalk ProBike, American Planning Association, and the International City County Management Association conferences. Amanda has a BA in International Relations from Agnes Scott College and a Masters in Public Administration from Georgia State University. She is actively involved in the International City/County Management Association as a member of Leadership ICMA class of 2010. Prior to her career in local government she was a dance instructor and performer. When she is not in Decatur, she can be seen on stage with Zoetic Dance Ensemble, a professional contemporary dance company based in Atlanta. "
Glen A. Tipton, FAIA, Principal, Brown Craig Turner Architects
Having recently relocated to BCT Architects, Glen formerly served for over 30 years as CSD Architect's Senior Living Studio Executive. In this role, he provided Executive Overview and Quality Assurance for all projects in CSD’s Senior Living Studio. He also served as Principal-In-Charge of numerous Continuing Care Retirement Communities, Assisted Living, Congregate Care, and Nursing Facilities. Mr. Tipton has spoken at a variety of conventions and seminars on the subject of design and development of retirement communities. Glen received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia and is a registered architect in twenty states and is NCARB certified. Mr. Tipton was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for his career long commitment to improve the quality of design for communities for older adults. He chaired for 4 years the AIA Design for Aging’s Knowledge Community. Glen has long been a pioneer in the creation of intergenerational community integrated facilities for older adults and is an active member of the Lifelong Community Consultant Team.
Macon Toledano, Vice President, LeylandAlliance LLC
Macon Toledano is Vice President of LeylandAlliance LLC
John Torti, President, Torti Gallas and Partners
As President of Torti Gallas and Partners, Mr. Torti has provided the strong conceptual leadership to bring his firm to international recognition. With offices in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Denver and Istanbul, Turkey, he and his partners have built a firm that understands the inextricable link between urban design, sustainability and architecture. A selected listing of Mr. Torti’s current projects includes: • Energy neutral community for 40,000 people in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi incorporating traditional urbanism, architecture, sustainability and cultural family values; • Waterfront community of 2,000 residences on the Marmara Sea in Istanbul, Turkey; • A new neighborhood for Camana Bay, Grand Cayman Islands; • New Town Center for Fort Belvoir, Virginia; • The Intermodal West Side Transit Study for Los Angeles’ Purple Line Metro, integrating Transit Centers with livable neighborhoods; • George Mason University Faculty and Staff Housing; • LEED Platinum Certified Neighborhood Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia; • Two-block, 4 building transit oriented, high density, mixed-use development at the Clarendon Metro Station in Arlington, Virginia with LEED Silver Certification.
Brian Traylor, AICP, ASLA, Senior Planner, South Florida Regional Planning Council
Brian Traylor, is a Senior Planner and Urban Designer with the South Florida Regional Planning Council, a regional planning and public policy agency and one of 11 regional councils in the state. The Council serves three counties: Monroe, Miami-Dade, and Broward; 71 municipalities; and over 4 million residents. Prior to joining the Council staff, Brian worked in the Design Studio at WilsonMiller, a multi-disciplinary engineering, planning and landscape architecture firm based in Southwest Florida. Brian’s work involved New Town planning and urban design including the development and presentation of several large-scale master plans throughout Florida. Currently Brian’s responsibilities with the Council include the administration of the State Road 7 Collaborative and the management of redevelopment implementation strategies through the planning and urban design services that the Council provides. The State Road 7 Collaborative is a unique partnership with a mission to promote the economic and aesthetic improvement of an underutilized corridor. Brian works with the membership, including each of the 16 local government jurisdictions that span the State Road 7/U.S. 441 corridor in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties to implement a strategic master plan for the corridor. Brian is also involved with the work that the Council has initiated relating to climate change and other issues of sustainability facing the Region, providing staff support with the Miami-Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force, and the Government Policy Technical Working Group of the Governor’s Action Team on Energy and Climate Change. He is currently serving on the Intergovernmental Affairs and Communications sub-committee of the Broward County Climate Change Task Force.
Matthew Trowbridge, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine and the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia
Matthew Trowbridge is a board-certified pediatrician and medical epidemiologist with joint appointments in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia (UVA). Dr. Trowbridge obtained both his medical and public health training at Emory University and completed an injury research fellowship at the University of Michigan. His primary research focus is the impact of architecture and urban planning on public health. Dr. Trowbridge recently completed research funded by the Department of Transportation that investigated the effect of urban sprawl on suburban emergency medical service response times. In addition, he is currently working as a program scientist at the National Institutes for Health to help develop and promote the use of evidence-based guidelines for the design and construction of healthy buildings, neighborhoods, and cities. Dr. Trowbridge serves on the Board of Directors for the Charlottesville Community Design Center (CCDC) and is a founding member of the UVA Built Environment and Health Research Group.
Bill Tunnell, President, Tunnell Spangler Walsh & Associates
WILLIAM T. TUNNELL Planner/Architect Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates Bill Tunnell is a partner in the Atlanta-based design firm of Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates (TSW). He has over 30 years of experience in planning and architecture. As principal-in-charge of TSW’s Planning Studio, Bill directs projects ranging from the planning of new towns and resorts to the detailed architectural design of individual residential and community buildings. His primary focus is the promotion of New Urbanism and Smart Growth practices in the firm’s work and in the Atlanta region. As a planner, Bill has designed mixed-use, resort, residential, commercial, and golf community projects in 13 states and in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He is currently directing the design of a new city in India. Bill’s firm, TSW, has designed a number of notable recent projects in Atlanta, including Glenwood Park, Downtown Woodstock, Vickery, and the expansion plan for Piedmont Park. They are currently working on the Beltline master plan and the redevelopment of City Hall East. Bill is a member of the Urban Land Institute, Congress for the New Urbanism, and ULI Atlanta District Council, where he was the founding Co-chair for the Smart Growth Committee. He and his wife, Karen, split there time between their Midtown condo and a house in western North Carolina. They have two children, Dylan (24) and Leila (20).
AJ Tusa, Owner and operator of major restaurants across the South East USA
Aj Tusa is the owner and operator of major restaurants across the South East USA.
Pere Vall Casas, PhD, Architect, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
Pere Vall-Casas, PhD. Architect. Doctor in Urban Design and Planning by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain (1997). From 2000 he works as Associate Professor and Director of the Center of Urban Design and Planning, in the School of Architecture of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. His research has been focused in cultural landscape and regional development. In 1997 he founded the Llobregat Colonies’ River Park, an initiative of territorial revaluation based on cultural heritage, which has received several awards. As a practitioner he has developed residential projects in Barcelona suburbs and he is the author of the Master Plan of Llobregat Colonies’ (2007). He has also published several papers on this topic. He is currently working on the study of the sprawl repair through heritage networks in collaboration with the School of Geographical Sciences of the Arizona State University.
Brett VanAkkeren, EPA, Smart Growth
Brett Van Akkeren is a senior staff member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Development Community and Environment Division. He has been working on a variety smart growth issues since 1997. In 2008 Brett spent six months with EPA’s Aging Initiative where he coordinated the 2008 Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging awards and helped develop Growing Smarter, Living Healthier: a Guide to Smart Growth and Active Aging. Currently, Brett is an EPA Liaison to the US Green Building Council’s LEED-Neighborhood Development program and is working on multi-agency initiatives covering Healthy Kids and Siting Federal Facilities. Prior to his work on smart growth, most of Brett’s work at EPA was garbage. He created a Municipal Solid Waste reuse and recycling program for the Government’s Climate Change Action Plan. Brett received and MBA from Stanford University and a BS from the University of Wisconsin.
Laurie Volk, Co-Managing Director, Zimmerman/Volk Associates Inc
Laurie Volk is principal in charge of Zimmerman/Volk Associates’ market studies and is the firm’s primary analyst of demographic, market, and lifestyle trends. Since 1988, the firm has completed more than 400 market studies, for properties ranging in size from the redevelopment of half a block to the establishment of a new town on several thousand acres. Volk has conducted more than 60 downtown studies across the country, in cities ranging in size from Petersburg, Virginia (population 29,000) to Detroit, Michigan (population 834,000). Volk currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Remaking Cities Institute, and is a member of the Location and Planning Technical Advisory Group of the USGBC. Volk also served for many years on the Board of Directors of the Seaside Institute, and was a founding Board Member, now emeritus, of the National Charrette Institute. Volk was a recipient of a 2002-2003 Knight Fellowship in Community Building, and is an instructor on market analysis for the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bob Voyles, Chairman, Perimeter Community Improvement District
Bob Voyles received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with Honors from the University of Virginia, a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Emory University and a Master of Laws in Land Development Planning from George Washington University. Bob founded Seven Oaks Company in 2004, a private real estate development and investment firm which currently manages over 1.9 million square feet of office mixed use projects in Atlanta. Bob has developed over 3 million SF of Class A award-winning, mixed-use and office-oriented development throughout Metro Atlanta. He has also developed land projects in Georgia, Tennessee and Florida totaling approximately 1,800 acres and nearly $1 billion in total development value. Prior to forming the Seven Oaks Company, Bob was the Senior Development Officer at the Hines Southeast Regional office. Bob was also a partner specializing in commercial real estate transactions and finance, and zoning and entitlements for Alston & Bird in Atlanta. He also served on the legal staff of the Secretary of the Air Force from 1977-1980. Bob holds numerous positions in local civic, community and charitable organizations: Chairman of the DeKalb Perimeter Community Improvement District; Land Use Committee Chair of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority; Construction Committee Chair for the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Stadium Authority; Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and Livable Communities Coalition.
Michael D. Watkins, AIA AICP LEED-AP CNU-A, Architect, Mike Watkins Architecture
After 19 years with Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Mr. Watkins enrolled last fall in the inaugural year of a new program being jointly offered by The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America (in NYC) and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The one-year program will lead to a Master's of Science in Architecture with a Concentration in Classical Design. Mr. Watkins served as Director of Town Planning for Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company. In 1988, Mr. Watkins opened the Washington, D.C. office of this Miami-based architecture and town planning firm. Since that time, he served as the Town Architect for Kentlands, a 352-acre neo-traditional neighborhood northwest of Washington, D.C. In Kentlands, Mr. Watkins was responsible for neighborhood design development, review of engineering drawings, and review of architectural designs submitted by builders for compliance with the Kentlands Design Code. He was also the project manager and town architect for numerous other neo-traditional neighborhoods. He has been a member of design teams for over seventy towns and neighborhoods in the United States and abroad. Mr. Watkins is one of the co-authors with Andres Duany of the SmartCode, a zoning ordinance that, once adopted, legalizes the development of traditional neighborhoods. The SmartCode has been very well received by many municipalities in the Gulf Coast region as they seek to rebuild themselves in the traditional pattern rather than in the pattern of suburban sprawl. In 2003 Mr. Watkins edited and produced The Guidebook to the Old and New Urbanism in the Baltimore / Washington Region.
Arthur M. Wendell, Healthy Community Design Initiative, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
LCDR Arthur M. Wendel, MD, MPH is a medical officer in the Healthy Community Design Initiative, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He is a board-certified physician in family medicine and preventive medicine, and he is a graduate of CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. He has worked in a variety of areas of public health, including disaster response, food-borne illness, and environmental health. He received his B.A. from Pomona College and his M.D. and M.P.H. from Tufts University. He completed his family practice training at the University of Washington and preventive medicine training at CDC. Dr. Wendel’s interests include building healthy communities and transportation systems.
Tom Weyandt, Atlanta Regional Commission
Charles Whatley, Director of Business Development, Atlanta Development Authority
Yvonne Williams , President, Perimeter Community Improvement District
* Yvonne Williams has an exceptional record of successes in building public/private partnerships to expand financial resources and implement projects that have produced positive changes for communities. A visionary with extensive knowledgeable about Georgia and economic development, she has a particular talent for grasping a project or issue and finding solutions. * During the past 25 years, as a chief executive, she has helped mold downtown revitalization, industrial development and comprehensive economic development strategy and advocacy in various capacities with the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, the Madison-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce, the Americus-Sumter County Chamber of Commerce, the Bristol Tennessee/Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. * Most recently, Williams has been the catalyst in forming business/government partnerships to leverage $500 million in the next five years in major transportation and infrastructure improvements in metro Atlanta’s important Perimeter area - one of the largest Class A office markets in the Southeastern United States. Williams was selected president of the newly formed DeKalb Perimeter Community Improvement District in 1999. She was appointed president of the joint DeKalb/Fulton PCIDs, which she helped organize, in 2001. * Through Williams’ leadership, this precedent-setting collaborative of the largest urban communities in Georgia is spearheading projects such as the following: o $20 million in intersection and streetscape improvements to improve traffic flow, pedestrian accessibility and attractiveness o $6.5 million in Livable Centers Initiative grants from the Atlanta Regional Commission to help create “smart growth” live, work and play centers o Advocated for the accelerated construction of a $35 million Perimeter Center Parkway Flyover Bridge over I-285 to provide alternative access to commuters, residents and shoppers o Championed a unique multi-agency partnership that will result in accelerating the Hammond Half-Diamond Project estimated at over $20 million at least 5 yrs ahead of schedule. RECENT APPOINTMENTS * Governor’s Commission on City of Dunwoody * Governor Perdue’s Congestion Mitigation Task Force * Regional Atlanta Civic League * Northside Hospital Foundation * Board member Georgia, Chamber of Commerce * Board member, Georgians for Better Transportation * DeKalb Police Alliance – Founding Board Member * Governor Perdue’s Sandy Springs Interim Government Commission * Congressman Tom Price’s Advisory Council Task Force for Transportation and Local Issues * Sandy Springs Comprehensive Planning Commission * Governor’s Commission on City of Sandy Springs EDUCATION Williams has a bachelor’s degree in public relations from the University of Georgia. She is a six-year graduate of the Institute for Organization Management, a graduate of the Economic Development Institute of the University of Oklahoma and was among 120 non-profit executives from throughout the country selected to participate in the Harvard Business School’s Strategic Perspectives in Non-Profit Management Program during the summer of 2006. AWARDS * While Cobb Chamber President and CEO, received the “Georgia Chamber of Commerce Certified Executive Award” from the Georgia Chamber of Commerce Executives Association. * A nominee for the Atlanta Woman Magazine Woman of the Year Award for 2006 * Woman of the Year in 2005 by the Women in Transportation Seminar Atlanta chapter * Who’s Who in American Business Executives and International Executives. * Selected for Harvard Business School’s Strategic Perspectives - 2006 Your browser may not support display of this image.
June Williamson, Associate Professor of Architecture - Spitzer School of Architecture, The City College of New York/CUNY
June Williamson, RA, LEED AP, is associate professor of architecture at The City College of New York/CUNY and co-author, with Ellen Dunham-Jones, of "Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs." She has practiced architecture and urban design in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Boston. Her writing has been published in the book "Writing Urbanism: A Design Reader" as well as the journals Places, Harvard Design Magazine, Urban Land, the Journal of Urbanism, and Thresholds.
Steve Wise, Natural Resources Program Director, Center for Neighborhood Technology
Steve joined CNT in 2006 to lead the development, management and implementation of Green Infrastructure projects, including on-the-ground monitored quantification demonstrations of rain gardens, swales and other Green Infrastructure features, implementation of on-line information tools, policy development and outreach. Steve has over 15 years of experience in environmental research and advocacy, with a particular focus on water quality. He previously acted as Development Director and Interim Executive Director of the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center in Oregon, where he led a sustainability program that included green building, wastewater system improvements, and a restoration education program that involved the community in efforts to remove invasive species and install native plants. Steve’s work, as a contributing writer for Ecological Riverfront Development, as Consultant to Lewis and Clark College’s Northwest Water Law & Policy Project, as Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, and as Economic Policy Advisor for the River Network and Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition in Portland, has extensively explored economic, social, and ecological impacts that result from degradation of water quality and aquatic habitats, especially as related to salmon conservation in Oregon. This work has addressed solutions including restoration-oriented urban development, improved agricultural irrigation efficiency, dam removal, restoration, and education. Mr. Wise also co-founded Virtual Production Services, a company that assists nonprofits in the production of online tools and resources, and has experience using technology and modeling to assess environmental impacts. Steve has an M.S. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota and a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan
Jessica Wolfe, PhD, Principal & Founder PhD, LEED GA, BluePond WellnessTM LLC
Dr. Jessica Wolfe began her career as a neuropsychologist at the Boston Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Following that, she spent over 20 years with the Department of Veterans Affairs as a healthcare executive and senior behavioral researcher, founding the Women’s Health Sciences Division of the VA’s National Center for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). During that time, she developed a series of national research and clinical programs ranging from PTSD to gender-based primary care to military sexual assault. Jessica was Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Boston University and BU School of Medicine and Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She has over 70 peer-reviewed scientific health publications and has consulted and spoken nationally to many organizations and agencies. After the VA, Jessica spent four years in senior management in the life sciences/biotechnology sector. In 2007, she founded BluePond Wellness™ to address her strong interest in how the built environment can better facilitate healthy living across the lifespan. The company partners with planners, real estate developers, healthcare systems, universities, and municipalities to target innovations at the juncture of wellness, design, architecture, and technology. Jessica obtained her PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University and a Master's in Public Health (MPH) in health care management from Harvard University. Her interests include community wellness and aging-in-place, interactive health technologies, and sustainable and accessible design. She has completed over a half-dozen design courses at Boston Architectural College and is credentialed as a LEED Green Associate (LEED® GA).
Jeff Wood, Reconnecting America
Jeff is the New Media Director and Chief Cartographer at Reconnecting America. He does mapping analysis for a variety of projects and conducts research on transit mode funding, technology, and the relationship of transit to development while also coordinating new media outreach and communications. Previous to his work at Reconnecting America, Jeff co-founded Connect Austin, an umbrella organization for nonprofits in Austin that promoted streetcars. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and a Master of Science in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin.
Bill Wright, Partner, Balch & Bingham LLP
BILL WRIGHT is a Partner in Balch & Bingham, LLP’s Real Estate and Commercial Transactions Practice Group. He works with developers, municipalities, financial institutions, and other business organizations in real estate, financing, and land use, matters with an emphasis on Smart Growth matters and Form-Based Code initiatives. Bill is a co-author of the SmartCode & Manual. He was selected to work with the Mississippi Renewal Forum for the redevelopment of the post-Katrina Gulf Coast and has worked on a number of Smart Growth development and Form-Based Code matters for private developers and municipalities. Bill was a recipient of the inaugural Driehaus Institute Form-Based Codes Award for his Form-Based Code work on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He also was a member of the team that received the CNU Charter Award for its work on the SmartCode. He is a member of the Alabama and Tennessee Bar Associations, the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Urban Land Institute, the American Planning Association and the Land Use, Planning and Zoning Committee of the ABA’s Real Property, Probate and Trust Section.
William S. Wright, Balch & Bingham LLP
William S. Wright is a Partner in Balch & Bingham, LLP’s Real Estate and Commercial Transactions Practice Group. He works with developers, municipalities, financial institutions, and other business organizations in real estate, financing, and land use, matters with an emphasis on Smart Growth matters and Form-Based Code initiatives. Bill is a co-author of the SmartCode & Manual. He was selected to work with the Mississippi Renewal Forum for the redevelopment of the post-Katrina Gulf Coast and has worked on a number of Smart Growth development and Form-Based Code matters for private developers and municipalities. Bill was a recipient of the inaugural Driehaus Institute Form-Based Codes Award for his Form-Based Code work on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He also was a member of the team that received the CNU Charter Award for its work on the SmartCode. He is a member of the Alabama and Tennessee Bar Associations, the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Urban Land Institute, the American Planning Association and the Land Use, Planning and Zoning Committee of the ABA’s Real Property, Probate and Trust Section.
Fred Yalouris, Design Director, Atlanta Beltline, Inc.
Fred Yalouris is design director for Atlanta Beltline, Inc. Previously, he served from 1997 to 2008 as director of architecture and urban design for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority's Central Artery Tunnel project (Boston's "Big Dig").
Liz York, AIA, LEED AP, CNU-A, Chief Sustainability Officer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Liz York serves as Chief Sustainability Officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Liz holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Architecture both from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and has attained LEED and CNU accreditation. She leads the CDC Office of Sustainability in promoting health and wellbeing, quality of work-life, and environmental stewardship throughout the CDC community. The office facilitates cross functional collaboration of hundreds of employee volunteers with the work of business service offices for the “Go Green, Get Healthy” Agency-wide initiative. Liz has held a number of roles since joining CDC in 1999, including General Engineer, Construction Project Manager, Design Architect, Core Team Representative and Chair of the Architectural Interiors Committee which developed the Interior Architecture Design and Construction Standards for the CDC. Liz works to increase employee and agency involvement in sustainable practices including sustainable facility design, physical activity promotion, waste and water management, sustainable purchasing, electronics management, transportation and telework all as a part of the integrated sustainability plan for the agency. She has been a proponent of sustainable design and has been a champion for sustainability issues throughout her career.
Margalit Younger, MPH, Public Health Analyst, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Sara Zimmerman, Senior Staff Attorney, Public Health Law & Policy
Sara Zimmerman is a staff attorney working on the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). Prior to joining PHLP she worked at several nonprofit organizations, including Disability Rights Advocates and the Community Benefits Law Center at Partnership for Working Families. She also clerked for Judge Richard Paez of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College (Phi Beta Kappa) and the UC Berkeley School of Law (Order of the Coif).
Todd Zimmerman, Co-Managing Director, Zimmerman/Volk Associates Inc
Todd Zimmerman is a managing director of Zimmerman/Volk Associates, the New Jersey-based research and development consulting company. ZVA is generally acknowledged by the country’s most experienced practitioners of the New Urbanism to be the leading expert on the residential market feasibility of mixed-income, compact, traditional and sustainable communities. ZVA’s work ranges from urban redevelopment to desert new towns; from new mixed-income inner-city neighborhoods to high-end beachfront resorts. Using its unique target market methodology, ZVA has established the optimum market position for hundreds of proposed urban redevelopments and new urban communities in 44 states from New England to Hawaii. Zimmerman was one of the framers of the Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and is a member of the CNU Board of Directors and executive committee. He is a frequent speaker—on housing, households, urban and regional settlement patterns, and compact and sustainable development.
Craig Zimring, Environmental Psychologist and Professor of Architecture,, Georgia Institute of Technology