Sevanne Steiner
Senior Planner
City of Fort Worth
Sevanne Steiner is a Senior Planner with The City of Fort Worth. She acts as staff for the Downtown Design Review Board, the Historic Districts Landmarks Commission and the Urban Design Review Commission. She has recently completed the revision of the Fairmount Southside Historic District Standards and Guidelines. The revision incorporates an illustrative and educational component and addresses sustainability and alternative materials. She joins the Preservation and Design Division from the City of New Orleans, where she was staff of the Central Business District Commission and the Downtown plans examiner for the Historic District landmarks Commission.
During her tenure with the City of New Orleans her most notable projects included: Brad Pitt’s Gobal Green Project in the Lower 9th ward; Reinventing the Crescent, the development of a riverside park; and the redevelopment of the Lafitte Housing Project, located in the Treme Historic District. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in historic preservation from Savannah College of Art and Design and a Bachelors of Arts in history from The University of Alabama. Ms. Steiner brings valuable experience in working with various design review boards in both rural and urban settings. She has worked for various design review boards in cities such as Richmond, VA; New Orleans, LA; Americus, GA; and Mobile, AL.
Dan Burden
Director of Innovation and Inspiration
Blue Zones
Dan is the newly-appointed Director of Inspiration and Innovation at Blue Zones. In May 2014, the White House recognized Burden as one of the top ten Champions of Change in Transportation, also named by TIME magazine as “one of the six most important civic innovators in the world,” and his peers at Planetzian list him as one of the 100 most significant urban thinkers of all time. Dan has relentless energy and has personally helped 3500 communities throughout the world make their means of transportation healthier, more active and affordable. Many of Dan’s streets designs and town centers are now celebrated in numerous publications and books and, of course, everyday by the millions of feet utilizing his designs.
Johnny Campbell
President and CEO
Sundance Square
Since 2001, Mr. Campbell has been President and CEO of Sundance Square where he is responsible for strategic planning, financing, development, leasing, merchandising, marketing, and operations activities for Sundance Square. Sundance Square is a 35 block, 42 building mixed-use project in downtown Fort Worth. With retail, office and residential product comprising approximately 3 million SF of operating property and 11 blocks of land held for development.
Prior to joining Sundance Square, Mr. Campbell worked with the Rouse Company of Columbia, Maryland for 20 years. His urban mixed-use management responsibilities have included Harborplace and The Gallery on the inner harbor for Baltimore; Pioneer Place in Portland, Oregon; Westlake Center in Seattle; The Riverwalk in New Orleans; Tabor Center in Denver; and Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix.
JD Granger
Executive Director
Trinity River Vision Authority
JD Granger is the Executive Director of the Trinity River Vision Authority (TRVA) which manages a massive flood control and river redevelopment project that creates 12 miles of public urban waterfront in Fort Worth’s central city. Mr. Granger currently serves as board member for the Greater Fort Worth Real Estate Council, Streams and Valleys, Inc., the Fort Worth Zoological Society, Van Cliburn Foundation, and recently completed a two year term for the Texas Society of Architects. He is an active member of the Urban Land Institute and after serving as Public Member Director for the American Institute of Architects Fort Worth Chapter he was named an Honorary Member in 2008. In addition, the USACE Fort Worth District and the TRVA led by Mr. Granger, recently received the USACE “Good Neighbor” Green Gov Award for outstanding partnership efforts between the two agencies on the TRV project.
Andy Taft
President
Downtown Fort Worth, Inc.
Andy Taft is a native of Tampa, Florida and graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in Marketing. He began his career in commercial real estate with the Florida Commercial Development Association and then joined Grubb & Ellis of Florida as a commercial real estate salesman in the downtown Tampa market. In 1992, he joined the Tampa Downtown Partnership as its Director of Marketing and Business Development.
Andy served Shreveport, Louisiana's Downtown Development Authority for six years as its Executive Director and while there was instrumental in relocating City Hall back to downtown after a 40-year absence, created a new public parking management program and authored the downtown strategic plan. Andy was Chairman of the United Way of NW Louisiana in 2001. Andy was also the President of Downtown Shreveport Unlimited and the Downtown Shreveport Development Corporation.
Andy joined Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. (Texas) as President in 2003. DFWI is downtown Fort Worth's planning, management and advocacy organization. It manages the downtown planning process, two Public Improvement Districts, the downtown Tax Increment Finance District, two city parks, the MAIN ST. Fort Worth Arts Festival and Parade of Lights. It recently completed the JFK Tribute in Fort Worth. He serves on the Convention and Visitor's Bureau Boards of Directors and is a member of the TCU Board of Visitors and Fort Worth Homeless Commission and Supportive Housing Task Force. Andy is a past Chairman of the International Downtown Association.
Jason Roberts
Founder
Better Block Project
Jason Roberts was the founder of the Oak Cliff Transit Authority, originator of the Better Block Project, co-founder of the Art Conspiracy and Bike Friendly Oak Cliff, and candidate for US Congress. In 2006, Jason formed the non-profit organization, Oak Cliff Transit Authority, to revive the Dallas streetcar system, and later spearheaded the city's effort in garnering a $23 Million dollar TIGER stimulus grant from the FTA to help reintroduce a modern streetcar system to Dallas. In 2010, Jason organized a series of "Better Block" projects, taking blighted blocks with vacant properties in Southern Dallas and converting them into temporary walkable districts with pop-up businesses, bike lanes, cafe seating, and landscaping. The project has now become an international movement occurring everywhere from Melbourne, Australia to Tehran, Iran, and has been featured in the New York Times, Dwell magazine, TED
Victor Dover
Principal
Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning
Urban designer Victor Dover, FAICP, CNUa, is a charter member of CNU. As principal-in-charge of Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning in Coral Gables, Florida, Dover has won multiple Charter Awards, as well as the John Nolen Medal for contributions to urbanism. He was founding chair of the CNU Florida Chapter, the first of its kind. Dover served as CNU’s national board chair from 2010-2012. He is the co-author of Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns (2014).
Emily Talen
Professor
Arizona State University, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
Emily Talen, Ph.d, FAICP, is a professor at Arizona State University in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, and a senior sustainability scientist in ASU’s School of Sustainability. She holds a Ph.D in urban geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a master’s in city planning from Ohio State. Prior to ASU, she was a faculty in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana for 8 years. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.
Talen has written extensively on the topics of urbanism, urban design, and social equity. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics, and has four sole-authored books: one on the historical lineage of New Urbanism (New Urbanism and American Planning: The Conflict of Cultures, Routledge, 2005); a study of the urban design requirements of socially diverse neighborhoods in Chicago, Design for Diversity (Architectural Press, 2008), Urban Design Reclaimed (Planners Press, 2009), a set of 10 urban design exercises for planners, and City Rules (Island Press, 2012), which explores the coded dimension of urban form.
Support for her research has come from artistic agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as science foundations, including 3 grants from the National Science Foundation. In 2011, she received a $500,000 grant from HUD’s Office of Sustainable Communities to conduct a nationwide study of the walkability of affordable housing locations.
Andres 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 currently being applied to areas 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.
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 earned 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.
Todd Zimmerman
Principal
Zimmerman/Volk Associates
Todd Zimmerman is principal in charge of Zimmerman/Volk Associates' consulting practice and is the firm's industry liaison. Using ZVA's proprietary target market methodology, Zimmerman was instrumental in bringing market rigor to urban development and re-development and the New Urbanism within the United States and is now expanding that effort outside the country.
Zimmerman was one of the framers of the Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a member of the CNU Board of Directors, and the CNU executive committee. He also served as chairman of the CNU Council of Task Force Chairs.
Zimmerman established a national reputation for his early identification of real estate market trends as Editor and Publisher of Multi-Housing News and Senior Living News, and founding Publisher and Editorial Director of Real Estate Times.
For more than decade in the 1980s and '90s, Zimmerman was program chairman of Multi-Housing World, the nation's largest conference devoted solely to density housing. Zimmerman was a founding director and executive committee member of the National Association for Senior Living Industries. Zimmerman has been a member of the Multifamily Roundtable and a founding principal of Real Property Resource Company, a consulting and brokerage firm specializing in corporate properties, and a founding director and former president of the North County Conservancy, a non-profit housing developer.
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. Volk has been directly involved with every market study completed by Zimmerman/Volk Associates since the company’s founding in 1988.
Volk’s development of analytical tools to determine the market potential for downtown housing; for mixed-income, mixed-tenure repopulation and stabilization of fragile inner-city neighborhoods, and for new mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented traditional neighborhoods has been instrumental in bringing Zimmerman/Volk Associates into national prominence. Since 1988, the firm has completed more than 450 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. She has conducted more than 65 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. She was a founding board member of the National Charrette Institute, and served for more than a dozen years on the Board of Governors of the Seaside Institute. She also served as a member of the Technical Advisory Group for Location and Planning of the U.S. Green Building Council. Volk was a recipient of a 2002 Knight Fellowship in Community Building, and has been an instructor on market analysis for the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania. She and her partner, Todd Zimmerman, are the recipients of the 2015 Seaside Prize.
Prior to Zimmerman/Volk Associates, Ms. Volk established international credentials for her observations of consumer and economic trends as a writer and researcher for The Times of London and as a member of the prestigious Insight Team of The Sunday Times. In addition, she was chief of research for over a dozen Sunday Times books, covering topics ranging from finance to commercial aviation.
She is a graduate of Duke University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
John Anderson
Principal
Anderson/Kim Architecture + Urban Design
John Anderson is a builder, developer, and urbanist. Prior to the Great Recession he served as the director of planning and design for New Urban Builders in Chico and Redding, where the firm demonstrated sustainable neighborhoods can be built by California production builders. He is the author with Paul Crawford of a form-based zoning code adopted by the City of Chico. John is a principal with Anderson|Kim Architecture + Urban Design. He is also a principal with Chico Building and Land, LLC (Anderson|Kim's sister company) which is currently developing projects in joint ventures with local partners in Arkansas, New Mexico, and Texas. John and his partner David Kim have focused their design and development work on pragmatic smaller projects that can be build incrementally.
Mike Lydon
Principal
The Street Plans Collaborative
Mike Lydon is the founding Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative. Before launching the firm 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 (DPZ).
As a planner, writer, and advocate, Mike's work has appeared in or been featured by CNN Headline News, Planetizen, Grist, Utne Reader, Next American City Magazine, New Urban News, Planning Magazine, Streetsblog, the Miami Herald, the El Paso Times, and The Village Voice, among other publications.
Mike collaborated with Andres Duany and Jeff Speck in writing The Smart Growth Manual, published by McGraw-Hill in 2009, and honored by Planetizen as one of the top ten planning books of 2010. A founding member of the New England Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), a Board Member for CNU New York, 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. Mike also speaks regularly at trainings and conferences on the topics of smart growth, planning and social media, complete streets, tactical urbanism, and active transportation. Mike remains a regular contributor to Planetizen and is a founding co-editor of A Living Urbanism. Mike was selected in 2009 as one of 34 Urban Vanguards by Next American City magazine. Mike is the primary author and editor of The Open Streets Project and Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action, Long-Term Change, two research efforts contributing to Pattern Cities, a project about cities and the ideas they incubate.
While living in Miami, Mike served as a member of the City's Bicycle Action Committee, where he helped spearhead the creation of the city's first Bicycle Action Plan, and the formulation of a monthly open streets initiative, entitled Bike Miami Days. He currently serves on an Executive Committee for Transportation Alternatives - one of the country's leading active transportation advocacy organizations, based in New York City and is an advisor to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. Mike received a B.A. in American Cultural Studies from Bates College and a Masters in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan. Mike is a CNU-Accredited Professional and he encourages you to trade four wheels for two.
James Dougherty
Director of Design
Dover, Kohl & Partners Planning
James Dougherty, AICP, CNU, ASAI is the Director of Design at Dover, Kohl & Partners, in Coral Gables, Florida. James has dedicated his career to helping communities envision and implement a more walkable, sustainable future. He began working with Dover-Kohl in 1996 and has since participated in over 120 design and form-based coding charrettes in the United States and abroad. He participates in all aspects of the office's work, including public involvement, development of master plans, regulating plans and form-based codes. James works closely with the firm’s Principals, Project Directors and Urban Designers to establish the design direction of each of the office’s projects. He also specializes in the creation of three-dimensional illustrations, using a blend of hand-drawn and computer techniques. James’ graphics and visualizations illustrating sustainable urban design and form-based code principles have been published in over a dozen books. James was honored with CNU Florida's 2012 Charles A. Barrett Memorial Award for Continuing Excellence in Architecture and Urban Design. James is a member of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators and has been honored with Awards of Excellence in their Architecture in Perspective 24 & 25 jury competitions.
Hazel Borys
Managing Principal
PlaceMakers, LLC
Hazel Borys is Managing Principal and President of PlaceMakers, an urban design, coding, and place-based marketing firm located throughout the US and Western Canada. She guides governments through land use law reforms — allowing walkable, mixed-use, compact, resilient places to develop by right — and helps developers build under the increasingly prevalent form-based codes of the new economy. Hazel is an electrical engineer with an MBA. She is the organizer of the Placemaking@Work webinar education series and the SmartCode Workshop, board member of the Transect Codes Council, co-author of the Codes Study, and blogger on PlaceShakers.
Charles Montgomery
Author & Principal
Charles Montgomery is an author, urbanist and leader of an interdisciplinary team investigating wellbeing in cities. His award-winning book, Happy City, examines the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness. Collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum, Futurewise, Lab Para La Ciudad and other entities, Montgomery has created experiments and design methods that help participants alter their relationships with their cities, and with each other. These include programs to map the emotional effects of public space, and interventions to test the relationship between architecture and pro-social behaviour. Montgomery and his team have advised and lectured planners, students, and decision-makers in Canada, the USA, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the UK. Montgomery’s writings on urban planning, psychology, culture and history have appeared in magazines and journals on three continents. Among his numerous awards is a Citation of Merit from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society for outstanding contribution towards understanding of climate change science. He lives in Vancouver and Mexico City. Learn more at www.thehappycity.com.
Doug Farr
Founding Principal
Farr Associates
Doug Farr is the founding principal of Farr Associates, an architecture and planning firm regarded by many as one of the most sustainable design practices in the country. Having a mission to design sustainable human environments, Farr Associate's unique niche is in applying the principles of green building at the scale of the neighborhood and in designing green buildings exclusively for urban contexts. Farr Associates also holds the unique distinction of being the only architecture firm in the world that has designed two LEED-Platinum buildings: the Chicago Center for Green Technology and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. An architecture graduate of the University of Michigan and Columbia University, Doug is on the board of the Congress for New Urbanism and also chairs the LEED Neighborhood Development project, a first ever leadership standard for sustainable land developments, about to enter its pilot phase. Farr Associates designs healthy and valuable places and buildings for its private, not for profit and public sector clients. Having worked for John Vinci, Davis Brody and Paul Rudolph, Farr's own work has been featured in Architectural Record, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and Doug is a featured speaker on an upcoming six-part PBS series on sustainability and green buildings.
Susan Henderson
Principal
PlaceMakers
As PlaceMakers' Director of Coding and Design, Susan has led numerous Form-Based Code projects including the inaugural Driehaus Form Based Code Award winner, Leander, Texas – plus numerous adoptions across North America. Susan is a LEED Accredited Professional, and brings an expertise in sustainability to form-based code writing. She is a contributor to the SmartCode & Manual as well as author of the SmartCode Landscape Module. Susan serves as a board member on the Transect Codes Council and is a member of the Form-Based Codes Institute’s Resource Council.
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, new codes and urban redevelopment plans in the United States, Canada, Middle East and Europe. She was the DPZ project director for Miami 21, the comprehensive rewriting of the City of Miami's zoning code into the largest-known application of a form-based code.
Matt Lambert
Partner
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Matthew Lambert is a planner and architectural designer, partner, senior project manager, and director of technology with Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. With more than ten years of practice, he has broad experience in planning and urban design as well as architectural design at all scales from regional planning and coding to infill and affordable housing. Matt is a graduate of the University of Miami with a dual major in Architecture and Computer Science.
Jennifer Hurley
President
Hurley-Franks & Associates
Jennifer specializes in group facilitation and mediation with respect to the built environment. Her planning career encompasses work across the country involving urban revitalization, dispute resolution and community visioning, strategic planning, neighborhood planning, transportation, and land development. Jennifer wrote one of the first articles chronicling the implementation of New Urbanist zoning codes, has worked on the development of several form-based codes, and is a regular speaker with the SmartCode Workshop. Jennifer is certified as a charrette planner by the National Charrette Institute and is a past Fellow of the Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Jennifer has organized numerous charrettes. In recent years, Jennifer has worked to introduce new urbanists to techniques from the field of large group collaboration, including Open Space Technology, Asset Mapping, and World Café Dialogue.
Ben Brown
Principal I Storyteller
PlaceMakers
Ben connects, helping build environments of trust so planning can be about testing ideas instead of protecting turf and battling through cynicism. With solid communications and facilitation skills, he fosters a genuinely inclusive process and coaxes fence-sitters and doubters towards common ground — a place where shared goals stand in bold relief against divisive perspectives. Leveraging skills acquired through training and years of experience in fiercely competitive, deadline-driven arenas, Ben helps keep the promise of placemaking as a community-building exercise.
Scott Doyon
Principal I Storyteller
PlaceMakers
Scott Doyon tells the stories that help connect people. To the idea of place. To productive, collaborative participation. To opportunities that build community ties and inform successful implementation. In his work with cities and organizations, he helps illuminate often unrecognized benefits through communications and marketing initiatives that bring their promise to life. Leveraging his ten years with global branding powerhouse J Walter Thompson and ten+ years since in the dedicated service of place, he delivers clarity of both purpose and value to the myriad endeavors that bring us together.
Lynn Richards
President/CEO
Congress for the New Urbanism
Lynn Richards is the incoming President and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, starting July 1, 2014. Previously, Richards had a long and distinguished career at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), holding multiple leadership roles over 13 years including Acting Director and Policy Director in the Office of Sustainable Communities. She worked with dozens of state and local governments to implement placemaking approaches by developing policies, urban design strategies, and environmental solutions for vibrant, prosperous neighborhoods. Additionally, she produced groundbreaking research on water and land use strategies.
Before joining the EPA, Richards worked briefly in the private sector at a consulting firm. She lived and worked in the former Soviet Republics from 1988 to 1995, helping environmental groups increase their organizational and political effectiveness.
Richards was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in the 2012-2013 school year. She has a dual Masters in Environmental Science and Public Affairs from Indiana University.
Paris Rutherford
Principal
Catalyst Urban Development, LLC
Paris Rutherford is Co-Founder and Principal of Catalyst Urban Development, a Dallas-based real estate company that focuses on the planning, finance and development of transit-oriented, multifamily and mixed-use places. Whether working in urban or suburban settings, Catalyst focuses on the creation of great urban places as measured in physical, economic and social terms. Since its inception in 2009, Catalyst has arranged over $1.5 Billion in debt and equity across conventional and non-traditional transactions, specializes in mixed-use and urban housing development, and is currently implementing $180M in development.
Mr. Rutherford has more than 20 years experience creating successful places in the United States, Mexico and South America. Prior to forming Catalyst, Paris was President of Woodmont Investment Company, Practice Leader of RTKL Associates’ Global Planning Practice, and Director of RTKL itself. The recipient of over 80 national, regional and local awards, his work has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Urban Land Magazine. He has spoken at the National Press Club, ULI, ICSC, and been featured on CNBC’s Closing Bell and PBS’s News Hour. Paris is a graduate of the University of Southern California and Harvard University.
Jan Gehl
Author, Architect, and Founding Partner
Gehl Architects
Jan is an Architect, Founding Partner of Gehl Architects, and former Professor and Researcher at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. Over the course of his career, he has published several books, including, “Life Between Buildings”, “Cities for People”, “New City Spaces”, “Public Spaces – Public Life”, “New City Life” and most recently “How to Study Public Life”. As part of Gehl, Jan has collaborated on projects for the cities of Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, Sydney, New York and Moscow, among others. He is an honorary fellow of RIBA, AIA, RAIC, and PIA.
Sandy Sorlien
Environmental Educator
Fairmount Water Works / Smartcode Local
Sandy Sorlien is a code writer, photographer, and environmental educator. In 2013 she joined the Fairmount Water Works, the educational arm of the Philadelphia Water Department, where she develops programming about the urban watershed. Sandy was the managing editor of DPZ's SmartCode 2005-2010 and in 2010 produced the Neighborhood Conservation Code based on the SmartCode. With the support of the Center for Applied Transect Studies, in 2011 she created the Transect Collection photographic resource (www.transect-collection.org). She is a collaborator in the Project for Lean Urbanism, and in the spirit of Lean wrote a five-page Pocket Code in 2013. She drafted the Roxborough (Philadelphia) Neighborhood Conservation Overlay, and (with Michael Watkins) wrote a complete lean rewrite and sector plan of an early SmartCode in Leander, Texas, both adopted in 2014. In 2014-2015, she is consulting with Form Ithaca (New York) on their form-based code and plan. Sandy is currently working on two books, The Heart of Town: Main Streets in America, and Along the Banks: Hidden Landscapes of the Schuylkill River, as well as an online course titled "An Environmental History of the Schuylkill" and a program for middle schoolers called "Walksheds for Watersheds."
Dan Slone
Partner
McGuireWoods LLP
Daniel K. Slone is a partner of McGuireWoods LLP in Richmond, VA. Dan assists innovative clients in designing and implementing their projects. He helps to create the right entities, put together the appropriate strategies, overcome impediments, and put together effective contracts for the new types of relationships they create including for green businesses and developers, localities, professionals, and non-profit organizations. He has been a member of the Board of Directors for the Congress for the New Urbanism since 2011 and was a Charter Member, General Council from 1992-2010. Dan is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and the Birmingham Southern College with BA Degrees in Philosophy and Political Science. He co-authored A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Architects, Planners and Developers with Doris Goldstein (John Wiley & Sons, September 2008). He is the Recipient of the Henry David Thoreau Environmental Conservator, Better Housing Coalition 2010 Groundbreaker Award and Special Recognition for Service Award fropm the Virginia Sustainable Building Network in 2006.
Joel Russell
Executive Director
Form-Based Codes Institute
Joel Russell, Executive Director of the Form-Based Codes Institute since January 2014, has been a planning consultant and land use attorney for over 35 years. He has been a member of CNU since it started and is known nationally for his work in drafting form-based codes and other measures to implement New Urbanism. He has helped many communities and individuals translate their ideas into reality through reform of land development codes. He is equally familiar with the issues of preserving rural open space and the revitalization of urban centers, both of which are necessary elements of any environmentally and economically sound planning program. He is a national authority on how to combine New Urbanism with land conservation to contain suburban sprawl. Joel is a principal co-author of Codifying New Urbanism, published by the American Planning Association and the Congress for the New Urbanism. He co-authored the Wyandanch, NY form-based code, which
won the Driehaus award in 2013.
Complementing his work on urban and village environments, he has been active in the land conservation movement since 1982, and has played a role in preserving over 20,000 acres of land through land protection projects of twelve land trusts. In 1985, he co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Dutchess Land Conservancy in New York, and has been the organization's conservation easement counsel ever since.
Joel has been a Fellow of the Glynwood Center in Cold Spring, New York, where he focused on local agriculture, land use policy and regulation, climate change, and improving the capacity of local communities to choose their future. He has also served as a Fellow at the Garrison Institute in Garrison, New York, where his work focused on environmental programming and the built environment. He has published numerous articles and spoken at conferences throughout the United States and abroad.
Peter Calthorpe
Principal
Calthorpe Associates
Peter Calthorpe has been named one of 25 “innovators on the cutting edge” by Newsweek Magazine for his work redefining the models of urban and suburban growth in America. In the 1986 he, along with Sim Van der Ryn, published Sustainable Communities, a book that inspired several generations of new thinking in environmental design and helped launch ‘sustainability’ as a defining goal of many ecological efforts. In the early 90’s he developed the concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) highlighted in The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream. Around the same time he became a founder of the Congress for New Urbanism and was its first board president.
In 2001 he published The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl with Bill Fulton, explaining how regional-scale planning and design can integrate urban revitalization and suburban renewal into a coherent vision of metropolitan growth. His seminal regional plans for Portland, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and post-hurricane Southern Louisiana created a more interactive approach to environmental design at the metropolitan scale. His upcoming book Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change documents new work and analysis relating patterns of development to energy and carbon consumption, along with other environmental, social and economic impacts. Recently he led a groundbreaking state-wide urban design effort, Vision California, to inform the implementation of the state’s Climate Change legislation.
He has taught at U.C. Berkeley, the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and the University of North Carolina. Over the years he has received numerous honors and awards, including appointment to the President’s Council for Sustainable Development. During the Clinton presidency, Mr. Calthorpe provided direction for HUD’s Empowerment Zone and Consolidated Planning Programs as well as the Hope VI program to rebuild some of the country’s worst public housing projects. In recognition of this broad body of work, he was awarded ULI’s prestigious “J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development” in 2006.
Doug Kelbaugh
Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning
Taubman College of Architecture and 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 helped jumpstart TOD), The Michigan Debates on Urbanism in 2005, and Writing Urbanism in 2008, and is the author of Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design, and Repairing the American Metropolis: Beyond Common Place. He recently served as Executive Director of Design and Planning for a Dubai development company with an international portfolio of mixed use, walkable and TOD projects.
Edward Mazria
Founder & CEO
Architecture 2030
Edward Mazria is an internationally recognized architect, author, researcher, and educator. Over the past decade, his seminal research into the sustainability, resilience, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions of the built environment has redefined the role of architecture, planning, design, and building, in reshaping our world. He is the founder of Architecture 2030, a think tank developing real-world solutions for 21st century problems.
Mazria issued the 2030 Challenge, and recently introduced the 2030 Palette, a revolutionary new platform that puts the principles behind low-carbon/zero carbon and resilient built environments at the fingertips of architects, planners, and designers worldwide. This past year he issued the Roadmap to Zero Emissions at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) calling zero emissions in the built environment by 2050; and the 2050 Imperative that has been adopted by professional organizations representing over 1.3 million architects in 124 countries worldwide. And recently, he developed The Urban Climate Initiative, a framework of incremental actions that governments can put in place to ensure carbon neutral built environments by the year 2050.
Mr. Mazria's awards include AIA Design Awards, American Planning Association Award, Department of Energy Awards, American Solar Energy Society Pioneer Award, Equinox Award, National Conservation Achievement Award, Mumford Award from Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, inaugural Hanley Award, Distinguished Career Award from Pratt Institute, Zia Award from the University of New Mexico, Game Changers Award from Metropolis Magazine, 2011 Purpose Prize, and the 2015 Kemper Award from the American Institute of Architects. He is a senior fellow of the Design Futures Council, Honorary Fellow of the RAIC, and received an Honorary Doctor of Architecture degree from Illinois Institute of Technology.
Gail Thomas
President and CEO
The Trinity Trust Foundation
Dr. Gail Thomas serves as President and CEO of The Trinity Trust Foundation in Dallas to remake the Trinity River Corridor. She is the founder and CEO of Cities Alive. In 1980, she founded the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and served as its Director for seventeen years and continues as the Director of their Center for the City where she teaches and conducts seminars and conferences.
Dr. Thomas represented one of the three organizations that led the creation of the "Balanced Vision Plan" for The Trinity. After the plan's unanimous adoption by City Council, the Mayor of Dallas asked Dr. Thomas to create an entity to raise private funds to implement the plan. She works with The Trinity Trust Board of Directors to introduce the project to the entire community and to raise $100 million in private funds to ensure that the Trinity River is the centerpiece of the city.
Dr. Thomas' life work has been the study and transformation of cities. Through her teaching and lecturing, she has been a catalyst for change in the inner city. For over twenty years she has conducted seminars and conferences on cities and city life not only in Dallas but also in cities as diverse as Montreal, Portland, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Denver, and Devon, England. She began in 1982 a series of conferences called, What Makes a City?, attended by city planners, artists, scientists, poets, teachers, business and civic leaders, the effect of these conferences has been profound.
She was instrumental in the creation of Pegasus Plaza in downtown Dallas; she was Chair of the Dallas Millennium Project to restore Dallas' icon, Pegasus, the Flying Red Horse. She hosted a five year urban design for Dallas called Dallas Visions.
Her book "Healing Pandora: The Restoration of Hope and Abundance" was released in 2009.
Dr. Thomas has received numerous awards including the coveted Kessler Award for improving the quality of life in Dallas. She has been named Distinguished Alumna of two universities – SMU and The University of Dallas. She has been a national awards panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been named Honorary AIA by the Dallas Chapter, the Texas Society of Architects and most recently by the American Institute of Architects.
Chris Leinberger
President
LOCUS
Chris Leinberger is a land use strategist, professor, developer, researcher and author, balancing business realities with social and environmental concerns. Mr. Leinberger is:
• President of Locus; Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors
• The Charles Bendit Distinguished Scholar and Research Professor, George
Washington University School of Business
• Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington DC
• Founding Partner of Arcadia Land Company, a New Urbanism and transit-oriented development firm.
His most recent book is The Option of Urbanism, Investing in a New American Dream. He is the author of Strategic Planning for Real Estate Companies and has contributed chapters to 12 other books. He is an Op-Ed Contributor to the The New York Times, writes regularly for The Atlantic Monthly and numerous other magazines. CNN, National Public Radio, Atlantic Cities Channel, Washington Post, among others, have profiled him.
Leinberger was voted one of the “Top 100 Urban Thinkers” in a 2009 poll conducted by Planetizen, the international urban planning website. He was the 2010 William H. Whyte Urbanism Award winner by Partners for Livable Communities.
Leinberger is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Harvard Business School and lives in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC.
Lee Sobel
Principal, Director of Public Strategies
RCLCO
Lee Sobel is RCLCO’s Director of Public Strategies, a position that blends his expertise in real estate and finance with his knowledge of land use and transportation policy. He has been a commercial real estate broker with CB Richard Ellis, in South Florida, and he spent 10 years handling real estate development and finance matters with the U.S. EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities in Washington, D.C. He is a recognized expert in urban retail, market analysis, economic development, and smart growth.
During Lee’s tenure in the public sector, he provided technical assistance, policy research and development, and implementation strategies to local governments, quasi-governmental entities, community groups, and national and local advocacy organizations on real estate, finance, and economic development issues with the goal of achieving sustainable community development. At the EPA, Lee authored and co-authored publications that reflect this work, including Infrastructure Financing Options for Transit-Oriented Development, Smart Growth and Economic Success, Market Acceptance of Smart Growth, and This Is Smart Growth. At CB Richard Ellis, Lee brokered the acquisition and disposition of land, retail, and office properties for institutional, national, and private clients. He also provided opinions of value and market analytics for positioning and repositioning income properties. While a broker, Lee authored the first book dedicated to redeveloping shopping malls into mixed-use town centers, Greyfields into Goldfields: Dead Malls Become Living Neighborhoods.
Lee is a nationally recognized speaker in smart growth, mixed-use and town center development, greyfield and suburban retrofits, economic development, land planning, infrastructure finance, retail real estate development trends, and capital investment trends as they relate to sustainable community development. Lee has made approximately 100 speeches and other presentations in the past eleven years to organizations, agencies, and communities, including the International Council of Shopping Centers, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, The National Association of Realtors, and the Urban Land Institute.
Scott Polikov
Principal, Founder
Gateway Planning
Scott Polikov is a national leader advancing the New Economics of Place. President of Gateway Planning, Scott is a town planner and innovative finance consultant who started his professional life with Patton Boggs, practicing law in Washington, D.C. Returning to Texas, he was appointed by Garry Mauro as the Director of the Texas Alternative Fuels Program and became directors respectively of his transit authority, Capital Metro, and the Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) for the Central Texas Region.
Alarmed that the MPO’s regional transportation plan ignored development patterns and land use in a sustainable way, Scott changed careers and established Gateway to focus on the marriage of walkable places and the economics of transportation. In 2013, Gateway Planning formed a joint venture with Balfour Beatty for projects involving comprehensive design implementation and P3 finance. Scott serves as an associate of the CitiStates Group and is on the National Board of Directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU).
Walt Mountford
Executive Vice President
KDC Development
For over 20 years at KDC, Mountford has successfully performed progressively important and wide-ranging roles in the development of over 7 million square feet of commercial projects valued at over $1.4 billion located throughout the nation. He earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics with cum laude honors from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and attended Harvard Graduate School of Business in Boston, MA.
Mountford enjoys spending time with his family, leisure travel, painting, sculpting, business reading, and music.
Hiram Peck
Director of Community Planning & Development
Simsbury, CT
As a professional planner for over 25 years, Hiram has worked with municipalities, the federal government/USDA, regional planning agencies and private clients. After working for many years in nurseries and greenhouses as a teenager, his focus has always been on the land and man’s optimal relation to it.
For the 15 years before coming to Simsbury, Hiram worked as a planner in lower Fairfield County in as Assistant Town Planner in Greenwich, CT and Town Planner in New Canaan, CT.
Since coming to Simsbury about 8 years ago, Hiram has worked extensively with many citizens, boards and commissions and other groups on building a strong public consensus regarding land use planning and development in Simsbury. Included in this work are major planning efforts regarding the Town Center Form Based Code and the Route 10 Corridor Study completed in 2011. Recently the adoption of a new Form Based Code for the 173 acres at 200 Hopmeadow (The Hartford) property was another successful, major year-long effort which involved a unique public/private partnership.
Hiram has also worked on creation of a Workforce Housing Overlay Zone regulation that will help supply a small amount of housing for everyday workers who would like to reside in Simsbury. The recent development of the Specialty MS Housing and apartments at Dorset Crossing are also noteworthy. Continued sound economic development remains one of his main focus points as the basis for helping the great historic community of Simsbury become even greater for all residents and age groups in the future.
Hiram is proud to have served as a transportation officer in the US Army. He also has taught science and geology at the secondary and college levels and has served on the Board of Selectmen,Board of Tax Review and numerous other committees in his hometown of Woodbury.
He enjoys bicycle riding and showing his Parson Russell Terriers, although not at the same time.
Phil Puckett
Executive Vice President
CBRE
Phil Puckett is an Executive Vice President in the Dallas office of CBRE. Phil has made his career specializing in the Downtown and Uptown office submarkets in representing tenants on their office leases. Phil has over 25+ years of individual experience, in these two submarkets and has completed over 4.2 million SF of tenant representation transactions in Downtown and Uptown of which 800,000+ SF has been law firm transactions.
Phil has represented some of the largest office transactions in Downtown and Uptown including Bank of America for 566,000 SF, the 197,000 SF world headquarters for Comerica Bank, 142,000 SF for Ernst & Young and the 247,000 SF world headquarters for Tenet Healthcare Corporation and has represented most of the major Dallas law firms in Downtown and Uptown.
Throughout his career Phil has been recognized as a leader in Downtown and Uptown by both his peers and numerous industry organizations. The Dallas Business Journal has selected him as a four (4) time winner of the #1 Heavy Hitters in office brokerage – which has only been accomplished by one other broker in Dallas. Phil was also recently awarded the 2014 Office Broker of The Year by NAIOP and was given this same award in 2010. In addition, he was selected to serve on CBRE’s International Law Firm Practice Group Executive Committee given his law firm experience in Downtown and Uptown.
Prior to the merger in 2006 of CBRE and Trammell Crow Company, Phil joined Trammell Crow in 1997 to assist in what became one of the most powerful office brokerage firms in Downtown and Uptown. Phil was consistently named as one of the top office brokers in the United States at Trammell Crow Company and served on Trammell Crow’s National Operating Committee. Today at CBRE Phil continues to be a top producer in the CBRE-Dallas office and was named the top office broker for his production in 2013.
It should also be noted that Phil won CBRE’s National Innovation Award for his creation of the Downtown–Uptown DASHBOARD. It has become common knowledge that Phil is the expert on Downtown-Uptown office submarkets. Tenants, developers, lenders, owners & investors seek Phil out for a presentation of his Downtown-Uptown DASHBOARD in order to gain an understanding of these two submarkets.
Cynthia Nikitin
Senior Vice President
Project for Public Spaces
Cynthia is a nationally-renowned expert in public participation and planning for transportation corridors and facilities, having managed complex multi-jurisdictional projects across the country during her twenty-four years with Project for Public Spaces. With a portfolio of more than 250 projects, Cynthia's technical expertise includes the development of downtown master plans and transit station area enhancement projects, corridor-wide transportation and land use strategies, and public art master plans for major cities. Cynthia’s extensive community engagement experience involves facilitating 40 public workshops, visioning sessions, and public meetings annually.
Cynthia is also a leader on using investments in walking and transit to leverage livability goals. She authored one of the first books on transportation and livable communities, has run more than 30 comprehensive transit and corridor planning projects, and recently completed a research project for the US Federal Transit Administration aimed at developing evaluation and engagement tools to assist low-income communities in becoming involved in the transportation planning process.
Cynthia is Director of the National Endowment for the Arts Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD), a design leadership initiative that seeks to empower residents of communities with populations of under 50,000 to leverage local assets for the future in order to build better places to live, work, and play. She also manages the Heart of the Community program, a partnership with Southwest Airlines to create transformative public spaces. The program is committed to leveraging the power of Placemaking to strengthen connections between people and the places they share and to spark social, economic, and environmental benefits in communities across the country.
Laura Maczka
Mayor
City of Richardson, TX
Laura Maczka was elected to the office of Mayor in May 2013, and has served as an elected member of the City Council since 2011. Maczka served as Mayor Pro Tem during her first term on the Richardson City Council from 2011-2013.
In addition to her duties on the City Council, Maczka represents the Cities of Richardson, Addison, Wylie, Sachse and Murphy as a member of the Regional Transportation Council. Maczka was appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to serve as a Commissioner for the State of Texas on the Commission on State Emergency Communications. She currently serves on the Executive Board of the North Central Texas Council of Governments for 2014-15 and serves as vice president of the Metroplex Mayors Association board for 2014-15. Additionally, Maczka is a member of the Texas Municipal League’s Resolutions Committee and State Rep. Angie Chen Button’s Education and Natural Resources Committees.
Maczka is a graduate of Texas A&M University and is the former Executive Director of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a non-profit agency that provides for credit entrepreneurship education to 2,000 disadvantaged youths enrolled in the program in Dallas Independent School District middle and high schools.
Prior to being elected to the City Council, Maczka was appointed to the City of Richardson’s Parks and Recreation Commission in 2007 and was named vice chair in 2010. She was a lead volunteer for the development of the outdoor classroom Discovery Point at Prairie Creek Park. She has held numerous PTA positions at Prairie Creek Elementary, North Junior High and J.J. Pearce High School, including two terms as PTA president and was honored with the lifetime membership in the Texas PTA. Her service also includes time on the board of the RISD Excellence in Education Foundation and she is currently part of the RISD budget review team. She is an active member on the athletic booster club boards of her sons’ schools, and is a graduate of the Inside RISD program.
Robert Wilonsky
Digital Managing Editor
The Dallas Morning News
Robert Wilonsky, a Dallas native, is the digital managing editor at The Dallas Morning News. Which makes his parents very, very proud.
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
Principal
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, F.A.I.A., is a founding principal of town planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) and was dean of the University of Miami’s School of Architecture for 18 years. Having initiated the graduate program in Suburb and Town Design in 1988, Elizabeth continues to explore current issues in city growth and reconstruction with students and faculty. She has served as Director of the Center for Urban Community and Design, organizing and promoting numerous design exercises for the benefit of communities throughout South Florida. Plater-Zyberk is a founder and emerita board member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and has authored two books, Suburban Nation: the Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream and The New Civic Art.
Monte Anderson
CEO/President
Options Real Estate Investments, Inc.
Monte Anderson is the President of Options Real Estate a multi-service real estate company specializing in creating sustainable neighborhoods in southern Dallas and northern Ellis counties in Texas. Mr. Anderson began his real estate career in 1984 and since that time has concentrated solely on improving the living and working environments in these communities. His company developed Main Station, the first mixed-use development in Duncanville, Texas. He is also responsible for the renovation of the historic Belmont Hotel, a 68-room boutique hotel, café and spa located in the Trinity River Corridor of Dallas, which was the recipient of Preservation Dallas and Preservation Texas awards. His most recent development is a 131-acre mixed-use, traditional neighborhood development currently under construction in Midlothian, Texas & he has just received the CLIDE Award. Mr. Anderson is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for his community involvement. He currently serves on the board of directors for the North Texas Chapter of CNU and was its founding president.
Ellen Dunham-Jones
Professor of Architecture and Urban Design
Georgia Institute of Technology
Ellen Dunham-Jones is an award-winning licensed architect and professor teaching contemporary architectural and urban design studios and theory. 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, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Design Magazine, Urban Land, Planning, Architectural Record, TEDx and other venues. The book received the 2009 PROSE award for architecture and urban planning from the American Association of Publishers and was featured in Time Magazine’s March 23, 2009 cover story, “10 ideas changing the world right now.”
She has published over 50 articles and 10 chapters in books, consults on urban design projects, and lectures widely.
Chris McCahill
Senior Associate
State Smart Transportation Initiative
Chris McCahill is researcher and educator focused on transportation engineering, planning, and policy. He is a senior associate at the State Smart Transportation (SSTI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he works with a network of reform-oriented state departments of transportation through research, knowledge exchange, technical assistance, and outreach.
Prior to joining SSTI in 2013, Chris was a project manager for CNU’s Project for Transportation in Chicago. During his time with CNU, he coordinated a series of grant-funded training workshops for state engineers, regional planners, local transportation professionals, and city officials, focused on urban street design. He has continued working with CNU and the Illinois Department of Transportation to assess and overcome obstacles to transportation reform.
Chris earned his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Connecticut in 2012. While at UConn, he was a transportation engineering course instructor and collaborated on multiple interdisciplinary research projects. His writing appears in academic journals and popular media including The Atlantic Cities, Planetizen, The Hartford Courant, and The New Haven Register.
In 2012, Chris was a fellow with the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, DC.
Angie Schmitt
Writer & Activist
Streetsblog USA
Angie is a Cleveland-based urbanist writer. She is editor of Streetsblog USA, a news site covering the movement for transportation reform and livable cities around the United States. She holds a master's degree in urban planning from Cleveland State University.
Joseph Minicozzi
Principal
Urban3, LLC
Joe Minicozzi is the principal of Urban3, a consulting company created by Asheville real estate developer, Public Interest Projects. Urban3’s work in pioneering geo-spatial representation of economic productivity has prompted a paradigm shift in understanding the economic potency of urbanism and the value of well designed cities. Their studies of cities in the United States and Canada have affected the reevaluation of public policy and a broader understanding of market dynamics created by tax policy.
Joe is a sought after lecturer on city planning issues and his work has been featured in numerous journals and at international conferences. He is a founding member of the Western North Carolina-based, non-profit Asheville Design Center and he holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami and Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard University.
Dan Parolek
Principal
Opticos Design, Inc.
Daniel Parolek is a nationally recognized thought leader in architecture, design, and urban planning, specifically in terms of creating livable, sustainable communities and buildings that reinforce them. Since establishing himself early in his career as an expert in these fields, he has won national competitions and awards for his work and is often asked to contribute to publications and resources. Daniel has a unique talent for quickly assessing places and understanding what’s needed to make them better, and for understanding what drawing or set of drawings are needed to clearly and evocatively convey a design solution. He has helped found several non-profit planning and architecture organizations, he regularly speaks at national conferences, and his projects have been featured in numerous publications. His strong interest in diverse building types, at different scales that bridge architecture and urban planning, drove his desire to start Opticos in 2000—and he continues to create buildings and neighborhoods that can be future models to inspire and guide others.
Over the years, he has become one of the leading practitioners of Form-Based Coding, a revolutionary new approach to zoning about which he co-wrote what’s been called “the definitive handbook,” and he is a founding board member of the Form-Based Codes Institute. With a strong commitment to sharing knowledge, he has taught several hundred advanced-level students through the Form-Based Codes Institute’s ongoing courses, and regularly teaches workshops on New Urbanism and Smart Growth, Missing Middle Housing, Coding, and Urban Living.
His love of good design and great places came from a childhood spent roaming the small town of Columbus, Nebraska, on his bike—and much of his current work is inspired by his memories of growing up in a place with a thriving main street and local businesses. After receiving a classical architectural education that emphasized visual harmony and contextual architecture, Dan worked in New York with the renowned architect Robert A.M. Stern where he became experienced at all scales of projects, from the smallest (private homes for Michael Eisner and Jon Bon Jovi) to mid-level (a federal courthouse in West Virginia and the renovation of Anaheim’s baseball stadium) to large (an entertainment complex at Tokyo Disney). He has worked alongside other leading architects and urbanists, such as Leon Krier, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Peter Katz.
Kerry Tate
Community and Home Builder
Moore Tate
Kerry Tate is a familiar Austin business and civic leader. After growing the communications firm of TateAustin over 20 years, she sold the business in 2008 to pursue her long-held interest in community development. Kerry is a founding partner of both Moore-Tate and Civic Interest LLC. She is past board chair to Leadership Austin, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, the Austin Community Foundation, and the Texas Mamma Jamma Ride. Her honors for service to others includes the 2012 Spirit of Caring Award from Care Communities, 2013 recipient of the First Tee Values Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Communications.
Spencer Holmes
Vice President
Holmes Homes
Jim Tischler
Director of Community Development
Michigan State Housing Development Authority
James Tischler, AICP, PCP is Director of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority’s Community Development Division. He is responsible for management of the State of Michigan’s Federal- and State-funded housing and community development programs, design of housing and neighborhood policy, and facilitating the State’s community planning and development activities. He has more than 25 years of experience in the field of urban planning, working for public organizations, and consulting with private sector firms, as well as established specialties in urban infill, New Urbanism, form-based planning, and brownfield/greyfield redevelopment.
Tischler has initiated or facilitated a large number of development projects, including the Mason Run Neighborhood in Monroe, Michigan, the Peninsula Neighborhood in Iowa City, Iowa, the Labadie Park Neighborhood in Wyandotte, Michigan, and the West Broadway Revitalization Project in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and is considered an expert in creating, negotiating, and managing public/private partnerships.
He holds a Master of Urban Planning degree from Wayne State University, and is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma Economic Development Institute. In addition to his registration with the American Institute of Certified Planners, he is a registered Michigan Professional Community Planner, a member of the American Planning Association and Michigan Association of Planning, and holds membership in the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Jarrett Walker
Consultant in Public Transport Planning & Policy
Jarrett Walker & Associates
Jarrett Walker is an international consultant in public transit network design and policy, based in Portland, Oregon. He has been a full-time consultant since 1991 and has led numerous major planning projects in cities and towns of all sizes, across North America, Australia, and New Zealand. He is also the author of Human Transit: How clearer thinking about public transit can enrich our communites and our lives (Island Press, 2011).
He is President of Jarrett Walker + Associates, a consulting firm that provides advice and planning services North America. He is also a Principal Consultant with MRCagney Australia.
Born in 1962, he grew up in Portland in during the revolutionary 1970s, the era when Portland first made its decisive commitment to be a city for people rather than cars. He went on to complete a BA at Pomona College (Claremont, California) and a Ph.D. in theatre arts and humanities at Stanford University. Passionately interested in an impractical number of fields, he is probably the only person with peer-reviewed publications in both the Journal of Transport Geography and Shakespeare Quarterly.
In addition to Human Transit, he also writes on botany, creative writing, performing arts, and a range of other interests on his personal blog, Creature of the Shade.
Mike Brennan
Planning Director
Fort Worth South, Inc
Mike Brennan leads planning and development initiatives for Fort Worth South, Inc., a non-profit redevelopment corporation working to revitalize Fort Worth's Near Southside. Mike’s work includes a wide range of activities, with a primary focus on facilitating redevelopment through consultation and collaboration with developers, City officials, and FWSI’s Development and Design Review Committees.
Mike led the effort to create an urban, form-based development code for the Near Southside, which received the Driehaus Award from the Form-Based Codes Institute in 2008. Mike received his Master’s degree in urban planning from Harvard's Graduate School of Design in 1999 and his certification from the American Institute of Certified Planners in 2002.
Mike served on the Board of Directors for the Fort Worth Transportation Authority 2011-2013, and he currently serves as Board Chairman for Fort Worth Bike Sharing, Inc. and represents District 9 on the City Plan Commission.
Melissa Konur
Planning Director
Downtown Fort Worth Transportation Authority
Melissa Konur is the Planning Director at Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. and serves as co-manager for the restoration of Heritage Park Plaza. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Colby College and a Master of Urban Planning from New York University, Graduate School of Public Service. In her previous position, she was a Vice President and Portfolio Manager at the New York Economic Development Corporation in the Bloomberg Administration. Her portfolio included mixed-use, commercial, hotel, retail, cultural, residential (market rate and affordable) developments, redevelopment and reuse of historic landmarks, and involved a variety of funding sources including bond financing and tax credits.
Kirk Williams
Managing Director
Cypress Equities
As Managing Director, Kirk is in charge of leasing, budgeting, reporting and advising for all aspects of ownership. He is also responsible for continued retail development and re-development oversight and direction on numerous assets that are in development.
Kirk’s varied background of real estate expertise includes site selection, development, budget review, acquisitions, disposition management, loan origination, loan defeasance, loan workouts, leasing, asset management property management, brokerage, due diligence and valuation of all types of commercial real estate. He has worked on the assembling and disposition of a 14-building, $92 million office portfolio; the asset management of more than 1.5 million square feet of commercial properties; and the development of a national retail building development program.
Kirk has more than 30 years of experience in development, having worked on such properties as West 7th, a mixed-use development in Fort Worth, TX; Village on the Green, a mixed-use development in Dallas, TX; and Centennial Shops, a life-style retail development in Edina, MN. Additionally, Kirk has extensive experience in the re-development of office and retail properties including projects such as the Village of Leesburg in Leesburg, Virginia and Bassett Place Mall in El Paso, TX.
Kirk received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) and sits on the Advisory Board for Search Ministries, Fellowship Bible Church Dallas and the Cultural District Alliance.
Megan Lee
Senior Manager, Community Relations and Giving
Southwest Airlines
Megan Lee is Senior Manager for Community Outreach at Southwest Airlines, where she is responsible for strategic direction and implementation of Southwest’s citizenship and community relations programs, such as Adopt a Pilot, Medical Transportation Grant Program, and most notably the launch of Southwest’s new nationwide signature program, Heart of the Community. In this role, she provides oversight and support for Southwest’s charitable donations, local giving boards, and volunteer events. Megan oversees a team of nine who facilitate all of Southwest’s philanthropic distribution, which totaled $20.2 million in combined cash and in-kind donations during 2013.
Jim Adams
President
McCann Adams Studio
Jim Adams is President of McCann Adams Studio and an architect, urban designer and planner whose work has involved a broad spectrum of project types from large-scale master plans to site-specific development projects.
As a principal of ROMA Design Group and then its affiliate ROMA Austin for more than twenty-five years, he has focused much of his career on transportation, land use planning, the design of major infill development sites and their re-integration into the urban fabric. Many of these projects have involved the incorporation of multi-modal transportation systems into mixed-use neighborhoods and districts in a way that promotes pedestrian and bicycle-friendly environments. He led the master planning for the award-winning redevelopment of the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport (Mueller), and is currently its master plan architect, advising Catellus Development Corporation on its implementation. He also serves as the chair of Mueller’s design review council, reviewing all residential and commercial development projects.
Jim received his Master of Architecture in Urban Design (with Distinction) from Harvard University in 1980, and his Bachelor of Architecture (Honors) from the University of Toronto in 1977. He is registered as an architect in California and Texas and is a member of the American Institute of Architects, the Congress for New Urbanism and the Heritage Society of Austin. He has taught urban design at Harvard University and has been a guest critic and lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, University of Texas and California College of the Arts.
David Whitworth
President
David Whitworth Development Company
David Whitworth graduated from The University of Texas with a BS in Civil Engineering in 1997. David is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E. # 91217). After a career in Site Engineering (codes, layout, utilities, & drainage), David went out on his own to develop and construct small infill projects. David has the head of an engineer, but his heart is with creating and building homes that people will love.
David is a Licensed Texas Real Estate Agent and a member of the Austin Board of Realtors. David is also a registered Texas Builder.
With the ability to start with a project from the conceptual phase beginning with land use issues, David is uniquely positioned to approach development and home construction in Austin.
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.
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.
Michael Swartz
Principal
David M. Schwarz Architects
Michael C. Swartz is a Principal with David M. Schwarz Architects in Washington D.C. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, he has been with the firm for 31 years. His Professional memberships include the Urban Land Institute, the American Institute of Architects and the Congress for New Urbanism. Mr. Swartz is a LEED accredited professional and holds architectural registrations in the District of Columbia, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia.
Mr. Swartz’s project experience includes master planning and mixed-use designs for: downtown Fort Worth, TX; Southlake Town Square, Southlake, TX; West Village, Dallas, TX; Frisco Square, Frisco, TX; Firewheel Town Center, Garland, TX; Regent Square, Houston, TX; Twinbrook West, Rockville, MD; Duke University, Durham, NC; and the University of Miami, Miami, FL. Mr. Swartz’s completed building design commissions include Southlake Town Hall, Southlake, TX; The Tarrant County Family Law Center, Fort Worth, TX; the Yale University Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center, New Haven, CT and master planning and building design for the Baltimore Orioles Spring Training Facility in Sarasota, FL..
Mr. Swartz is currently working on the design of several mixed-use and residential projects in Washington, DC, Virginia and Texas.
On numerous occasions Mr. Swartz has been a presenter and panel member for the Urban Land Institute’s Mixed Use Conferences and has previously participated with ULI’s TAP program. He has also served as a visiting critic at the University of Maryland.
Gregory Hoss
Principal
David M. Schwarz Architects
Gregory M. Hoss is a Principal of David M. Schwarz Architects, Inc. and has been with the firm since 1997. He is a graduate of The Catholic University of America where he now serves on the School of Architecture’s Executive Development Board. Gregory has served as Project Manager for such signature projects as Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, South Carolina, American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, Dr Pepper Ballpark in Frisco, Texas, The Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas, Nevada, Sundance Square in Fort Worth, Texas and is currently working on the Fort Worth Multi-Purpose Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
Greg Brown
Program Director
Dallas Center for Architecture
Greg Brown is Program Director for the Dallas Center for Architecture. Founded in 2008, the Center produces public programs on architecture and design, including films, exhibitions, lectures and tours. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Architecture Organizations. He is asked regularly to write on Dallas architecture, including essays for the recently-published D: Portrait of a City and Bragging Rights.
Prior to joining DCFA, he was Managing Director of the AFI DALLAS International Film Festival. Presenting over 200 screenings annually over 10 days throughout central Dallas, the Festival very quickly became one of the largest film festivals in the Southwest. Greg was responsible for most of the day-to-day operations of AFI DALLAS, as well as leading the Festival’s extensive education and outreach efforts.
Greg has worked in the arts and arts education in Dallas for almost 25 years. A native Dallasite, he earned undergraduate degrees and his M.B.A. from SMU. He went on to work at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts in a variety of roles, including as Managing Director of both the Meadows School and the Meadows Museum. As Managing Director, Greg was responsible for most non-academic functions of the school, including marketing, public relations, development, ticket office, operations, events, facilities and production. He was instrumental in the opening of the new Meadows Museum in 2001 and in the development of a Meadows School and Museum strategic plan which resulted in an historic $33 million gift from the Meadows Foundation in 2006.
A musician, producer and director, Greg has worked with the Texas Boys Choir and the Dallas Summer Musicals and has directed several local productions. While at SMU, he produced eleven Meadows Award presentations to a stellar group of internationally-acclaimed artists, including Angela Lansbury, Wynton Marsalis, and Arthur Miller. The 1994 Meadows Award presentation to Stephen Sondheim was subsequently aired on the Arts & Entertainment television network. He has also produced tributes to Bob Hope and Greer Garson.
Brandy O'Quinn
Policy Manager
Blue Zones Project - Fort Worth
William Pinkerton
President
Options Real Estate Development
Jason Aprill
Planner
City of McKinney
Jason Aprill is a long-range planner with the City of McKinney. His current and past projects include the Northwest Sector Study, City of McKinney Comprehensive Plan Update, monthly/annual development reports, population projections and estimates, semiannual impact fee updates, and other comprehensive planning projects.
Frank Bliss
President
Cooper & Stebbins
Jayashree Narayana
Principal
Gateway Planning Group
Livable Plans & Codes is a planning and urban design firm focusing on developing master plans for walkable mixed use and implementation through various zoning tools, with specific expertise in form-based codes. With over 18 years of public and private sector experience, Jay Narayana, Principal of Livable Plans & Codes, has worked on several award winning initiatives and specializes in:
• Redevelopment plans for downtowns, station areas, corridors, and neighborhoods
• Comprehensive Plans, Area Plans, and Sector Plans
• Implementing zoning and form-based codes
• Master Plans, Urban Design Plans, and Development Plans for walkable, mixed use
• Land use analysis and feasibility studies
Our planning and coding work is based on a firm understanding of real estate market fundamentals that ensures that plans are implementable. In addition, as a member of the Gateway Planning Team over the last 7 years, Ms. Narayana has led the development of several master plans and form-based codes including Downtown Owensboro, North Richland Hills TOD Plan and Code, Padre Boulevard Redevelopment Plan and Code, to name a few. Ms Narayana is an active member of the Form-Based Codes Institute’s Resource Council, Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association.
Andrew Frey
Development Manager, CC Residential
Townhouse Center
Andrew Frey is a development manager at CC Residential, a developer of luxury rental apartment communities. He is also executive director of Townhouse Center, a not-for-profit that promotes fine-grain urban neighborhoods.
Frank Starkey
President
People Places LLC
Frank Starkey is co-founder (with his brother, Trey) of Longleaf, a 568-acre Traditional Neighborhood Development just Northwest of Tampa, Florida. Frank was intimately involved in Longleaf’s design, entitlement, engineering, permitting, construction, builder program, architectural review (using a form-based design code) marketing, homeowner association, mixed-use development and property management, even operating a coffee shop in its Downtown. From 2005 through 2012 Frank and Trey oversaw planning, entitlements and marketing of Starkey Ranch, a 2,500-acre multi-use development planned for the family’s remaining land. In December, 2012, the family closed on the first portion of a multi-year takedown of the Ranch to Wheelock Street Capital.
In 2013 Frank founded People Places, LLC, a real estate development and consulting company. Drawing on Frank’s broad experience, the People Places goal is to craft vibrant, people-oriented residential and/or retail places in walkable settings. Its first project is Audrey Place, a vacation rental property in Wilton Manors, Florida.
Frank is Chairman of the Board of The Seaside Institute, immediate past president of the National Town Builders Association, was the first Developer in Residence at University of Miami’s Masters in Real Estate + Urbanism (MRED+U) program and served on the Rollins College Masters of Planning in Civic Urbanism advisory board. He holds undergraduate and professional degrees in architecture and urban design from Rice University, is CNU (Congress for the New Urbanism) Accredited, and a member of Urban Land Institute and Leadership Florida.
Tony Garcia
Principal
The Street Plans Collaborative
Anthony Garcia is Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative. Prior to launching the firm’s Miami office, Anthony was Project Director for six years at Chael Cooper & Associates Architects. His work there gave him a strong has a background of urban planning that includes urban design, policy writing and code analysis. He has experience in hosting public meetings, and has completed a number of bicycle and pedestrian plans at the scale of city, neighborhood, and campus and contributed to the codes and policies that help shape the resulting spaces.
Between 2008-2012 he was the managing editor and publisher of TransitMiami.com, a web journal dedicated to public participation and discourse in South Florida. He is also an active Board member of the Green Mobility Network, a Miami-based organization that advocates for greater use of active transportation throughout the region. He is a member of the Dade Heritage Trust, and a member of the Florida Chapter of the Congress of the New Urbansim.
Tony graduated from New York University with a B.A. in Urban Planning and Architecture Studies, with a concentration in community development and participation in the planning process, and the use of technology in garnering public support. He went on to get his Masters in Architecture from the University Of Miami School Of Architecture and is working toward becoming a registered architect in the State of Florida. Currently, he is also serving as adjunct faculty at the University of Miami School of Architecture, teaching second year studio, and the New Urbanism Online Course.
While at the University of Miami he was one of a handful of students invited to the Rome Program, an intensive six month program of study into the history of traditional urbanism and architecture. Most recently he was one of a select few regional participants in the LEED-Homes pilot program, where his work on a historic South Miami cottage led to a Gold rating and a Dade Heritage Trust Award for excellence in preservation.
Seth Harry
Principal
Seth Harry & Associates, Inc.
Seth Harry is a licensed architect with over twenty years of experience in the design, master planning, and implementation of TNDs, large-scale mixed-use developments, urban entertainment projects, waterfront destination shopping, dining and entertainment complexes.
Prior to founding Seth Harry and Associates, Inc., in 1992, Mr. Harry was Design Director for the late James Rouse’s Enterprise Development Company where he contributed to many successful retail and entertainment development projects in Japan, Australia, Ireland and the United States.
Recent projects include a variety of mixed-use, town center, greenfield and infill projects in Tennessee, New Jersey, California, Guatemala, El Salvador, and New Zealand.
Kevin Adams
Georgia Tech, School of Architecture
I am a cross-disciplinary specialist in the fields of urban design, ecological and landscape design, community design, and urban planning.
Work experience includes research, teaching, design, planning, and public relations, with strengths in design, planning, graphics for urban planning, public speaking and involvement, writing and publications, analysis, GIS mapping, and qualitative design research. I bring a trans-disciplinary breadth to my work weather as a consultant, instructor, designer, planner, or researcher.
Most current urban design work is research exploring the power of parcel lines in design and planning. Most current landscape design work is research on the impact of urban agriculture as both an open space and food system typology.
Paddy Steinschneider
President & Founder
Gotham Design & Community Development Ltd.
Padriac Steinschneider is a placemaker, designer, and real estate developer. He is President of Gotham Design and Community Development, Ltd., a firm he founded in 1978 that seeks projects in village settings that focus on “healing the whole.” His interest in the restoration and adaptive reuse of properties has seen particular success with projects like Wit’s End in Dobbs Ferry and Wicker Park in Chicago. Paddy is very active in his local community, serving on Dobbs Ferry's Land Use Committee, the Mayor’s Task Force on Energy and the Environment, and Sustainable Westchester’s Transportation and Land Use Committee. An Environmental Science major at Columbia College, Paddy received his Masters in Architecture from Columbia University in 1976. With his personal philosophy of being locally involved, Paddy’s previously peripheral support for CNU was invigorated by the advent of chapters. He is a founding member of the New York Chapter and serves as the Chief Operations Officer for CNU New York.
Steve Mouzon
Principal
The New Urban Guild
Mouzon Design is the husband-and-wife team of Steve and Wanda Mouzon. Their house plans have been featured repeatedly as Home of the Month in Southern Living, Coastal Living, and Cottage Living. Steve is Town Architect at several new hamlets, villages and neighborhoods around the country, using a unique method that communicates principles, not just particulars. Mouzon Design’s Premium Tools Collection is a subscription service to robust new place-making tools that heretofore were unaffordable when commissioned by a single development. A Living Tradition is a framework for a new type of pattern book that is principle-based instead of taste-based, and therefore contributes to the creation of new living traditions.
Steve is also 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.) Steve’s Katrina Cottage VIII, which is first design of the next generation of Katrina Cottages, was awarded a Charter Award by the Congress for the New Urbanism. The Guild Foundation is the non-profit educational arm of the Guild; it sponsors a number of workshops, tours, and seminars that fill several of the gaps that previously existed between theory and practice. It also sponsors the Guild Tool Foundry, which is a growing collection of place-making tools that can be downloaded free of charge.
David Rau
Partner
3North
David Rau AIA, architect and urbanist, has devoted his career to the rejuvenation of great American places. His portfolio of award-winning work at college campuses, destination resorts, urban landscapes, and cultural complexes nationwide includes the renovation of landmarks and the construction of new buildings. After a decade of working in Chicago, New York City, and Venice, Italy, David established practice in Richmond, where he developed a design approach characterized by a sensitivity to context and environment. He is distinguished as the author of 3north’s trademark “IQ” (Intangible Qualities) process, which integrates historical, contextual, and ecological considerations with architecture, landscapes, and the allied arts: craft, interiors, graphics, and branding. David lectures frequently, and serves as designer, advisor, and facilitator on a broad range of projects.
David Rau, who studied architecture in London and Vicenza, received dual degrees, including a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design and a Bachelor of Architecture, from the College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State University.
Maisie Allison
Editorial Director
The American Conservative
Maisie Allen manages digital and special projects for The American Conservative. She previously worked for Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish at Newsweek/The Daily Beast and was digital media manager at The New Republic and a media fellow for The Atlantic. She is a graduate of Harvard College.
Jon Coppage
Associate Editor
The American Conservative
Jonathan Coppage is an associate editor at The American Conservative. He manages web editorial and and edits "New Urbs", TAC's urbanism blog dedicated to the intersection of politics and place.
Ken Schroeppel
Director of Professional Engagement, Instructor
University of Colorado Denver, College of Architecture and Planning, Master of Urban and Regional Pl
Ken serves as the Director of Professional Engagement and Instructor of Planning and Design in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at CU Denver, where he lectures on urban form, planning methodologies, professional applications in planning, and the history of Denver’s built environment. Prior to joining the CU Denver faculty, Ken worked for 12 years as a planning consultant and project manager. Ken received his Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from CU Denver in 2000. Since 2002, he has been a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.
Ken is very active in Downtown Denver’s planning and development communities. He serves on the board of directors of Denver Civic Ventures, the Downtown Denver Partnership’s non-profit corporation that focuses on improving downtown’s built environment. Additionally, he is a founding board member of Union Station Advocates, a grass-roots organization created to advocate for the public’s interest in the transformative Denver Union Station project. Ken is also on the board of directors of the Denver Architectural Foundation, where he works to expand the popular Doors Open Denver program that showcases the legacy of Denver’s built environment. Ken is an active member of the Colorado chapters of the Urban Land Institute, the American Planning Association, and the Congress for the New Urbanism, serving on several boards and committees for these organizations over the years.
Ken is possibly best known as the founder of the DenverInfill and DenverUrbanism website and blogs, which offer news, ideas, and commentary on infill developments and other aspects of sustainable urbanism in central Denver. Launched in 2005 (DenverInfill) and 2010 (DenverUrbanism), Ken’s blogs enjoy over 70,000 visits monthly and are regarded as the Mile High City’s leading online resources for downtown-related planning and development information. Ken has been honored for his work with DenverInfill, receiving the Denver Mayor’s Design Award, the Downtown Denver Partnership’s Downtown Denver Award, and two Westword Best of Denver awards. Finally, Ken has the privilege to frequently present on Denver’s urban history and its current growth and development to numerous civic, educational, and professional organizations throughout the region and can often be found leading walking tours in the Downtown Denver area.
John Simmerman
CoFounder, President & CEO
Active Towns
I'm a health promotion professional and entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience. My primary focus is on getting more people moving on a daily basis by helping create communities that support healthy, active lifestyles.
Personally, I strive to lead by example by walking and biking to meet most of my daily needs and competing, just for fun, in triathlons and running events on a semi regular basis, which also helps to keep me motivated, focussed and fit.
I also enjoy serving as a professional race announcer, mostly of the endurance athletic type such as triathlons and running events.
Christopher Coes
Director
LOCUS, Smart Growth America
Christopher A. Coes is the Director of LOCUS, a network of real estate developers and investors who advocate for sustainable, walkable development. He works with real estate developers and investors across the country to advance LOCUS’ public policy agenda and business opportunities. Prior to joining LOCUS, Christopher served as a Consultant for Government Affairs and Campaigns at M+R Strategic Services. As a consultant, Christopher worked with various clients including Transportation for America – a broad, diverse and unprecedented coalition advocating for a national vision for a 21st century transportation system. For nearly three years, Christopher served as Transportation for America’s Senior Campaign Advisor and Deputy Director, where he was responsible for the day to day operations and advising the Campaign on its legislative and political strategies. In addition to his work on transportation issues, Christopher brings over five years of experience in government relations, political advocacy and electoral campaigns. Christopher received a BA/MA in Government and Politics from St. John’s University, specializing in Public Administration and International Relations.
Matthew Lewis
Assistant Director of Planning & Development Review - Urban Design
City of Austin
Matthew Lewis is a City Planner that has the passion for creating great places. He is currently the Assistant Director of Planning & Development Review- Urban Design Long Range Planning for the City of Austin, Texas. He previously held 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.
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.
Stefanos Polyzoides
Principal
Moule & Plolyzoides Architects & Urbanists
Stefanos Polyzoides was born and educated in Athens, Greece, and later earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Architecture and Planning from Princeton University. His career has engaged a broad span of architecture and urbanism, its history, theory, education and design. He is a cofounder of the Congress for the New Urbanism and, with his wife Elizabeth Moule, a partner in Moule & Polyzoides, a Pasadena, California practice since 1990. From 1973 until 1997, he was an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
His professional experience includes the design of educational, institutional, commercial and civic buildings, historic rehabilitation, housing, and the urban design of university campuses, neighborhoods and districts. Mr. Polyzoides has led such projects throughout the United States and around the world, in Canada, South America, Australia, China and the Middle East.
He is the co author of Los Angeles Courtyard Housing: A Typological Analysis (1977), The Plazas of New Mexico (2012), and the author of R.M. Schindler, Architect (1982), and the forthcoming Between House and Tower: The Architecture of Density. He also led on the production of four distinguished exhibitions and exhibition catalogs on the architectural and urban history of Southern California: Caltech: 1910–1950, Myron Hunt: 1868–1952, Wallace Neff, and Johnson, Kaufmann & Coate.
John Torti
President
Torti Gallas & Partners
As President of Torti Gallas and Partners, Mr. Torti has provided the strong conceptual leadership to bring his firm to international recognition. His firm has been the recipient of over 100 prestigious national design awards in the last 20 years. With offices in Washington, DC, Silver Spring, Los Angeles, and Istanbul, he and his partners have built a firm that understands the inextricable relationship between placemaking, architecture, and sustainability.
Torti Gallas’ work achieves success for their clients and for the communities in which it is located. Mr. Torti joined the firm he now leads in 1973. Under his leadership, Torti Gallas and Partners has focused its practice on Trans National Urbanism, transit-oriented development, mixed use, mixed-income architecture, and human sustainability. Prior to joining Torti Gallas and Partners, Mr. Torti worked with NASA and the National Capital Planning Commission. He also was a Principal in an architectural firm in the Midwest and was the director of a non-profit housing and community development corporation. In recognition of his many design contributions in architecture and urban design, Mr. Torti was elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2001. Mr. Torti was awarded the Paul H. Kea Medal for Leadership by the Potomac Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2007. He is a member of the Advisory Council for the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Torti is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Architecture degree. In 2004, Mr. Torti became a LEED Accredited Professional.
Russell Sikes
Vice President of Administration
Regal Research and Mfg. Co.
Russell Sikes, Vice President of Administration, has held a variety of manufacturing, finance and business development positions over the past 20+ years. He has fulfilled a variety of roles in recent years at Regal Research. Previous positions included Vice President Of Business Development, Vice President Of Marketing, Chief Financial Officer and Manufacturing Manager in the computer manufacturing and software industry. He received his BA from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Principal Planner
City of Austin - Planning and Development Review Department
Tonya Swartzendruber is a Principal Planner with the City of Austin’s Urban Design Division within the Planning and Development Review Department. She oversees the public and private development that occurs in the Transit Oriented District (TOD) and several other special regulating districts. In addition she is responsible for overseeing the design of streetscape projects such as E. 7th St. in East Austin as well as Sabine Street in the Waller Creek District in coordination with a myriad of other City Departments.
Prior to joining the City of Austin Tonya worked in the private practice of landscape architecture in North Carolina and Virginia for eight years. She has experience with managing a wide range of project types. Projects include taking a design from concept to construction details of projects for schools, office complexes, and county parks as well as large scale projects in park and neighborhood master planning.
Tonya holds a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from Purdue University. She is also CNU Accredited as well as a LEED – Green Associate.
Jeffrey Tumlin
Principal and Director of Strategy
Nelson\Nygaard
For more than twenty years, Jeff has led award-winning plans in cities from Seattle and Vancouver to Moscow and Abu Dhabi. He helps balance all modes of transportation in complex places to achieve a community’s wider goals and best utilize their limited resources. He has developed transformative plans throughout the world that accommodate millions of square feet of growth with no net increase in motor vehicle traffic.
Jeff is renowned for helping people define what they value and building consensus on complex and controversial projects. He provides residents and stakeholders the tools they need to evaluate their transportation investments in the context of achieving their long-term goals. He understands that managing parking and transportation demand is a critical tool for revitalizing city centers and creating sustainable places.
A dynamic and frequent guest speaker, Jeff is the author of Sustainable Transportation Planning: Tools for Creating Healthy, Vibrant and Resilient Communities.
Beth Anne Macdonald
Executive Director
Downtown Somerville Alliance
Beth Anne has worked to revitalize downtowns since 2001 and currently manages one of NJ’s oldest business improvement districts in Somerville.
She previously worked with IKEA to test market their Small Business Big Dreams campaign in the Springfield Avenue business improvement district in Maplewood, NJ before they launched a national campaign in June of 2007. She has been a panel speaker at the New Jersey League of Municipalities on increasing the effectiveness of business improvement districts, and worked with several NJ improvement districts on creating best practices for the management of improvement districts. She is particularly interested in community engagement and its impact on small business growth.
She joined the Downtown Somerville Alliance (DSA) in 2012 and during this time has worked to reconnect the business and changing residential community to each other through the social fabric of the Downtown. She guided the organization through a strategic planning and visioning process and subsequent rebranding of the DSA in 2014. A significant part of her tenure has been dedicated to helping Division Street evolve from a declining roadway into a thriving public space.
She has served on the boards of Downtown New Jersey and New Jersey Managed Districts Association and currently sits on the executive board of the Somerset County Tourism Council and is a board member of Arts on Division, a 501 (c) 3 dedicated to bringing the arts to Somerville.
Her formal education in anthropology, keeps her fascinated with the many components of what makes a downtown a great place.
James Rojas
Founder
Place It!
James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. He has developed an innovative public-engagement and community-visioning method that uses art-making as its medium. Through this method he has engaged thousands of people by facilitating over four hundred workshops and building over fifty interactive models around the world - from the streets of New York and San Francisco, to Mexico, Canada, Europe, and South America. He has collaborated with municipalities, non-profits, community groups, educational institutions, and museums, to engage, educate, and empower the public on transportation, housing, open space, and health issues.
Rojas is also one of the few nationally recognized urban planners to examine U.S. Latino cultural influences on urban design and sustainability. He has written and lectured extensively on how culture and immigration are transforming the American front yard and landscape. He is the founder of the Latino Urban Forum, an advocacy group dedicated to increasing awareness around planning and design issues facing low-income Latinos.
Rojas has lectured and facilitated workshops at MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, Cornell, and numerous other colleges and universities. His installation work has been shown at the Los Museum of Contemporary Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, the Venice Biennale, the Exploratorium, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bronx Museum of Art, and the Getty. His research has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Dwell, Places, and in numerous books.
Steven Bingler
Principal
Concordia
Steven Bingler is the founder and President of Concordia. Under his leadership, Concordia’s projects span a wide range of building types including the Jackson Brewery Festival Marketplace, the New Orleans Aquarium of the Americas and the Henry Ford Academy. Concordia’s award winning work has appeared in a wide range of national publications, including Architecture, Interiors Magazine, Architectural Digest, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.
In recent years, Steven has undertaken projects focused principally on the planning and design of environments for living and learning. He served as a special consultant to the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education for policy related to the design of schools as centers of the community. His educational papers have been published in a wide range of books and journals in the fields of urban planning, architectural design, education, public health and smart growth. Additionally, Steven frequently speaks at national symposia and conferences related to innovations in community-based and small school planning and design.
Ian Lockwood
Regional Office Director
Toole Design Group
Ian Lockwood, P.E. is a recognized national leader in sustainable transportation policy and urban design. As a former partner in the Orlando-based Glatting Jackson (which later became AECOM), Ian led a wide variety of transportation projects aimed at making communities more walkable, bikable and transit-friendly. He also served as the City Transportation Planner for the City of West Palm Beach, where he transformed state arterial roads, local roads, and the City’s approach to parking to help the city overcome its blighted condition and evolve into an economically and socially successful city.
Ian’s current work includes walkability projects, restoring one-way streets to two-way, taming arterials, shared spaces, policy reform, and designing main streets, campuses, and downtowns. Ian has guest lectured at several universities and is occasionally interviewed on National Public Radio. In 2011, Ian was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University during which he studied the links between transportation, land use, and successful outcomes for communities at all scales.
For fun, Ian enjoys photography, cartooning, and road cycling.
Chuck Marohn
President
Strong Towns
Charles Marohn - known as "Chuck" to friends and colleagues - is a Professional Engineer (PE) licensed in the State of Minnesota and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). He has a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute.
He is the author of Thoughts on Building Strong Towns (Volume 1), the primary author of the Strong Towns Blog and the host of the Strong Towns Podcast and See it Differently TV.
Chuck grew up on a small farm in Central Minnesota. The oldest of three sons of two elementary school teachers, he graduated from Brainerd High School in 1991. Chuck joined the Minnesota National Guard on his 17th birthday during his junior year of high school and served for nine years. Besides being passionate about planning and small towns, he loves playing music, is an obsessive reader and is a season ticket holder of the Minnesota Twins.
Chuck and his wife live with their two daughters and two Samoyeds just north of Baxter, Minnesota.
Charles Green
Health Communication Specialist, Healthy Community Design Initiative
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Charles Green joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999 where he is health communications specialist for their Healthy Community Design Initiative (www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces). A member of CNU, Charles was the first person to receive CNU accreditation from the University of Miami School Of Architecture. He has since written a public health/built environment module for the online course. Charles is a trustee on CNU Atlanta’s board and a member of CNU’s Health Districts Initiative (http://www.cnu.org/healthdistricts) Team. He served on the local executive planning committee for CNU 18’s “New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places”, and is co-chair of CNU 22’s Healthy Places track.
Betsy Price
Mayor
Fort Worth, Texas
Betsy Price, a Fort Worth native, was elected in 2011 as the 44th mayor of the City of Fort Worth. In 2013, Price ran unopposed and was re-elected to a second two-year term. As the 16th largest city in the United States, Fort Worth remains one of the fastest growing large cities in the country.
Along with her focus on promoting jobs, strengthening education, fighting crime and improving mobility, Price has made significant strides along the path toward her vision of a healthy, engaged and fiscally responsible city.
Instead of sitting in cars, on the couch or in the office, Price believes in a community that naturally promotes physical activity throughout the day.
During her first term, Price led a community effort to build a city that’s more fit, happy and productive. The result was FitWorth, a citywide initiative focused on promoting active lifestyles and healthy habits in both kids and adults. With an initial $250,000 grant from Oncor, FitWorth is working to stem the rising tide of obesity, especially in children. Thanks to FitWorth, employers, schools, hospitals, faith communities, non-profits and retailers are energized and actively promoting a more healthy and sustainable city.
Wade Walker
Principal
Alta Planning+Design
Wade is the Complete Streets Regional Leader for Alta Planning+Design and leads Complete Streets implementation. For the past twenty years, he has worked in the realm of context-sensitive design and context sensitive solutions, focusing on the restoration of livability to streets, smart growth, and walkability. Wade has been involved in many varied initiatives concentrating on livable traffic and a rebalancing of modes, ranging from downtown revitalizations, to new traditional neighborhood developments, to preservation of scenic and historic roadways, and design and implementation of Complete Streets and Thoroughfares.
Recent projects include the El Paso Avenue Complete Street Design in Russellville, Arkansas; the HampLine Cycle Track in Memphis, Tennessee; and the Opt-In/Opportunity Initiative for Western North Carolina. He is also a member of CNU.
Abbey Oklak
Certified Planner & Staff Architect
Cooper Carry
Abbey is a board member and secretary for CNUDC. Among other duties, Abbey organizes our Third Thursday and 20x20 events. Abbey also leads the Chapter's student scholarship program that sends select students and
recent graduates to the annual CNU congress.
Abbey L. Oklak is currently employed by the architectural and urban design firm Cooper Carry working with the Mixed Use Studio planning residential, commercial and retail buildings. She is also part of the Alexandria Office's Planning Studio which works on urban design, masterplans, and planning initiatives for both the public and private sectors.
Laura Poncelet
Intern Architect
Torti Gallas & Partners
Mark Lamster
Architecture Critic
The Dallas Morning News
Mark Lamster is the award-winning architectural critic of the Dallas Morning News and a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at Arlington. He has been celebrated for his “beautiful mind” by D Magazine, which has twice named him the best critic in Dallas, and has been lauded for his “sharp analytical eye” by the alt weekly Dallas Observer. In 2014, he was awarded the Dunnigan Media Award by the Greater Dallas Planning Council. He is the author of several books, and is currently at work on a biography of the late architect Philip Johnson, to be published by Little, Brown.
Tim Van Meter
Architect / Urban Designer
Van Meter Williams Pollack LLP, San Francisco and Denver
Tim is a firm partner and founder of Van Meter Williams Pollack, LLP, an Architecture and Urban Design firm in San Francisco and Denver, whose work has focused on green architecture and sustainable urban design for the last 25 years. VMWP has received numerous design awards from organizations as diverse as the AIA, EPA, APA, ULI, CNU, and HUD as well as the State Agencies in California, Colorado, and Hawaii. Tim is a Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Real Estate Development, Leeds School of Business, MBA Program, University of Colorado.
Tim is currently working on new township planning projects in India, and affordable housing and mixed use adaptive re-use projects in Denver.
Patrick Kennedy
Partner, Urban Dynamics and Planning
Space Between Design Studio
Patrick Kennedy is an Urban Planner and Designer with 15 years of experience. He is partner and co-founder with Space Between Design Studio, founder of A New Dallas, a non-profit promoting economic development and transportation equity, co-founder of Coalition for a New Dallas Political Action Committee, and is President of the North Texas Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Peter Park
Visiting Design Critic of Urban Planning & Design | Associate Professor Adjunct of Urban Design
Harvard Graduate School of Design | University of Colorado - Denver
Peter J. Park is a city planner and educator that has led innovative practice for over 20 years. His integrated approach to comprehensive planning, urban design, and development review has created clear visions for sustainable urban development, places of high quality design, and streamlined permitting systems. He has overseen preparation of numerous plans, comprehensive citywide zoning code updates, and implementation of major infrastructure and development projects. His focus on the linkage between innovative planning and practical implementation strategies has delivered lasting improvements in communities where he has worked.
He oversaw comprehensive zoning code updates in Milwaukee and Denver while he served as Planning Director of those cities and has implemented form-based codes at various urban scales. His urban infrastructure work focuses on making walkable urban places through effective transit-oriented development and replacement of highways in cities with enriched street networks. He was the 2012 Lincoln Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate of Design where he studied opportunities of freeway removals and delivered a presentation entitled “Planning for the Post-Freeway American City” at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Peter is a Visiting Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and an Associate Professor Adjunct of Urban Design at the University of Colorado – Denver. Previously, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and coordinated the Joint Master of Architecture/Master of Urban Planning program. Over the last 20 years, he has focused on integrating teaching and practice. The work explored in his urban design studios has significantly influenced real world planning and development outcomes such as the removal of the Park East Freeway in Milwaukee and adoption of the Denver Zoning Code.
Peter is the Director of Peter J. Park, LLC and currently working on comprehensive planning, land use, and transportation projects in Los Angeles, Austin, and Denver. Peter has collaborated with the Institute for Transportation and Development (ITDP) on work related to freeway removal and TOD in Mexico City, Mexico and Chennai, India. He authored “Re-thinking Highways in American Cities: New Opportunities for Leadership” with the support of CNU and the Ford Foundation and prepared the forward to “The Life and Death of Urban Highways” published by ITDP.
Thomas Osdoba
Vice President, Green Initiatives
Enterprise Community Partners, Inc
Bertran Kuyrkendall
City Transportation Engineer
City of Chattanooga
Bertran Kuyrkendall, PE, CNU-A, LEED Green Associate
Bert is the City Transportation Engineer for the City of Chattanooga, overseeing the planning, design and construction of all transportation projects and the design review for public space aspects of private development. He is spearheading the City’s Complete Streets Implementation Plan which includes creation of new design standards, a bicycle implementation plan that will add 325 miles of facilities within the next four years, pedestrian gap closure plan, passenger rail study, multimodal traffic data collection, and street network connectivity plan. He is a graduate of Mississippi State University in Civil Engineering, a LEED Green Associate, and an accredited member of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Mariia Zimmerman
Principal & Founder
MZ Strategies, LLC
Mariia Zimmerman, Principal and Founder of MZ Strategies, LLC, is a seasoned veteran of shaping organizational change and entrepreneurship. She opened Reconnecting America's Washington, DC office and served as its Vice President for Policy. She was a founding member and interim Director of Transportation for America and served as Deputy Director of the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities helping to manage the establishment of a $250 million grant program within the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mariia also spent six years on Capitol Hill working in the office of Congressman Earl Blumenauer.
Mariia has led a wide range of technical, research, and planning efforts on a range of policy subjects from transportation reform to transit-oriented development to affordable housing and regional planning. She is a frequent national speaker and author on transit-oriented development (TOD), smart growth, public transportation finance and urban planning issues. Mariia currently serves as a Visiting Fellow at Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute in Alexandria, VA and is the Vice Chair for Regional and Metropolitan Planning with the American Planning Association's Regional and Intergovernmental Division.
Marcy McInelly
President
Urbsworks, Inc
Marcy McInelly has practiced architecture and urban design for more than 27 years in New York City and Portland, Oregon. In 1995, she founded Urbsworks, and redirected her expertise to the often-neglected space between buildings. Over time she has sharpened her focus on a multi-disciplinary, collaborative approach to sustainable urban design and placemaking, with a particular emphasis on smart, safe transportation and innovative codes for the benefit of communities.
In 2004, Marcy was appointed to co-chair the CNU Transportation Task Force, which she renamed the Project for Transportation Reform. This is the group that just published the “CNU Sustainable Street Network Principles,” and initiated the joint CNU and ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) Recommended Practice, “Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach.”
Through this work and projects at Urbsworks, she is committed to realizing the CNU Charter Principles in their highest form. Award-winning projects include the Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan, the Roseway Vision Plan, the New Columbia HOPE VI community and school (all in Portland, Oregon), El Mirage Comprehensive Plan, Arizona, and NorthWest Crossing in Bend, Oregon. 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 100+ 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. She currently serves on the Board of National Charrette Institute, and in 2011 was elected to the CNU Board.
Kerry Hayes
Director of Public Relations
Doug Carpenter & Associates
Blake Bowyer
Nate Hood
Nathaniel Hood is a a founding member of Streets.MN and lives in St. Paul. He tweets at @Nathaniel1983 and can be found online at Thoughts on the Urban Environment, Strong Towns and the Star Tribune.
Jim Kumon
Executive Director
Strong towns
Jim Kumon is an urban designer and community organizer based in Minneapolis. As Executive Director, he organizes events, volunteer initiatives, membership activities and sponsorship programs for the group. He is your primary point of contact for engaging with anything relating to Strong Towns.
Jim was born and raised in a rural township about fifty miles northwest of Detroit. After graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan, Jim started his professional career in architecture and urban design in Los Angeles, and later moved to Denver. He has served on the board of a multitude of professional and trade groups and brings over a decade of not-for-profit experience to Strong Towns. Most recently, he served as operations manager of a national niche consulting company in the architecture and engineering industry.
Jim and his wife, Faith, live in the heart of south Minneapolis, where they are slowly renovating their 102 year old house. A self proclaimed rain barrel enthusiast and edible garden aficionado, he is working to maximize the return on investment in their small city yard. He serves on the board of directors for Kingfield Neighborhood Association and chairs its redevelopment committee.
Kyle Zepplin
Principal
Zeppelin Development
Kyle Zeppelin is recognized as an innovative developer of mixed use communities in underused former industrial areas in Denver. Kyle is committed to promoting social change through catalytic projects that address unmet needs in the market. He has received recognition and multiple awards for his work at TAXI—the re-purposed 20 acre former Yellow Cab terminal in Denver's River North District (RiNo). Among recent projects is The Source, a new generation urban market. Set in an 25,000 sf 1880s former iron foundry, it includes a community of some of the most accomplished independent artisan culinary producers in the region. Also under development is a new model for high density urban housing. Broader social efforts are focused on improved bikeability and walkability throughout the city.
Jeanne Anthony
Project Advisor
AARP
Jeanne Anthony is a Project Advisor with AARP’s Education & Outreach Department. She is part of the Livable Communities team, where her work focuses on supporting the efforts of communities to become Great Places for All Ages. She develops strategies and resources which are designed to help communities provide features such as safe, walkable streets, better housing and transportation options, access to key services, and opportunities for older residents to participate in community activities.
Her portfolio includes the Age Friendly Communities Network program as well the Active Living Workshop program delivered in partnership with the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute. In addition, she manages partnerships with organizations which support various strategies that help create livable communities where consumers can more easily age in place. She has been with AARP for 12 years and has served in various capacities within the organization. Prior to joining AARP, Jeanne worked in the Financial Services industry developing consumer products.
Janthony@aarp.org
www.AARP.org/livable
Russell Preston
Design Director
Principle Group
Russell Preston is founder of Principle Group, a design and development firm focused on creating living places. He has worked as a developer and urbanist since 1999 on a variety of public and private projects throughout the United States. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, and the University of Miami master’s program in architecture and urban design. Preston is an editor of “Living Urbanism”, a publication on contemporary urban design and city building. He currently serves as Secretary of the board of directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism and is President of the CNU New England chapter. Prior to founding Principle Group, Preston worked with Cornish Associates on the redevelopment of Downcity, Providence and Mashpee Commons, a mixed-use neighborhood on Cape Cod. In 2010 he received the Faculty Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Profession from the University of Miami. Preston is also a working artist and illustrator. He lives in Boston with his wife, sculptor Gillian Christy.
Katherine Gregor
Communications Consultant, Sustainability / Planning
City of Austin
Katherine manages the Complete Streets Program and other urbanism initiatives for Austin Transportation Department. She serves on the Board of CNU-CTX and has participated in every Congress since CNU16.
Ian Rasmussen
Attorney & Urbanist
Ian Rasmussen is an attorney and urbanist living in New York City. Since discovering New Urbanism, he has focused his academic and professional efforts on its advancement. Having graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 2008, Ian now practices zoning law in New York City. This role offers a unique perspective on the land use process that continues to inform his views on urbanism. Moreover, practicing zoning law provides the opportunity to fight for the creation of worthwhile places that are foolishly prohibited by the existing regulatory framework. Ian resides in Forest Hills Gardens with his wife Erika.
Dan Bartman
Senior Planner
City of Sommerville
Dan Bartman is a Senior Planner with the City of Somerville, the current chair of CNU NextGen, and contributor to the Tactical Urbanism series of guidebooks. Dan has written multiple form-based codes for cities across the country and focuses his research on urban design that supports the physical, social, and emotional needs of human beings.
Howard Blackson
Urban Design and Community Planning Manager
RBF Consulting, a Company of Michael Baker International
Howard M. Blackson III, is a national leader in crafting innovative urban design and planning techniques. Currently leading Michel Baker International's Urban Design Studio in San Diego, California he has 25 years of experience. Recently, Howard was Program Manager for the City of San Diego’s Civic Innovation Lab leader of Urban Projects and Neighborhood Strategies, Howard was responsible for restructuring entitlement and engagement processes across city departments in a highly charged political environment. He was also a Principal and Director of Planning with PlaceMakers from 2006 - 2014 and responsible for enabling form-based codes and developing master planning documents for public entities and private developers. Howard has worked in Singapore, South Korea, and throughout North America and holds a Master degree in Urban Design from the University of Westminster, London, and a Bachelor degree in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an Accredited Member of the Congress for the New Urbanism and has a Professional Certificate in Master Planning from Harvard University. Also, he is member of the U.S. General Services Administration Design Excellence Peer Review Committee, Chairman of the Congress for the New Urbanism California Chapter, and recent Board Member of Civic San Diego.
Sherrelle Evans
Chief Financial Officer
Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation
Sherrelle is the Chief Financial Officer of the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation (the non-profit organization that manages Klyde Warren Park). In this role, she oversees all financial aspects of the organization, including monthly reporting, human resources, and the annual audit. Prior to this role, her experience included over ten years of experience in public accounting performing audit and other attest procedures on clients in the financial services, real estate and not-for-profit fields. Sherrelle’s philanthropic work includes her service as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of a Dallas-area private elementary school and community center (2011-2013). During her 8 years of service as a member of the Board of Trustees, she led efforts to source approximately $2 million of funding to support St. Philip’s 2011 capital campaign. Sherrelle is a graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana with a B.A. in accounting. She is a certified public accountant in the state of Texas. Sherrelle is engaged to be married to Brandon Jones in March 2014 in the chapel at St. Philip’s. In lieu of gifts the couple is leading an effort endow a scholarship at the school. In her spare time, she enjoys watching movies and playing with her two puppies (Baxter and Shelby).
Laura Voltmann
Senior Planner
City of Fort Worth
Laura Voltmann is a senior planner with the City of Fort Worth. She is the primary administrator for the City adopted form based codes, including the Driehaus Award winning Near Southside Development Standards and Guidelines. She staffs the Urban Design Commission which can grant waivers to the form based district standards.
Meaghan Kroener Janson
Senior Project Manager - Development
Streetlights Residential
Meaghan is a Senior Project Manager of Development for StreetLights Residential (SLR), a high-end multifamily developer based in Dallas, TX. In this role, Meaghan manages the development of multifamily and mixed-use projects, as well as assisting in analysis, design, and due diligence for pursuits. Before joining SLR, Meaghan worked for several architecture and urban design firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., including Torti Gallas, Roma Design Group, and WRT Solomon ETC. With over a decade of architectural experience, she focuses primarily on urban, mixed-use, and multifamily product. Her project experience includes early conceptual stages of design, community involvement initiatives, entitlement, design & construction documents, production, and sustainability efforts.
She holds a Masters of Business Administration from the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame.
Meaghan spends her weekends debating the future of Dallas with her urbanist husband, Chris, while pushing their young daughter along the Katy Trail.
Scott Bernstein
President
Center for Neighborhood Technology
Scott Bernstein is the president and co-founder of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). Scott leads CNT’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. Scott is a member of the Urban History Association, which includes urbanists old and new. Scott co-founded and chairs the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, led the development of the Location Efficient Mortgage®, co-founded the Center for Transit Oriented Development, and helped lead a civic network to question the premise of the proposed Deep Tunnel and Reservoir Program.
Hank Lawson
Community Engagement Advisor
Frazier Revitalization, Inc.
Henry T. "Hank" Lawson joined FRI in 2009. He is the retired executive director of South Fair Community Development Corporation, a neighborhood based community-building organization in South Dallas. As the executive director, he worked to promote neighborhood revitalization through the development of affordable housing, economic development and providing community support services. Hank has more than 35 years of experience in community development and organizational planning. Since 1993, he has participated in the planning and development of over 1,250 units of housing and 75,000 SF of retail/commercial space with a development value of over $60 million. Hank has a master's degree in City Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellow from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and a Kellogg Foundation Fellow. Mr. Lawson is a graduate of the Bank of America Leadership Academy as well as a graduate of the Achieving Excellence Program from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Mr. Lawson is a former college All-American in track & field, also having coached and worked with world class track & field athletes. He is raising a wonderful family with his wife Sharon in Dallas, Texas.
Robert Bagwell
President
Urban Planners
Robert, an award-winning developer, is responsible for guiding the merchandising, design and layout of retail projects to create a dynamic mixed-use neighborhood. Robert manages the development of West Village, a $55 million urban retail and residential development in the burgeoning Uptown District of Dallas. In addition to advising retail developers nation-wide, Robert was a founding partner in George Lucas’ Entertainment/Retail Development and Master Developer of West End Historical District.
Art Lomenick
President
Integral Development
Art Lomenick is President of Integral‘s Real Estate Development Division, leader of the Texas office and a member of the Executive Committee of The Integral Group.
Mr. Lomenick has an extensive mixed-use development career, during which he has held various senior management positions with the Staubach Company, and served as Senior Development Officer for Columbus Realty Trust & Post Properties, Managing Director with Trammell Crow Company and Founder of High Street Residential, a wholly owned subsidiary of Trammell Crow Company, and most recently, Sustainable Development Practice Leader for Parsons Brinckerhoff Internationally. He has been instrumental in enhancing and rebuilding neighborhoods and implementing Transit Oriented Development (TOD) projects in cities throughout the U.S. A long-time student of urban design and planning, he combines these studies with his knowledge of human behavior, architecture, economics, and public-private partnerships to create a unique skill set.
During his career, Mr. Lomenick has directed the initial redevelopment of numerous Uptown and Midtown community redevelopments throughout the U.S. A major success story is the development of Uptown Dallas, transforming it from a blighted area into a thriving urban district of shops, residencies, offices and engaging public spaces. He orchestrated the business planning and development of Addison Circle and Legacy Town Center, two master-planned, new urbanist communities crafted in cooperation with the edge cities of Addison and Plano, Texas. Attributes include residential, retail, office, and civic venues, nestled around neighborhood streets and parks within steps of public transit. Mr. Lomenick effectively blends the art of new urban development with economic strategies to enhance and rebuild organic, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods and adaptive re-use of existing structures.
Mr. Lomenick attended the University of Florida and earned his BBA from Southern Methodist University. His professional Affiliations include the Urban Land Institute (ULI), Reconnecting America – Center for Transit Oriented Development Board of Directors, U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) – LEED Location & Planning Technical Advisory Group (LP TAG), and is a past Board Member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU).
Ken Voigt
Senior Traffic Engineer
Ayres Associates
Ken has nearly 50 years of experience in conducting traffic safety studies, roadway operation analysis, traffic calming, and neighborhood street system design. He has led numerous focus group sessions to build consensus and to develop a context-sensitive design approach to projects. One of his most challenging projects was building consensus for improvements along the East Washington Avenue Corridor in Madison.
Ken teaches a course on environmental impacts of transportation systems at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; he has also taught a traffic control course at UW-Milwaukee and intersection design and traffic impacts of land development courses for the University of Wisconsin Engineering Extension. Ken's experience on large, complex corridor management projects ranging from capacity improvements to ITS applications, along with his common-sense approach to traffic management, provides insight into solving clients' traffic problems. His public involvement skills make a real difference in how projects are received.
Tim Lomax
Senior Research Engineer
Texas Transportation Institute (TTI)
Dr. Lomax has been extensively involved in urban mobility research for more than 30 years. He developed and applied a methodology to assess areawide traffic congestion levels and congestion costs. The Urban Mobility Report examines trends in urban area mobility in 101 cities throughout the U.S. A related pooled-fund research project has developed several performance measures and analytical techniques to describe mobility to a wide range of audiences including transportation professionals, public policy decision-makers, the media and the general public.
Dr. Lomax has also been involved in developing and evaluating a wide range of solutions to mobility problems, including high-occupancy vehicle facilities, and in improving decision-making processes and performance measurement. He also played a role in the regional and statewide congestion analyses and in developing principles and performance measures to evaluate and communicate solution strategies. These studies included assisting the public agencies and business community in Atlanta and Houston to develop a process to estimate congestion levels, identify cost-effectiveness analysis procedures and the effect of a range of mobility improvement strategies. He was the lead researcher in a project to examine the benefits of transportation improvements and the cost of addressing congestion in major Texas metropolitan regions for the Texas Governor's Business Council , the Texas 2030 Committee and a joint working group of Texas DOT and Metropolitan Planning Organizations.
He has been invited to make presentations on congestion, mobility and performance measure issues to a variety of professional, civic, business and government groups. He has testified before subcommittees of the U.S. and Texas House of Representatives and Senate on mobility issues. He has appeared on radio and television network news shows and many newspapers, radio and television stations in major cities covered in the mobility report.
Greg Kiloh
Project Manager, Economic Development Department
City of Austin
Greg provides project management and implementation services to project owners and stakeholders in order to successfully complete projects on time. He manages various aspects of public-private partnerships, including planning and implementing CIP projects, negotiating and monitoring agreements between the City and developers, coordinating with and assisting development partners with City regulatory functions.
Greg has been with the City of Austin since November 2000. Greg’s previous work experience includes urban design, landscape architecture and architecture, in both the public and private sector in the US and Canada.
Greg received a Master’s of Landscape Architecture from the University of Manitoba, Canada. He is an accredited member of the Congress for the New Urbanism and is a registered landscape architect in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Fred Evins
Redevelopment Project Manager, Economic Development Department
City of Austin
Fred is a Texas Registered Architect and Redevelopment Project Manager with the Economic Development Department (EDD) of the City of Austin, Texas. EDD is charged with negotiating and administering the public-private agreements used to further the City’s redevelopment and sustainable community initiatives.
Fred’s downtown Austin projects have focused on the redevelopment of underutilized City property, leveraging the properties to achieve additional public benefits while expanding the tax base and adding to downtown vitality. Fred’s downtown projects include the 2nd Street District (which produced a new downtown shopping destination as well as new multifamily, office, civic, cultural, and hospitality product) and the Seaholm Redevelopment District (which includes dense mixed-use redevelopment of the former Seaholm Power Plant, Green Water Treatment Plant and Austin Energy Control Center properties).
A native of Texas and a graduate of the Texas A&M College of Architecture, Fred began his career in private practice with the Austin firm of GSC Architects, Inc. He then pursued a non-traditional architectural career path with the City of Austin in a project management capacity. Initially, Fred managed the design and construction of City infrastructure (buildings, streets and utilities) from within Austin’s Public Works Department. Upon joining EDD in 2004, Fred became more involved in the City’s public-private redevelopment initiatives.
Lucia Athens
Chief Sustainability Officer
City of Austin
Lucia is the Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of Austin and has served as a leader in the green building movement for two decades. She is a licensed landscape architect as well as author of the book, “Building an Emerald City: A Guide to Creating Green Building Policies,” published in 2010 by Island Press. She began her career in green building in the early 1990’s, working on the development team for the City of Austin’s Green Builder program, the first such program in the United States. Ms. Athens previously spent a decade leading the City of Seattle’s award-winning green building programs.
Pam Hefner
Redevelopment Project Manager, Economic Development Department
City of Austin
Pam is the Project Manager on the Mueller Redevelopment Project for the City of Austin’s Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office.
Job Description: Facilitates the implementation of the RMMA Redevelopment and Reuse Plan
Duties:
• Support negotiations with Catellus Development Corporation to reach a Master Development Agreement (MDA). This includes coordinating interdepartmental input on development agreement topics, providing analysis and research to City team, and coordinating with City consultants.
• Consult on City regulatory issues pertaining to the redevelopment. Act as agent to zone the Mueller tract and process waivers to the Land Development Code; coordinate the processing of a “Procedure Ordinance” and Criteria Manual revisions to enable the implementation of the RMMA Redevelopment Plan
• Act as liaison between Catellus, Seton, and various City departments to coordinate and facilitate pre-MDA projects including: Seton infrastructure construction; Children’s Hospital; remediation activities; interim property uses; subdivision.
• Administer the Master Development Agreement after it is approved by Council and signed.
• Provide information to public and stakeholders concerning the negotiation and implementation process.
• Work with and staff the RMMA Plan Implementation Advisory Commission.
Gregory Weaver
Executive Vice President - Development
Catellus Development Corporation
Greg is responsible for acquisitions and development throughout the country’s Southern and Midwest regions. He also leads the following development projects: Mueller airport redevelopment, a 700-acre, sustainable mixed-use development in the heart of Austin, Texas; Prairie Glen Corporate Center, a 92-acre corporate campus and part of the 1,200-acre Glenview Naval Air Station redevelopment situated 20 miles north of Chicago; and CirclePoint Corporate Center, a 65-acre, 1.3-million-square-foot office project in Westminster, Colorado.
During five years of ProLogis ownership, Mr. Weaver served as Catellus’ President and Managing Director and was responsible for integration and branding activities, as well as providing oversight for the company’s mixed-use developments nationwide and a $1 billion retail portfolio.
Mr. Weaver joined Catellus in 2000. Roles included spearheading redevelopment at Mueller and overseeing the development of Stapleton Business Center, a 300-acre, 3.5-million-square-foot industrial business park in Denver, Colorado, and CirclePoint Corporate Center.
Marc Maxwell
City Manager
City of Sulphur Springs
Whether you know him as Mr. Downtown, Citizen of the Year, The Main Street Magician, or simply Marc, there’s no denying that Mr. Maxwell has had a profound impact on his city. Since he became the City Manager in 1995, Sulphur Springs has ushered in a new era of growth and celebration. Armed with a philosophy of skinny streets, fat sidewalks, and wholesome entertainment, Marc oversaw a $6.5 million revitalization of the central commercial district, including a major overhaul of the downtown square.
Jeff Speck
Principal
Speck & Associates LLC
Jeff Speck is a city planner and urban designer who, through writing, lectures, public service, and built work, advocates internationally for smart growth and sustainable design. He currently leads a private consultancy offering design and advisory services to public officials and the real estate industry.
Important recent work of Speck & Associates includes the Lowell, MA, Downtown Evolution Plan, walkability studies for six different cities, and the design of two transit oriented developments along the Long Island Rail Road in Babylon, NY: Wyandanch and East Farmingdale. He also led street design for Project 180 in Oklahoma City, which is currently rebuilding 50 blocks of downtown city streets. This project has converted a one-way system back to two way, doubled the amount of on-street parking, and introduced a full bicycle network where none existed.
As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, Mr. Speck presided over two NEA leadership initiatives, the Mayors' Institute on City Design and Your Town, both of which teach design skills to community leaders nationwide. He also created and oversaw a new initiative, the Governors' Institute on Community Design, which is bringing smart growth principles and techniques to state leadership. Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., Architects and Town Planners, where he directed or managed more than forty of the firm’s projects. DPZ is a leader in the international movement called the New Urbanism, which promotes alternatives to suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment.
Mr. Speck is a contributing editor to Metropolis magazine, and serves on the Sustainability Task Force of the US. Department of Homeland Security. With Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, he is the co-author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, which the Wall Street Journal calls "the urbanist's bible.” With Andres Duany, he has written The Smart Growth Manual, published in 2010 by McGraw Hill. His latest book, Walkable Cities, was released by Farrar Straus in summer, 2012.
Deanne Desjardin
VP Mueller Marketing & Communications
Catellus Development Corporation
Deanne is responsible for marketing and communications for the redevelopment of the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport (“Mueller”), a 700 acre mixed-use redevelopment located in Austin, Texas. Prior to joining Catellus’ Mueller team in 2007, Deanne began her commercial real estate career with The Rouse Company where she spent twenty two years in marketing, specialty leasing, regional property management and development roles for suburban, urban and festival marketplace projects.
John Rosato
Southwest Strategies Group Inc
John C. Rosato, applies his 30 years of commercial real estate experience to all of Southwest Strategies’ four service areas of planning and development, investments, brokerage, and public agency consulting. He has been a general partner in over 30 real estate partnerships responsible for the management of all activities of the partnerships including acquisition, development, financing and investor relations.
Mr. Rosato earned a Master of Science in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas School of Architecture. A licensed real estate broker, he has furthered his education with courses in the psychology of marketing, real estate contracts and appraisal.
He has served as President of the Heritage Society of Austin and as the Chair of the Downtown Austin Alliance board of directors. Previously he served on the Citizens Planning Committee, the Robert Mueller Redevelopment Task Force, and the Capital Metro develop enhancement guidelines for South Congress Avenue, and he has provided consulting services to Victoria Bank and the University Catholic Center at UT.
His memberships include ULI, International Right of Way Association, Commercial-Investment Division of the Austin Board of Realtors and the Commercial Leasing Brokers Association.
Gary Scott
Membership Assistant
Congress for the New Urbanism
Gary Scott joined CNU in January 2014 as a Membership Assistant after volunteering at the 2013 Transportation Summit. He works mainly with CNU’s seventeen Chapters and 2000+ members. Currently, he is a Chaddick Scholar at DePaul University, finishing his Masters of Public Administration with a focus in Metropolitan Planning & Urban Affairs. He has co-written research for the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development on inter-city bus travel in the United States, and has contributed to a national study on technology use onboard intercity buses, planes, and trains. Gary holds a B.A. in Education from Michigan State University with minors in French and History.
Mike Clark-Madison
Vice President, Public Policy & Research
Hahn Public Communications
Mike Clark-Madison, a leader of the Central Texas Chapter since 2009, is a consultant and vice president with Hahn Public Communications in Austin, specializing in public affairs land use and infrastructure projects. Before joining Hahn in 2005, Mike was for 15 years a writer and editor at The Austin Chronicle; he also serves as the chair of Austin's urban renewal agency.
Michael Mehaffy
Executive Director
Sustasis Foundation
Michael Mehaffy is a consultant, researcher, author and educator, a contributing author to sixteen books, on the editorial boards of three international urban design journals, and a regular contributor to Better Cities and Towns, The Atlantic Cities, Metropolis, Urban Land, Planetizen and others. He is also executive director of the Sustasis Foundation in Portland, where he collaborates with wiki inventor Ward Cunningham, pattern language inventor Christopher Alexander, and other innovators in planning, architecture, software and other fields, developing new neighborhood-scale tools and approaches.
Larry Gould
Principal
Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates
Larry is a transportation planner with over 30 years of experience in public transit planning and operations. He has created systems for implementing tens of billions in capital investment while maintaining nearly full service for customers as well as service plans for every major event and venue, and every potential and actual disaster, affecting New York City, including delay management for everyday problems. A founding member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, New York chapter, Larry advocates for reinforcing good development decisions with good transit decisions.
Previously, Larry served in various capacities in the Operations Planning division of Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) New York City Transit where he was responsible for short-term service planning for bus and rail, including planning for capital projects, construction, contingencies, and special events. A member of the MTA’s Blue Ribbon Sustainability Commission, he helped developed MTA’s Smart Growth and transit-oriented development program.
Robin Bergstrom
Executive Director
CNU New England
Robin Bergstrom became CNU New England's first Executive Director in March 2014, after serving for three years on its Board of Directors. Prior to this, she worked for Fort Point Associates, a Boston-based planning & consulting firm specializing in the Massachusetts environmental regulatory system. With two urban design firms -- Town Planning & Urban Design Collaborative and B. Dennis Town & Building Design -- she contributed to community-based design charrettes across New England, as well as in Texas and Tennessee. Through her studies and lifelong interest in geography and philosophy, she has cultivated a special appreciation for the the cultures, landscapes, and quirky political systems that characterize New England and New Englanders.
Patrick Condon
Chair of Masters of Urban Design
University of British Colombia
Patrick Condon has over 25 years of experience in sustainable urban design: first as a professional city planner and then as a teacher and researcher. He started his academic career in 1985 at the University of Minnesota, moving to the University of British Columbia in 1992, acting first as the Director of the Landscape Architecture program and later as the James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments. In that capacity he has worked to advance sustainable urban design in scores of jurisdiction, in the USA, Canada and Australia. In recognition of the need for collaboration as a fundamental part of designing sustainable communities, Patrick has pioneered public engagement methods and has popularized his methods in his recent book called “Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities” (2007 Island Press). He has distilled his 20+ years of experience designing sustainable communities in his recent book “Seven Rules for Sustainable Cities, Design Strategies for a Post Carbon World” (2010 Island Press). He is now the Chair of the Masters of Urban Design Program at UBC.
He has successfully focused attention on how to make systemic change in the way cities are built and operated, notably in his East Clayton project in Surrey, BC. More recently, he and his research partners have collaborated with the City of North Vancouver to produce the “100 Year Sustainability Vision,” a plan to make the City of North Vancouver a zero-carbon community. Professor Condon and his partners have recently received awards from the Planning Institute of Canada and the American Society of Landscape Architects for this work.
Timothy Zork
Urban Designer
Torti Gallas and Partners
Timothy Zork, AICP, LEED AP, is an Urban Designer and Planner with Torti Gallas and Partners in Silver Spring, MD. He works with both public and private sector clients on a wide variety of projects, and brings to each an enthusiasm for design and a dedication to careful thinking and analysis. His experience and expertise covers a broad range; from place-making and urban design, to neighborhood planning, transit-oriented design, form-based codes, and larger municipal planning efforts. Mr. Zork enjoys the unique challenges that working at each scale offers. He has also been instrumental in developing new and interesting ways to engage technology and multimedia in the design and presentation process within the firm.
Mr. Zork holds a Master of Architecture degree from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI and continues to remain involved with the school as an occasional critic and consultant on student urban design and planning projects.
Benjamin Schwarz
National Editor
The American Conservative
Benjamin Schwarz is national editor of the American Conservative and the consulting editor at large for Yale University Press, where he is responsible for bolstering the Press’s list of books in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and cultural criticism. He was for 13 years the literary and national editor at The Atlantic. Before that he was a national correspondent for The Atlantic, executive editor of World Policy Journal, and a national-security analyst at the RAND Corporation. He is writing a biography of Winston Churchill, to be published by HarperCollins.
Ward Davis
Developer
The Village at Hendrix & Community Economics
Ward Davis is a Founder of Ruskin Heights, a DPZ designed traditional neighborhood in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Community Economics a financial consulting group that works closely with traditional neighborhood developers to optimize the financial structure for TNDs, provide real time financial input to design teams during charrettes, and devise appropriate phasing strategies to reduce project risk while maximizing profit potential.
Prior to founding Ruskin Heights in 2006 and Community Economics in 2008, Mr. Davis was the acquisitions and development manager of Medical Properties Trust, a healthcare REIT located in Birmingham, Alabama. From 2000 to 2004, Mr. Davis worked as an investment banker in the corporate finance department at Stephens Inc. Mr. Davis holds an MBA from the University of Virginia, a bachelor's degree in Economics from Davidson College, and a General Course diploma from the London School of Economics.
Steve Maun
Principal
Leyland Alliance
Steve J. Maun is the President of LeylandAlliance LLC, a Tuxedo, New York-based company that is taking a leading role in creating traditional neighborhoods across the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Southeast. Steve has been a student of New Urbanism since its inception, and has fostered the vision now pursued by LeylandAlliance – to build a new company exclusively focused on the creation of new towns and neighborhoods – places that embrace tradition while setting new standards for innovation and environmental responsibility. To carry out its vision, LeylandAlliance forms strong working partnerships with talented and dedicated professionals who share its values and support its vision. Mr. Maun is a graduate of Princeton University and an executive board member of the Seaside Institute and the National Town Builders Association, a leading organization advocating smart growth and traditional neighborhood design.
Robert Sharp
Principal
Robert Sharp Architect, Inc., Partners for Better Housing
Robert is an architect working in his hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Robert Sharp has 25 years of experience in the architectural profession. He founded Robert Sharp Architect, Inc. in 1998 as a community based architectural practice to serve the needs of local organizations, institutions, and private clients. He has a keen interest in city and town planning, development economics, and regional architecture. Robert Sharp has served in numerous local organizations such as the Historic District Commission, Downtown Architectural Standards Committee, Jefferson Center for Arts and Education, and Fayetteville Natural Heritage’s Green Infrastructure project. Robert is currently Chairman of Partners for Better Housing, a 501c3 nonprofit corporation that is developing attainable housing in Fayetteville's Walker Park Neighborhood.
Jeremy Hudson
Partner & CEO
Specialized Real Estate Group
Jeremy leads design, development, and marketing for Specialized’s projects. Since 2002, he has been involved in all facets of real estate in Northwest Arkansas including brokerage, design, development, and construction. He speaks nationally about the importance of building for health and sustainability. He is a member of the inaugural Urban Land Institute 40 Under 40 and is a board member of the Arkansas Chapter of the US Green Building Council. Jeremy is a graduate of John Brown University with a degree in Construction Management and Business Administration.
Catie Sacks-Rabun
Co-Founder | Vice President-North Augusta Riverfront Company
Caradasa LLC | LeylandAlliance LLC
Catie Rabun is a co-founder of the Aiken, South Carolina based start-up development and investment firm, Caradasa LLC. Caradasa undertakes both new construction and adaptive reuse projects to achieve incremental and organic development of undervalued or underutilized properties by identifying uses that better suit the neighborhood. Caradasa focuses on development that will make a walkable lifestyle available to the broadest range of the community.
Catie also serves as Vice President and Project Manager for North Augusta Riverfront Company, subsidiary of LeylandAlliance LLC. Her work there spans a range of key development responsibilities for North Augusta Riverfront Company’s traditional neighborhood development, Hammond’s Ferry, in North Augusta, South Carolina.
Catie is a graduate of Clemson University and the University of Miami where she received a Masters Degree in Real Estate Development and Urbanism.
Giovanni Palladino
The New Urban Guild
As a tested development professional, Giovanni has a rare combination of experience – that of a licensed design professional and a residential and commercial construction manager. Giovanni blends his passion for history and New Urbanism with an architect’s precise eye for scale and detail and a businessman’s keen sense of execution and bottom line responsibility.
As an implementer of New Urbanism, Giovanni is responsible for architectural design and construction for the noted developer LeylandAlliance, of Tuxedo, New York, and serves as the company’s Town Architect for its traditional neighborhoods. His planning and architectural expertise is bolstered by his extensive field experience as a construction manager. These skills combine to ensure that the neighborhood vision created on paper comes to fruition in the built environment.
John Hersey
Program Officer
TOD Initiative
John K. Hersey serves as the TOD Initiative’s Program Officer. In this role, John conducts research and writes on best practices in creating or preserving equitable station areas, administers the Initiative’s Section 4 capacity-building program, and closely coordinates priorities with other Enterprise initiatives and markets. Prior to joining Enterprise, John worked in transportation planning in Boston and Washington, D.C., promoting transit-service accessibility, bicycle sharing, walkable communities, and community development. John earned a bachelor’s degree in sustainable urban planning and a master’s degree in regional planning from the University of Massachusetts, as well as a master’s degree in real estate development from the University of Maryland.
Michael Spotts
Senior Analyst - Project Manager
Enterprise Community Partners
Michael A. Spotts is a Senior Analyst – Project Manager for Enterprise Community Partners, where he conducts research and analysis of affordable housing and community development policies and manages Enterprise’s federal transit-oriented development policy activities. In addition, he serves as vice-chair of the Arlington County (VA) Affordable Housing Study working group, a member of the County’s Community Development Citizen’s Advisory Committee, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing. Michael graduated from Dickinson College and received a post-baccalaureate certificate in community and economic development from the Pennsylvania State University before graduating with a master’s of science in public policy and Management from the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University.
Daniel Piatkowski
Assistant Professor
Savannah State University
Dr. Piatkowski is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Savannah State University. He holds a PhD in Design and Planning from the University of Colorado Denver where he was a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education Research Trainee (NSF-IGERT) Fellow, as well as a member of the Active Communities Transportation Research Group (actresearchgroup.org). He holds a Master's degree in Urban and Environmental Planning, and a Bachelor's degree in English, both from Arizona State University. His research centers on healthy and sustainable transportation. Current research projects include: conflict, street design, and travel behavior; historic preservation and active transport; social media and sustainable transportation planning.
Rachel Tepper
Planner & Urban Designer
Design Workshop
Rachel Tepper grew up under the sunny skies of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She earned her Bachelor’s degree of Fine Arts in Design from the University of Texas at Austin and completed dual masters’ degrees in Community and Regional Planning and Urban Design at the University of Texas in the spring of 2014. Upon graduation, she began work as a Planner and Urban Designer at Design Workshop. In addition to her professional experience at Design Workshop, Tepper has worked for the City of Albuquerque Cultural Services Department, The Center for Sustainable Development at the UT School of Architecture, and Code Studio.
Mary Ebeling
Transportation Policy Analyst
State Smart Transportation Initiative
Mary Ebeling (MS in Urban and Regional Planning – UW Madison; BA – UNC Chapel Hill) is a transportation policy analyst with the State Smart Transportation Initiative. Previously she work at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in the Public Transit Section managing American Recovery and Reinvestment projects. Prior to joining WisDOT she managed the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program for Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. She also serves on the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin board of directors.
Wesley Marshall
Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering
University of Colorado Denver
Wes is currently an assistant professor of Civil Engineering and adjunct professor in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Colorado Denver, program director of the University Transportation Center through the Mountain Plains Consortium, co-director of the Active Communities/Transportation (ACT) research group, and an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (CSIS) that houses the NSF IGERT Program. He received his Professional Engineering (P.E.) license in 2003 and focus on transportation teaching and research dedicated to creating more sustainable urban infrastructures, particularly in terms of road safety, active transportation, and transit. Other recent teaching and research topics involve: transportation planning and land use modeling, parking, health, and street networks.
Having spent time in the private sector with Sasaki Associates, and Clough, Harbour and Associates, he has been working on planning and site design issues related to civil and transportation engineering for the last fifteen years. A native of Watertown, Massachusetts, he is a graduate of the University of Virginia, the University of Connecticut, a recipient of the Dwight Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship, and winner of the Charley V. Wootan Award for Outstanding TRB Paper in the field of Policy and Organization.
Courtney Coughenour
Assistant Professor in Residence
UNLV School of Community Health Sciences
Dr. Courtney Coughenour is currently an Assistant Professor in Residence in the UNLV School of Community Health Sciences. Her research area of interest relates to Health & Place, specifically community design as it relates to an obesogenic environment. Much of her work focuses on disparities in access to a health promoting environment, such as opportunities for physical activity, food access, and community resources. Current projects include an evaluation of rural Nevada communities resident perceptions and available resources which are obesity preventing or promoting and uncovering perceived barriers and preference for bicycle infrastructure in an effort to increase intermodal transportation rates.
Kathleen Larson
University of Nevada Las Vegas
Patrick Braga
Student
Cornell University
Patrick Braga is a third-year undergraduate student at Cornell University, pursuing degrees in Urban and Regional Studies and Music. He presented research on misapplied notions of walkability at CNU 22 in Buffalo last year. Patrick is a mayor-appointed voting member of the City of Ithaca, NY Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Council, has worked as a comprehensive planning and form-based coding intern at the City of Sarasota Urban Design Studio, and will be interning with the Boston Cyclists Union this summer.
Nikos Salingaros
Professor of Mathematics
University of Texas at San Antonio
Nikos Salingaros is a mathematician and polymath known for his work on urban theory, architectural theory, complexity theory, and design philosophy. He has been a close collaborator of the architect and computer software pioneer Christopher Alexander, with whom Salingaros shares a harsh critical analysis of conventional modern architecture. Like Alexander, Salingaros has proposed an alternative theoretical approach to architecture and urbanism that is more adaptive to human needs and aspirations, and that combines rigorous scientific analysis with deep intuitive experience. Salingaros' writings helped to introduce two key concepts in urban morphology, fractals and networks.
Salingaros published substantive research on algebras, mathematical physics, electromagnetic fields, and thermonuclear fusion, before turning his attention to architecture and urbanism. He is on the architecture faculties of universities in Italy, Mexico, and The Netherlands. He also still teaches mathematics, and holds the post of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Salingaros has been ranked 11th among a poll of "top 100 urban thinkers of all time" by Planetizen, and "one of 50 visionaries who are changing your world" by the Utne Reader.
Joanna Alimanestianu
Project leader
Bahia Muyuyo project
Joanna Alimanestianu is an architect and urbanist based in Belgium, and co-founder of the Council for European urbanism. She is lead planner for the Bahia Muyuyo project on the Ecuador coast, a pioneering mixed-income project that builds on local culture and ecology. She was educated at Barnard and Princeton, and is currently affiliated with the University of Notre Dame.
Audun Engh
Secretary
INTBAU
Audun Engh is from Oslo, Norway. Education in law. Project manager for conferences, workshops and charrettes held in several countries, including the Climate Change and Urban Design conference in Oslo, 2008, and INTBAU Scandinavia workshops in Transylvania, Romania. Member of the INTBAU College of Chapters, representing INTBAU Scandinavia. Board member of CEU – Council for European Urbanism.
Kate Rube
Vice President, Public Policy & Research
Project for Public Spaces
Kate Rube is an urban planner with expertise in smart growth, active living, and transportation issues. She has led many efforts to build coalitions across different sectors, organize workgroups and training programs, and provide technical assistance to local organizations and governments in order to advance sustainable community goals.
Previous this position, she worked as the Active Design National Training Manager for New York City’s inter-agency Active Design program, where she developed and ran a peer mentoring and training program for municipalities across the country on how to design communities and streets that encourage walking, bicycling, and other physical activity. In this role, she organized trainings and workshops for more than 1,200 people. She provided resources and technical assistance on a range of active living issues, including fostering inter-agency partnerships, building political support, and policy opportunities.
Kate served as the Director of Government Affairs & Outreach for Smart Growth America from 2007-2010, where she organized a coalition of more than 60 national, state, and local organizations. She led policy development and advocacy on sustainable communities, housing, transportation, and environmental issues. During her time at Smart Growth America, Kate helped develop and build support for performance-based transportation planning policy, as well as legislation integrating climate change goals in transportation policy. Kate helped to organize development of the Transportation for America campaign, a broad national coalition for federal transportation reform.
Kate formerly worked for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group as the Assistance National Field Director, where she coordinated the organization’s strategy to build political, public and stakeholder support on a range of federal environmental issues.
Eli Spevak
Owner
Orange Splot LLC
Eli Spevak has been crafting affordable, community-oriented housing developments in Portland since he arrived in 1994 as a volunteer construction supervisor with Portland Habitat for Humanity. During his first decade in Portland, he managed the finance and construction of over 250 units of affordable housing through community-based non-profit organizations. After taking a year off to work as a backcountry ranger, Eli launched a development and general contractor company, Orange Splot, LLC, with a mission to pioneer new models of community-oriented, affordable, green housing developments in Portland—ideally within an easy bike ride of his house. So far, Orange Splot has completed several small communities of homes and consulted on the development of projects large and small. Orange Splot projects have been featured in the New York Times, Sunset Magazine, NBC’s Today Show, and Portland’s annual Build It Green! tours. For links to articles and more information about recent projects, please visit www.orangesplot.net.
Michael Hathorne
Senior Planning Manager
Suburban Land Reserve
Michael Hathorne is a land planning executive and urbanist with experience in areas such as community design, property acquisition, land entitlements, long range land planning, and land use policy. Specialties include excellent project management, negotiation, teaching and public relations skills. Other areas of expertise include New Urbanism, Transit-Oriented Development, and Form-Based Code.
Bill Dennis
Architect & Urban Designer
B. Dennis Town and Building Design
Bill Dennis attained his professional Degree in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati and has practiced as an architect and planner since 1979. He is a charter member of The Congress for the New Urbanism and board member of New England CNU. He has also served as the director of the CNU Council for housing and codes in Sant Fe and team leader for the Governor’s Katrina Commission for Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Mr. Dennis has designed more than 120 New Urbanist neighborhoods, villages and towns, as well as all housing types, retail, office and civic buildings. His most significant projects in the last 25 years have been collaborated with such noted design firms as Moule & Polyzoides as well as Duany, Plater-Zyberk & Placemakers, Mr. Dennis has vast experience in forming and running complete teams of talented consultants for design charrettes to working on plans and buildings on his own. Mr. Dennis is a proud recipient of CNU awards for his Crewkerne, England; Dona Ana, New Mexico and Rio Nuevo, Arizona projects.
Michael Mabaquiao
Designer
Torti Gallas & Partners
Lew Oliver
Whole Town Solutions
"Lew Oliver is an Atlanta-based, urbanist, master planner, and designer, whose work has won numerous national and international awards. His design and implementation of the DPZ Master Plan of Vickery was instrumental in the project winning the 2006 ULI Development of Excellence Award, the 2006 Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association Development of the Year Award, and a 2008 CNU Charter Award.
Oliver’s residential design emerged in the early 2000’s with work in noted New Urbanist projects as Celebration FL, I’on SC, Clarke’s Grove GA, Lost Rabbit MS, Rosemary Beach FL, and lead to the design for the 2001 New American Home in Atlanta, the National Association of Homebuilder’s 1st Earthcraft show house. The same year, Oliver’s Southern Accents Show house at Rosemary Beach opened to a record number of visitors. Oliver’s “Nest” cottage, collaboration with Serenbe, Southface, the DOE will be open to the public early in the Summer of 2010, as well as the Coastal Living Ultimate Beach House in Seabrook WA.
Oliver’s mixed-use projects began in the design of boutique hotels in 2001. In collaboration with architectural firms, he produced the design for the Grand Bohemian Orlando which has earned the title of Best in Brand, Westin Worldwide for 5 consecutive years. The Mansion on Forsyth in Savannah was conceived and detailed by Oliver the following year. Vickery Town Center, Downtown Woodstock, realized by 2008, received Charter Awards.
In 2001, Oliver was named “Town Urbanist” of Clarke’s Grove, a historic infill project master planned by DPZ. By the late 2000s, the DPZ master planned towns of Vickery, Big Canoe Village, and the Village at Hendrix, as well as the new town of Serenbe (nation’s largest eco-community), Woodstock Downtown, Seven Norcross, Manget, and Patrick Square, were added as projects under Oliver’s design direction. Oliver’s design hand has lead to his involvement and leadership on numerous charettes including DPZ’s Isla Jose Gonzalez, Panama; Arcos de la Frontera, Spain; the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Lifelong Communities Charette, Seabrook, WA, Big Canoe Village, GA; Tornagrain, Scotland; Schooner Bay, Bahamas; Cloudrock, UT; amongst many others.
Jason King
Senior Project Director
Dover, Kohl & Partners
Jason has extensive experience with smart growth, comprehensive planning and form-based codes. His previous experience as a municipal planner assists in the creation of successful, effective plans and codes. Jason leads projects across the country through to implementation, and has participated in over 30 design and comprehensive plan charrettes worldwide. He is a specialist in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Transfer of Development Rights programs, and the Smartcode. His writings and graphics have been published in numerous planning texts.
Jason has been a Project Director with Dover, Kohl & Partners since 2005 and has extensive experience with illustrative plans, comprehensive planning and form-based codes. His previous years as a municipal planner informs the creation of successful, effective plans and codes. Jason has participated in over 40 design charrettes worldwide for both public and private clients and has a specialty in city and town design. Jason holds a Masters of Community Planning and is credentialed by the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Congress for the New Urbanism. Jason is on the Transect Codes Council, frequently speaks at APA and CNU national conferences and his writings and graphics have been published in numerous urban design and planning publications. Jason is also the author of the first novel of the New Urbanism:www.newtownstjerome.com
Chris Elisara
Producer
First+Main Media
A visionary social entrepreneur and filmmaker, Chris has over 20 years experience producing award-winning broadcast documentaries, promotional videos, and media strategy with director, and First+Main Media co-founder, John Paget.
John Thomas
Director
EPA Sustainable Communities Office
John Thomas is the Director of the Community Assistance and Research Division in the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities. He holds a master’s degree in Urban Planning from Cornell University and a Ph. D. in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley.
Over the past 15 years John has worked on sustainable transportation and land use planning issues at the federal level, provided technical assistance to state and local governments, and taught graduate courses related to smart growth. More recently, John has been spending significant time on the HUD-DOT-EPA Sustainable Communities Partnership and plays a leading role in providing technical assistance and supporting performance measures to guide the policy process. John’s classes are PSUS 210 Sustainable Transportation Systems and PSUS 212 Sustainable Communities.
Kara Luckey
PhD Candidate
College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver
Kara Luckey is a PhD Candidate in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver, where her work is focused on the relationship between urban infrastructure, community development, and social equity. She is currently engaged in research on neighborhood change and gentrification associated with transportation investments, residential location decision-making, and the interface between transportation and housing policy and planning. Kara has been funded through fellowships in Sustainable Urban Infrastructure through the National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program, as well as the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Eisenhower program. She holds a degree in Civil Engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, and has over seven years of experience as a practitioner working in transit and transportation planning, urban revitalization, waterfront redevelopment, and planning for national parks and federal lands.
Hank Dittmar
Director
Dittmar Associates Limited
Hank Dittmar is one of the world's leading urbanists, advising governments, companies, and communities all over the world on making cities and towns more livable, resilient and beautiful.
In 2014, he stepped down as Chief Executive of The Prince's Foundation to undertake a limited number of number of high impact projects for the Foundation and on his own. Dittmar was the longest serving Chief Executive for The Prince's Foundation for Building Community, directing the growth of the unique charity in the UK and around the world, and overseeing the development of its practice based approach to education from 2005-2013. He remains a Special Advisor.
From 2000-2005, Dittmar was Founding President and CEO of Reconnecting America, was Chairman of the Congress for the New Urbanism from 2003-2008, and Executive Director of the Surfacte Transportation Policy Project from 1993-1999. He has been the head of a US based foundation, a regional planner, an airport director, and an outreach worker with street gangs in Chicago's inner city.
Steve Murdock
Professor
Department of Sociology, Rice University
Steve H. Murdock is the Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Professor of Sociology at Rice University. He previously served as Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census having been nominated for the position by President Bush and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007 and serving until the change in administration in January of 2009. Prior to his appointment at Rice, he was the Lutcher Brown Distinguished Chair in Demography and Organization Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the Director of the Institute for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research. Before UTSA, Murdock was a Regents Professor and Head of the Department of Rural Sociology at Texas A&M University. He was also the official State Demographer of Texas. He was appointed to this position by Governor Rick Perry and was the first person to occupy this position. Dr. Murdock earned his Ph.D. in demography and sociology from the University of Kentucky and is the author or editor of 15 books and more than 150 articles and technical reports on the implications of current and future demographic and socioeconomic change. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. These include the Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award in Research from Texas A&M University, the Excellence in Research Award and the Outstanding Rural Sociologist Award from the Rural Sociological Society, The Distinguished Alumni Award from North Dakota State University and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Sociology at the University of Kentucky. He was named one of the fifty most influential Texans by Texas Business in 1997 and as one of the twenty-five most influential persons in Texas by Texas Monthly in 2005. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Eta Epsilon national honor societies.
Tom Low
Director
Civic by Design
Thomas Low is a registered architect and certified planner. Low has completed over 150 charrettes and is directing numerous new urbanism projects winning awards from organizations including the American Institute of Architects, the Sierra Club, the National Association of Homebuilders, and the Environmental Protection Agency for Smart Growth Achievement. He is Director of Civic By Design with the mission to elevate the quality of the built environment. He leads the initiatives Light Imprint and Learning Cottages. Light Imprint integrates Sustainability and Community Design. It includes the Light Imprint Handbook, and web site, (lightimprint.org) Learning Cottages (learningcottages.com) are small scale neighborhood schools and campuses. He is also the creator of Mixopoly, a hands-on design workshop on placemaking for a healthy, sustainable built environment. Low makes presentations, conducts workshops, and participates in webinars for the Congress for the New Urbanism, the American Institute of Architects, the American Planning Association, The Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club, New Partners for Smart Growth, Railvolution, the National Town Builders Association, the United States Green Building Council, the Form-Based Code Institute, and other planning and civic organizations.
Lee Einsweiler
Principal
Code Studio
Lee has been involved in planning, zoning and plan implementation in a variety of settings over the past 30 years. His main emphasis has been on redevelopment activity in urban areas, beginning in south Florida in the 80’s and 90’s, and continuing with his recent work in Los Angeles, Raleigh and Chattanooga. Lee sharpened his skills in the preparation of zoning and subdivision regulations across the country, and has been personally responsible for over 50 code projects, including the complete revision and adoption of over 30 codes. His combination of conventional zoning know-how and new form-based code approaches are rare in the profession, and his ability to facilitate the consideration and adoption of new zoning serves his clients well.
Mary Madden
Principal
Ferrell Madden Lewis, LLC
Mary Madden, AICP has nearly 20 years of experience in the fields of urban planning and design, community development, and historic preservation at the federal, state, and local levels. Current work includes town planning and urban design for public and private sector clients, with an emphasis on revising zoning codes to promote smart growth, sustainability and New Urbanism. Recent projects have been in Prince George’s County, Maryland (suburban Washington, DC); Memphis, Tennessee; Leesburg, Virginia; and Peoria, Illinois. She recently co-authored “Placemaking with Form-Based Codes” for the September 2006 issue of Urban Land magazine and was a contributor to the APA/CNU publication Codifying New Urbanism: How to Reform Municipal Land Development Regulations. She has been an adjunct faculty member for the Virginia Tech Department of Urban Affairs and Planning and frequently speaks on the topics of planning, design, and form-based codes.
Before joining Ferrell Madden Lewis in 2002, Ms. Madden served in several positions at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, including as the Assistant Deputy Secretary for Field Policy and Management, where she managed the Community Builder program, and as a Special Assistant to the HUD Secretary. Earlier in her career, she was the Assistant Coordinator of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, and worked in the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.
Ms. Madden holds a Master of Urban and Environmental Planning degree from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Princeton University.
Ms. Madden is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, the Congress for the New Urbanism and the American Planning Association. She is a Charter Board Member of the Form-Based Codes Institute.
Michaele Pride
Professor & Associate Dean for Public Outreach and Engagement
School of Architecture and Planning, University of New Mexico
Michaele Pride, AIA, NOMA, Professor & Associate Dean for Public Outreach and Engagement, School of Architecture and Planning, University of New Mexico
Michaele is a professor of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. Prior to 2011, she was at the University of Cincinnati, where she served as the Director of the School of Architecture and Interior Design from 2003-09. As an architect and urban designer, she emphasizes principles of consensus, collaboration and public engagement in her teaching, research and professional consulting.
After the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles, Michaele helped found the Design Professionals’ Coalition, offering assistance to neglected communities of South LA. She left private practice in Los Angeles to become the inaugural Director of the Downtown Design Center at the University of Kentucky in 1996.
Michaele is on the Board of Trustees of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and serves on the Design Review Committee for the Sawmill Community Land Trust.
Andrew Laska
VP - Special Projects
Richardson Heights Neighborhood Association
Andrew Laska serves on the board of the North Texas Chapter for the Congress of the New Urbanism. For five years he served as President of the Richardson (Texas) Heights Neighborhood Association and currently serves as its Vice President of Special projects. In the past he served on Richardson's Environmental Advisory Commission and on its Sign Control Board.
In the past he served as co-Chair for the Richardson, Texas vote Yes campaign for its 2010 Bond Program. He helped lead the 2009 Heights Plan for Excellence - A plan for helping revitalize older neighborhoods in this inner ring suburb. As part of those efforts, he helped bring Richardson's first retro-fitted park, Durham Park, into existence and he was the lead citizen on the redevelopment planning and rezoning of the West Spring Valley corridor in Richardson, Texas. He earned a Graduate Certificate in City Planning from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Bruce Donnelly
Urban Planner
Office of Bruce Donnelly
Bruce F. Donnelly is an urban planner based in the Cleveland, Ohio area, specializing in organizing codes and plans. He has written a chapter for the forthcoming book, The Transect, edited by Brian Falk of CATS, and has contributed a chapter to Landscape Urbanism and its Discontents, edited by Emily Talen and Andres Duany.
Kenny Craft
Principal
Craft Design Studio, LLC
Craft Design Studio, PLLC is an Architecture firm specializing in Authentic, Traditionally Rooted Architecture, in an Urban context. Founder, Kenny Craft, has been a passionate advocate of the New Urbanist movement, and the work of Craft Design Studio strives to align with, and advance it’s principles.
Craft Design Studio specializes in residential architecture, from High End Residential, to Affordable Housing, from New Urban Neighborhoods to Historic Urban In-fill. Craft Design Studio can also provide architectural services for a wide range of commercial architecture, specializing in types common to New Urban Neighborhoods, such as Live Works, Multifamily Buildings, and Mixed Use Buildings. Craft Design Studio can also provide Town Architect services, developing architectural standards, and upholding them through a rigorous yet customer sensitive review process.
Kenny Craft currently serves as the Director of Design for the South Main Neighborhood, in Buena Vista Colorado, a Mixed-use Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND), planned by Dover Kohl and Partners. As Director of Design, Kenny oversees all aspects of design and implementation, upholding design standards through a design review process and construction observation.
Kenny has also been a Charrette team member for mixed-use developments around the country, helping to set and establish an architectural vision for the development, rooted in the local building traditions of the region.
Jenny Bevan
Partner & Designer
Bevan & Liberatos
Jenny is partner and designer at Bevan & Liberatos, a Charleston-based design firm specializing in contemporary traditional design at many scales, from town-planning to buildings and furniture. She holds a BS Arch from the University of Virginia, an M Arch from the University of Notre Dame, has received fellowships from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and was named 2013 Soane Scholar by the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation. Jenny co-authored CivicConservation.org in 2014, and delivered a “TED” talk in 2015 entitled, “Our Disposable Architecture.”
Erin Chantry
Urban Designer and Planner
Stantec
Erin Chantry, LEED AP ND, CNU-A is an Urban Designer and Planner with Stantec’s Urban Places Group in Charlotte, NC. With a BA in Architecture, an MA in Urban Design, and an MS in Urban Planning, Erin has served on a variety of projects for both public sector and private sector clients, with a primary focus on architecture, urban design, land use planning, design research, and sustainability. She has expert knowledge in New Urbanism, LEED for Neighborhood Development, and how sustainable city planning and urban design can be used as a catalyst for redevelopment.
Erin has written articles in Next City, New Geography, and has served as a journalist for the Congress for the New Urbanism. Additionally, Erin’s blog, At the Helm of the Public Realm, has gained recognition in the field of urban design. Erin is one of the founders of CNU Tampa Bay, the local chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism. In 2012, she and CNU Tampa Bay, partnered with the Urban Charrette to create Urbanism on Tap, a recurring open-mic event that gives the community the opportunity to speak about issues of urbanism facing cities today.
Vinod Kadu
Vinod Kadu is an architect and urban design professional with advanced degrees from the University of Illinois and the School of Planning & Architecture New Delhi, India. Passionate about creating walkable and transit friendly sustainable communities, Vinod has an expert knowledge in town planning and urban design. He has worked on a variety of urban design and planning projects, both here in US and his native country, India.
Currently, he is actively involved with CNU Tampa Bay and serves as the program coordinator for the group. He is also the key organizing member of Urbanism on Tap event series, which recently won the 2014 Award of Excellence from the Sun Coast Section of the Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association.
Ashly Anderson
Placemaking & Urban Design Manager
Tampa Downtown Partnership & Friends of the Riverwalk
Ashly Anderson, LEED AP, is the Placemaking and Urban Design Manager for the Tampa Downtown Partnership and Friends of the Riverwalk. Ms. Anderson holds a Master of Urban & Community Design from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Interior Design from the Art Institute of Tampa. In her current position, Ashly works to program, activate and promote Tampa’s downtown and the Tampa Riverwalk and uses principles of placemaking to establish public-private collaboration in public spaces.
Prior to her current position, she worked as a designer at RS&H, a private architecture and engineering firm. Her work at RS&H included the design and management of building projects for private and public sector clients such as Raymond James, Tampa International Airport, Wells Fargo, Moffitt Cancer Center and the Florida Department of Transportation.
Beginning in 2012, she has acted as Adjunct Design Faculty at the Art Institute of Tampa, educating bachelor degree seeking interior design students.
Ashly serves as the Vice-President of the Urban Charrette, a non-profit focused on educating communities and leaders on quality urban design and also serves as incoming President of the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, a 45 year-old public art festival held in Downtown Tampa. She has been published in the National Civic Review and Architect Magazine.
Ann Bagley
Director elected at Large
APA
As a community planner and as a consultant, Ann Bagley's work has focused on comprehensive plans, ordinances, park development, and training planning commissions. She has worked in both the public and private sectors and now serves on the Dallas City Plan Commission. Ann is in her second term as a Board Member Elected at Large on the Board of Directors of the American Planning Association. She also serves as the Planning Officials Development Officer for APA Texas.
Merrill St. Leger Demian
Principal
SmithGroupJJR
A Principal at SmithGroupJJR’s Washington, DC office, Merrill leads the Urban Design and Planning Studio. She believes in the power of urban design and planning to create unique and memorable places which generate social and economic value, and enrich the lives of the people who use them. In over 20 years of practice, Merrill has led community planning projects, mixed-use development master plans, university and federal campus planning projects in the mid-Atlantic region. Merrill is currently leading the urban design and planning of Scotts Run Station, a 40-acre TOD at the first Silver Line Metro Station in Tysons Corner, Virginia. She recently completed the Southeast Boulevard Planning Study and the Mid City East Small Area Plan in Washington, DC. Merrill holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Catholic University, and a Master of Architecture from Virginia Tech.
James Khamsi
Principal
FIRM Architecture and Design
James Khamsi (RA, AIA) is principal of FIRM Architecture and Design, an emerging New York City-based practice he founded in 2010. The firm specializes in public and cultural spaces within the city, and is known for its innovative use of structure, patterns and materials. James has experience delivering projects in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom which range in scale from urban masterplans and public infrastructure to private interiors and furniture pieces. James received his Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, and his Masters of Architecture with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His work has been published in Metropolis, Actar’s Verb series, Volume, MONU, Scapegoat and Interior Design magazine. He is the editor of “Huburbs: Transit and Urbanism in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area,” published 2012 by the University of Toronto. Beyond his practice, James is active in research and teaching. He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University, and he has held positions at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard.
Mike Christensen
Graduate Student
University of Utah in Salt Lake City
Currently studying at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City pursuing a Master of City and Metropolitan Planning and an Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Sustainability. Primary interests include sustainable transportation and land use policy. Serving on the Council of Representatives of the National Association of Railroad Passengers.
David Stocker
Principal
Stocker Hoesterey Montenegro Architects
David is an architect in Dallas, TX, with a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arkansas and over 25 years of experience in the industry. His firm specializes in high-end residential projects throughout the United States, including a project currently underway in Alys Beach, Florida. David enjoys writing about the intersection of economics, architecture, and community with religious faith. His articles have been published in Modern Reformation Magazine and The Journal of Sacred Architecture. He is a member of the Mises Institute (an Austrian economics think-tank in Auburn, Alabama), as well as the Congress for New Urbanism and the American Institute of Architects.
Daniel Emerine
Development Review Specialist
D.C. Office of Planning
Alejandro Henao
PhD Student, Civil Engineering
University of Colorado Denver
"Alejandro is currently a transportation PhD student in Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver (UCD), president of the Institute of Transportation Engineers UCD Student Chapter, and student leader of the Active Communities/Transportation (ACT) research group. He is conducting his dissertation on evaluating the accuracy of information technologies, and analyzing the travel behavior impacts of information technologies and evolving transportation services.
Alejandro holds an M.S. in civil engineering from UCD and a B.S. in Civil engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a recipient of the Dwight Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship, the Bridge to the Doctorate Program Fellowship, and the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program from the National Science Foundation. He has taught the class “Introduction to GIS” in the Civil Engineering department at UCD, and prior to joining the graduate school program at UCD, Alejandro worked professionally as a civil engineer for Contech Bridge, Insituform Technologies, and Opus Northwest in Colorado.
Alejandro has published several transportation research studies in peer-reviewed journals including Transport Policy and Transportation Research Record, and has presented at various conferences such as the Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, in topics related to transportation infrastructure investments and mode share changes, sporting event stadiums characteristics including parking, and transportation economic resilience. He continues doing research that focuses on creating more sustainable and equitable places such as active transportation, multimodal and intermodal options, information technologies, and evolving transportation modes."
Sinclair Black
Principal
Black + Vernooy
Sinclair Black has been instrumental in the development of urbanist ideals in Central Texas while retaining the region’s architectural spirit and character. As the Austin Chronicle notes, “Over four decades, he’s remained tirelessly devoted to inspiring, cajoling, haranguing and goading Austin to embrace better urban design.” Sinclair has found success in both his Architecture and Urban Design practice as well as his teaching position at the University of Texas, where he focuses on urban design, bridging the gap between architecture and planning. In 2007, Sinclair launched Placemaking Studio, a national urban design collaborative that is a free-form association of respected urban designers, planners, and architects that offer their placemaking and urban design expertise to large-scale public and private projects.
The many awards that recognize Sinclair’s accomplishments include two Austin “Community Foundation Awards,” the “Impact Award” from the Downtown Austin Alliance, the “Visionary Award” from the Heritage Society of Austin, “Downtowner of the Year” from the Texas Downtown Association, and the “Pioneer Award” from Envision Central Texas. In 1984, the American Institute of Architects, AIA, took note of Sinclair’s life’s work and made him a Fellow. As his long and admirable career continues, we have also taken note and honor Sinclair with an Athena Medal for his excellence in promoting practical, green, and smart urban design.
Bill Lennertz
Executive Director
National Charrette Institute
Bill Lennertz, AIA, is Executive Director of the National Charrette Institute. First as Director of the Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) Boston office, then as a partner with Lennertz Coyle & Associates, Bill has managed over 150 charrettes. Bill co-developed and teaches the NCI Charrette System™, the first structured approach to design-based collaborative community planning. Since he co-founded NCI in 2001, Bill has trained top staff from various organizations including the US DOD, World Bank, US EPA, US General Services Administration, Parsons Brinckerhoff as well as public planning agencies and private firms nationally. Bill is co-author of The Charrette Handbook published by the American Planning Association. He received his Masters of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University where he annually teaches the NCI Charrette System™ certificate course. Bill is currently the President of the CNU-Cascadia chapter.
David Brain
Professor of Sociology & Environmental Studies
New College of Florida
Claudio Sarmiento-Casas
PhD Student, Planning
University of Toronto
Claudio Sarmiento-Casas is a PhD candidate in Planning for the University of Toronto. Stemming directly from his experience as Urban Development and Accessibility coordinator at EMBARQ Mexico, his research investigates the intersection between guerrilla (DIY) urbanism and sustainable urban mobility. Although currently residing in Toronto, his research focuses on Mexico.
Ricardo Fernandez
MNU, Msc
Ricardo Fernandez is an advisor for The Federal Housing Trust in Mexico, working as a link between street artists that intervene public spaces in housing development with trouble, and with the Trust. He holds a master in New Urbanism and has specialized in Housing and Public Space analysis.
He is the director of a communications agency specialized in urban issues working both with private and the public sector.
Ezequiel Frías
Artist
Ezequiel Frías is a member of The Board Dripper: a platform for artistic production and social research that aims to contribute to the building of community identities where free speech, aesthetic art experience, reflection and team collaboration contribute to the development of our communal social sensitivity, and the formation of a prosperous and free culture. The Board Dripper has been a critical celebration of street culture for more than 5 years.
Steve Wilson
Senior Urban Designer
Farr Associates
Steve is a Senior Urban Designer and project manager with over eighteen years of national experience, joining Farr Associates in 2014. His work focuses on the creation and revitalization of urban places and he has a broad portfolio in master planning for cities, university campuses, and new development.
Jennifer Krouse
Founder
Steepletown Studios and Imagining North Adams
Jennifer Krouse is a strategist and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Steepletown Studios, a web development studio, and Imagining North Adams, a 2012 placemaking festival that continues to effect change in its host city. From 2008-2012, she served on the Steering Committee of NextGen: The Next Generation of New Urbanists. As two-time Co-Chair and co-organizer of the Open Source Congress – the grassroots component of the Congress for the New Urbanism – she has facilitated idea marketplaces for groups as small as 30 and as large as 250. Jen holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the Stockholm School of Economics, and she is a regular guest contributor to the Strong Towns blog.
Rik Adamski
Partner
ASH + LIME Strategies
Rik focuses his work on placemaking, economic development, retail policy, mapping and research. He has more than ten years of experience in the real estate and planning industries. Before co-founding ASH+LIME, Rik was a Senior Planner for Bowman-Melton, a Dallas-based pedestrian and bicycle planning firm. His professional experience includes planning, economic development, public safety, business management, stakeholder facilitation and real estate research. He earned a Masters in Urban Planning & Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Cincinnati.
Rik has worked in various capacities for the City of Fort Worth and the national headquarters of the American Planning Association (APA), the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and S.B. Friedman Development Advisors. He conducted research for several of the nation’s most influential planning organizations, as a Program Assistant for the CNU, for the APA Planning Advisory Service, and in the development of the CNT’s Housing+Transportation® Toolkit.
Rik substantially contributed to the Downtown Fort Worth Inc. Transportation and Education committees in the development of the downtown master plan. In 2012, he was the Streetscape Team Leader on embRACE theSTREET, a neighborhood-based project oriented toward creating an economically-sustainable arts district in Fort Worth’s Near Northeast Side. He has lectured at UTA, Texas A&M, Congress for the New Urbanism and Focus North Texas on the Better Block model and similar citizen-oriented neighborhood revitalization strategies. Rik also manages the most comprehensive planning and urban design calendar in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Christopher Pizzi
Architect
Hart Howerton
Christopher Pizzi is an award-winning designer and a licensed architect in California with 15 years of experience in architecture, urban design and master planning. Christopher’s work experience - in New York, London, and San Francisco – has included a broad range of project types, from high-density residential buildings and schools to resort and campus planning. Christopher’s design research includes drawing, painting, picture-taking, collage and architectural competitions. He has exhibited his work nationally, and his design work and writings have been published in books and journals including The American Scholar, The Architects’ Journal, and Retrospecta. Christopher’s teaching experience includes design studio and seminar courses, and design review juries.
Sallie Hambright-Belue
Assistant Professor & Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies
Clemson University
Sallie Hambright-Belue is the Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies and an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at Clemson University. Her academic research areas are in beginning design-pedagogy, design-build curriculum, and merging sustainable farming and architecture. She has led numerous service learning design studios, which contribute to strengthening the local food community in the Upstate of South Carolina. Additionally, she and her husband own and operate Thicketty Mountain Farms.
Rebecca Pittman
Landscape Architect, RLA, LEED AP
Freese and Nichols, Inc
Rebecca Pittman is a landscape architect with Freese and Nichols who specializes in park and recreational design for public and private owners. She has transformed parks and trails, corporate campuses, community centers, streetscapes and bridges into sustainable, viable solutions that enhance their communities for decades.
Rebecca has worked on a variety of trail system projects that help communities and neighborhoods connect to nature. As project manager for City of Dallas’s Elm Fork Greenbelt Master Plan, she helped establish the alignment for the 14-mile multi-use trail, connecting trail users from surrounding neighborhoods to trailheads and other site amenities. She also helped identify existing wildlife areas and created buffers to help protect the wildlife from trail users. When designing trail projects, Rebecca focuses on preserving the land, protecting existing wildlife areas, and providing public access that minimizes disturbance to the area.
Erica Craycraft-Bartlett
AICP, LEED Green Associate
Freese and Nichols
Erica Craycraft-Bartlett is an urban planner with Freese and Nichols specializing in current and long-range land use planning for municipalities and other public sector entities. Her work focuses on comprehensive plans, zoning and subdivision regulations, municipal development review, and growth management strategies for cities across Texas. Her interests include sustainable design, healthy communities, and urban agriculture. Erica is an Ohio native and received her Master of Community Planning degree from the University of Cincinnati.
Tania Homayoun, Ph.D
Senior Conservation Biologist
Urban Conservation Program, Audubon Texas
Dr. Tania Homayoun is the Senior Conservation Biologist with Audubon Texas. She leads Audubon Texas’s Urban Conservation Program, which invites communities to reimagine their relationship with the natural world through conservation strategies – tailored to individuals, community spaces, and municipalities – that create urban spaces supporting native ecosystems, birds, and people. She has worked on a variety of conservation projects, restoration plans, and educational programs/trainings that support North Texas’ unique biodiversity and contribute to sustainable communities.
Sarah Stumpo
Senior Undergraduate Architecture Student
Clemson University
Sarah Stumpo is a Senior Undergraduate Architecture Student with a minor in Communication Studies at Clemson University. She has worked with Sallie Hambright-Belue in the Feed & Seed Studio. Sarah is interested in integrating culture into interior environments specifically in the hospitality field. Upon graduation, she will pursue a Masters of Art in Interior Architecture and Design at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Kathleen Peek
Senior Undergraduate Architecture Student
Clemson University
Kathleen Peek is a Senior Undergraduate Architecture Student with a minor in Art at Clemson University. She has worked with Sallie Hambright-Belue in the Feed & Seed Studio as well as in a directed study course. She is interested in community development and outreach opportunities. Upon graduation, she will work as a college missionary with Fellowship of Catholic University Students.
Candace Carlisle
Staff Writer
Dallas Business Journal
Candace Carlisle is an award-winning journalist at the Dallas Business Journal, with a focus on real estate. The DBJ recruited Candace for her extensive coverage of the Dallas-Fort Worth business community. Prior to the Business Journal, she spent five years writing for the Dallas Morning News, Denton Record-Chronicle and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
She graduated with a Masters degree in journalism from the University of North Texas, Magna cum laude. Candace also has a business degress from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Lysistrata Hall
Neighborhood Specialist
City of Phoenix
Michael Alost
Senior Vice President
KDC Development
Michael Alost has been involved in building development since 1985. Currently, Alost directs the development of infrastructure for the CiyLine project in Richardson. Texas, which includes the 1.5 million square foot State Farm Dallas HUB. Duties include administration of governmental funding sources and TIF district financing as well as the coordination of adjacent development partners for multifamily, retail and hospitality. Alost joined KDC in early 2013 after a 27 year career in Louisiana and across the Gulf South. Alost has managed more than $800 million in construction since 1985, including hospitality, multifamily, educa¬tion, health care and large scale publicly funded projects. Michael earned a degree in Education, and then obtained a Master of Architecture from Texas A&M University.
Antwi Akom
Associate Professor of Environmental Sociology, Public Health, and STEM Education, Co-Founder
San Francisco State University, I-SEEED
Dr. Antwi Akom is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of I-SEEED (Institute for Sustainable Economic, Educational and Environmental Design) and Associate Professor of Environmental Sociology, Public Health, and STEM Education at San Francisco State University. Dr. Akom sees “smart,” “shareable,” and “sustainable” cities as the cities of the future and wonders what our communities would look like if we designed for everyone in mind.
Dr. Akom is part of new generation of college professors, innovators, and entrepreneurs building technology to inspire, equip, and mobilize people to solve some of communities’ greatest challenges. His work includes developing tools, ideas, and models that empower communities through community-driven technologies that improve planning and design processes, democratize data, and the way social services are delivered to low-income communities and people of color.
Dr. Akom was recognized by the Partnership for Democracy and Education as one of twenty-one 21st century eco-visionaries and was the keynote speaker for the 2014 Affordable Homes and Sustainable Communities Summit at Greenbuild. He is nationally and internationally recognized for his work and has held research and academic appointments at UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and San Francisco State University.
Bill Nesper
Vice President
League of American Cyclists
Bill directs the Bicycle Friendly America℠ program with a particular focus on growing the program as a tool for new communities, businesses and universities. Bill first joined the League in 2002 and has worked in membership and managed the education programs before taking on the BFA program. He holds a BA in History from the University of Florida and an MA from George Mason University.
Christopher Janson
Planning/Architecture
Looney Ricks Kiss
Christopher is an urban designer and architect who strives to successfully bridge the two disciplines. His expertise is in taking his architectural-scale experience and knowledge of building types and using it to shape his approach to urban design-scale projects. This skill has made him a leader in the exploration of innovative urban building types and sustainability from building to city-wide scales. His experience working with both private and public sector clients has enabled him to gain a strong understanding of the key issues for successful project implementation from the builder’s, developer’s, and local jurisdiction’s perspective.
Prior to joining LRK, Chris was an Associate at Opticos Design, Inc., where he managed many of the small firm’s nationally recognized award-winning projects including the Seaside Town Square and Beachfront Master Plan and the Richmond Livable Corridors Initiative. In addition to his leadership on the firm’s architectural projects and building type research, Chris was also a key contributor to the firm’s development of their Form-Based Coding practice. Drawing upon his architectural experience, he transformed complex text-heavy zoning codes into user-friendly graphic documents that were more accessible for private developers and property owners. Chris also worked at the Florida-based firm, Merrill, Pastor, and Colgan Architects, where he worked on the award-winning University of Miami School of Architecture Lecture Hall with Leon Krier, one of the founding fathers of New Urbanism, as well as other key projects, such as the Fort Pierce Federal Courthouse and the Seaside Chapel.
John Miki
Associate
Opticos Design, Inc.
John Miki’s detail-oriented background and architectural training add depth and bring expertise to planning and form-based coding projects. His keen understanding of digital technology combined with a passion for urban places, results in cutting-edge planning and design solutions. John has created a host of award-winning Form-Based Codes and plans that utilize the benefits of highly technical computer programs and photographic software—yet he is skilled at making advanced technological applications clear and understandable with his excellent sense of humor, outgoing personality, and ease of collaboration.
Before joining Opticos in 2006, John was at Urban Design Associates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While there, he worked on a number of award-winning projects, including the East Baltimore Redevelopment Project, a long-term process with both public and private involvement that revitalized an inner-city neighborhood, the redesign of public housing into mixed-income housing for the HOPE VI projects, and a Master Plan for the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. While living in Pittsburgh, John also fell in love with walkable urban design; after growing up in the automobile-dependent city of Miami, Florida, Pittsburgh was a dense, pedestrian-friendly city with traditional main-street-based neighborhoods and excellent public transportation. His experience there helped shape his interest in urban planning and in the integration of historic architectural details within the communities he is helping to redesign.
When he’s not in the office or shuttling his three children between soccer practices and games, John enjoys sailing and fishing. He is also an enthusiastic photographer shooting pictures of urban environments or natural landscapes with his Nikon SLR.
Jean Kim
Transportation Planning Intern
Puget Sound Regional Council
Jean Kim is a Transportation Planning intern at the Puget Sound Regional Council. She received her B.Arch. from Hanyang University, Korea, and her M.U.P and a graduate certificate in Global Injury and Violence Prevention from University of Washington, Seattle, in 2014. Jean's walking experience in Seoul, Singapore, Chengdu, Tokyo, Chicago, New York, and Seattle have built her unique perspective in reading city streets. She is interested in examining walkable/bikable cities and safe street design/policy.
Emily Brown
Economic Development Associate
International Economic Development Corporation
Emily Brown is an Economic Development Associate at IEDC, where she works with the in-house think-tank, the Economic Development Research Partners (EDRP) program, as well as other projects in the Knowledge Management and Development (KMD) Department. Emily’s background is in real estate and economic development, and she has worked in various planning capacities in non-profits and local government. Prior to joining IEDC, Emily facilitated an entrepreneurship training program for high school students. Emily earned her Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from Georgia Institute of Technology, specializing in economic development. She completed her undergraduate studies in English at Allegheny College.
Christopher Calott
Robert and Millicent Lalanne Chair in Real Estate Development, Architecture and Urbanism
College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley
Chris Calott is an award-winning architect, urban designer, academic and real estate developer. In 1998, he established CALOTT + GIFFORD Architecture / Urban Design and later founded the closely-aligned real estate partnership INFILL SOLUTIONS: Innovative Urban Design and Development in order to facilitate the design and development of forward-thinking urban solutions. Together, his two firms have been responsible for creating progressive regional urban typologies in mixed-use urban housing, dense infill developments, affordable housing, transit-oriented developments, and vibrant public plazas principally in the Southwest, often working with urban Native American populations and traditional Hispanic communities in the region. Fast Company magazine recognized Calott’s award-winning design and real estate development practice in 2011 as one of the “50 brilliant urbanites helping to build the cities of America’s future”.
Chris has also pursued significant research in the areas of urbanism, housing, community-based design and social equity practices through published investigations tied to teaching appointments at numerous universities throughout the United States, Mexico, and Latin America. A Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2012, he spent a year in residence investigating affordable housing delivery mechanisms, informal real estate development and resilient infrastructure design strategies. Previously, he was the Director of the Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development Program within Tulane University’s School of Architecture, where he developed a curriculum in “regenerative development”, working with students in post-Katrina New Orleans, and throughout the United States. He currently is the inaugural holder of the Robert J. and Millicent C. Lalanne Chair in Real Estate Development, Architecture and Urbanism within the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley.
Eliza Harris Juliano
Director of Urbanism
Canin Associates
Eliza is the Director of Urbanism at Canin Associates in Orlando where she leads the Urban Design and Planning studio. Canin Associates’ multi-disciplinary team tackles master planned communities, infill, form-based codes, transportation design, and public sector planning. She led an effort that incorporated an urbanist approach to land use into the Long Range Transportation Plan for metro Orlando which has since been replicated in other area MPOs.
Eliza encountered the New Urbanism while pursuing a Biochemical Sciences degree at Harvard; It immediately resonated with her contrasting experiences growing up in Manhattan and suburban South Carolina, and she vowed that no teen should be trapped in sprawl again. Before completing a Masters of Urban Planning Degree at the Harvard School of Design, she had the privilege of interning with City of Charleston Planning and Neighborhood Design and Cornish Associates of Mashpee Commons and Providence, RI.
Attending every Congress since Chicago, she quickly took on leadership roles in local chapters and CNU's national young professional organization, the Next Generation of New Urbanists. She has served as a liaison to the Program Committee since CNU 17 and she founded the Open Innovation Track at CNU 20.
Amanda Popken
Co-founder & Partner
ASH+LIME Strategies
A LEED Accredited professional with 7 years of experience in Economic Development for the City of Dallas and the Greater Dallas Regional Chamber, she co-founded ASH+LIME Strategies in 2014. Amanda’s emphasis is on the nexus between quality of life and economic development. She has traveled to Central America, Europe and China studying people and the city’s ability to facilitate vastly different lifestyles.
With a Masters in City and Regional Planning from University of Texas at Arlington and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Psychology of Cultural Paradigms from University of Redlands, she now lives in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas and bikes to work.
Brandon Castillo
Co-founder & Partner
ASH+LIME Strategies
He creates pop-up markets and food festivals where the pedestrian-scale infrastructure facilitates the street life he experienced while living in Madrid. Before co-founding ASH+LIME, Brandon developed the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market, a monthly event of local vendors, live music, and food trucks in an entertainment district in the heart of Dallas. In 2013, Brandon acquired an existing independent mailing center and transformed it into the Deep Ellum Postal & Grocer, providing post boxes, maining services, and a badly-needed convenience store featuring healthy foods and local daily necessities.
Brandon graduated from Pitzer College with a
bachelor’s degree in linguistics, and quickly moved to Madrid where he learned first hand the value and mechanics of good urbanism. He now lives in East Dallas and serves as Vice President of the Dallas Homeowners League.
Stephanie Bothwell
Principal
Stephanie Bothwell Urban and Landscape Design
As principal of Stephanie Bothwell Urban and Landscape Design, Washington, DC, Ms. Bothwell is a nationally recognized contributor to the walkable, mixed-‐use, healthy and sustainable community development movement. She is a city and town planner and a landscape architect. Her practice ranges from local residential to large-‐scale public projects. She designs civic spaces as Consulting Town Landscape Architect for the Charter Award winning new community of East Beach in Norfolk, Virginia; she recently worked with HUD on the formation and administration of Sustainable Communities Regional and Community Challenge Grant programs.
Ms. Bothwell served as a Director and Executive Committee of the Congress for the New Urbanism and is co-‐founder, President and Board Chair of its DC Chapter, CNU‐DC.
Ms. Bothwell established and directed the American Institute of Architects' Center for Livable Communities. Later, consulting for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, she brought design, planning and health professionals together to collaborate on building a healthier world through design.
Prior to that, she was Senior Landscape Architect for the City of Boston neighborhood open space, housing and transportation redevelopment programs including the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. Her earlier projects have included the creation of the acclaimed new town of Baldwin Park created from the Orlando Naval Training Center in 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, in the course of which she instituted training programs, conferences and partnerships. HOPE VI’s innovative and transformative program is currently being adopted and expanded by the current administration into the Choice Neighborhoods Program.
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, and was Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Auburn University. She is currently a faculty member and advisor with the National Charrette Institute.
Douglas Duany
Professor of the Practice, School of Architecture
University of Notre Dame
Douglas Duany has worked on many pivotal architectural and urban projects that have put him at the forefront of his field. He received his Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1990. Previous to that, he had designed and executed private landscapes as well as developing the public spaces and landscapes of Seaside. Duany has been involved in urban design projects in over 10 countries and 30 states while maintaining an intermittent landscape practice. He has taught as a visiting professor of architecture at the University of Miami and the University of Florida.
Sarah Lewis
Associate
Fuss & O'Neil
Sarah Lewis was born in Great Britain and moved to the U.S. during high school. She received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Tennessee, moved to Washington DC in 1988 to practice architecture, and then realized her true passion was urban design. She was President of the Washington DC Chapter of the CNU since its inception in 2002 through 2012 and is also a National Board Member. She has taught architectural design studios at the University of Maryland and frequently teaches Management and Facilitation for the National Charrette Institute.
Sarah joined Fuss & O’Neill from her own firm, Ferrell Madden Lewis, in January 2012. Her expertise includes the design of projects with open public involvement, design guidelines and form-based coding, and facilitation of the physical implementation of those projects. She has worked with jurisdictions across the country developing urban design master plans for mixed-use developments. These new developments, plus infill and redevelopment plans for existing communities, have ranged in scale from walkable historic neighborhoods to entire downtown areas encompassing hundreds of acres.
Three notable projects under her design and management guidance have won Congress for the New Urbanism Charter Awards: the College Town Study for Lexington Kentucky (2006), the infill/redevelopment plan with architectural and urban design guidelines for the historic Beall’s Hill neighborhood in Macon Georgia (2005), and the Concept Plan for Rebuilding Long Beach Mississippi (2007).
Mark Nickita
President
Archive Design Studio
Mark Nickita, AIA, co-founded the multi-disciplinary design firm Archive Design Studio [D.S] in 1991. As an architect and urbanist, Mr. Nickita has enabled Archive D.S. to incorporate the multiple disciplines of architecture, urban design and graphic design. The award-winning firm has distinct expertise in the development, enhancement and the regeneration of existing, pedestrian-oriented urban environments including downtowns, neighborhoods, developed corridors, mixed-use areas and underutilized districts of post industrial cities.
Archive D.S. has particular experience with urban areas challenged by decay and abandonment, and uncovering their potential to be redeveloped into viable participants within the greater built environment. Examples of this planning include the 1200 acre urban design plan for Detroit’s far east side that included a vision for nine neighborhoods and over 8,000 properties. Archive D.S. was invited to join an international team of urban designers to establish a design vision for the abandoned Port Lands waterfront in Toronto and was also invited to provide design direction for the hurricane Katrina devastated coastline of Mississippi as part of the Governors Commission for Renewal.
Architecturally, the firm has designed many institutional and mixed-use buildings within the urban context. These include adaptive-reuse, historic rehabilitation and new infill buildings in a variety of cities as well as educational facilities, loft housing, office and retail projects. These are typically on challenging urban sites that require unique design solutions.
Mr. Nickita has resided and traveled to over 350 major cities throughout the world, in order to better understand architecture, design and urban issues. Walking the streets, interviewing people, taking extensive photographs, sketching and note taking, all of which create the basis for a genuine understanding of what works and does not work in diverse urban conditions. Archive D.S. brings this experience and understanding to each of its projects.
Thomas Comitta
President & Founder
Thomas Comitta Associates, Inc.
As President and Founder of TCA, Tom serves as Principal-In-Charge and Operations Manager. He is an expert in communications and has utilized his verbal and graphic skills for many TCA assignments relating to: town planning; landscape architecture; expert witness testimony; citizen/public participation; preference surveys pertaining to community development; and land planning mediation. He is a frequent lecturer at planning and land planning seminars and workshops, and conducts training sessions on town planning, open space planning, and traditional neighborhood development. Tom promotes a humanistic and sustainable approach to planning and design through careful consideration of the historic context of towns, neighborhoods and landscapes.
Fred Dock
Director
Department of Transportation, City of Pasadena
Fred Dock is a traffic engineer and transportation planner. He directs the Department of Transportation for the City of Pasadena, overseeing a staff of 45 and the City’s transit, pedestrian, bicycle, traffic and parking systems. For the 30 years prior to joining the City of Pasadena, he was a consultant based in San Francisco, Chicago and Minneapolis, working predominantly on transit-oriented development and livable community design. He has led an urban street design initiative for the Congress for the New Urbanism and developed a national award-winning form-based street design code. Fred is a contributing author of the Urban Land Institute’s Developing Around Transit, the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Recommended Practice for Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares, and Sustainable Urbanism. He attained Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Civil Engineering at the University of California Berkeley, is registered as a Professional Engineer, is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and a fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
James Frye
Vice President
HNTB Corporation
James Frye is a vice president at HNTB Corporation in Dallas and a registered Landscape Architect with a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Louisiana State University. For twenty years, James has supported departments of transportation, cities and communities by leading transportation and mobility projects through conversations, charettes, visioning sessions and implementation of the Context Sensitive Solutions process. He enjoys the challenge of balancing varying stakeholder desires with complex environmental and infrastructure design problems. James also understands the tremendous range of opportunities associated with large infrastructure projects and the lasting benefits these projects can have on communities, cities and regions. A sampling of James’ local projects include concepts for the Deck Parks spanning IH-30 near Fair Park, the Sylvan Avenue Bridge over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas and the recently completed Northwest Highway at White Rock Lake Park Bridges and Trail. James is currently leading the Dallas CityMAP process for Texas Department of Transportation identifying neighborhood redevelopment, preservation and transportation scenarios for a comprehensive mobility vision for Dallas’ urban core, and the CSS process for the reconstruction of I-30 through Little Rock, Ark. His past experience includes CSS efforts such as the reconstruction of Interstate 405 in Seattle and the western portion of I-465 in Indianapolis. Both projects now serve as Federal Highway Administration CSS successful case studies. James lives in Dallas with his wife Laura and their triplet sons Jack, Sam and Ben and two daughters Susannah and Caroline.
Dan Solomon
Principal
Mithun | Solomon
Dan is an architect and urban designer whose 42-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 one hundred awards. His commitment to urban repair and the construction and reconstruction of urban neighborhoods extends beyond his project work; he is a co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, an organization whose principles have helped shape the contemporary practice of community design. He is author of many articles and three books: ReBuilding, Global City Blues, and Cosmopolis and the e-book, Bedside Essays for Lovers (of Cities).
He lectures regularly at universities and conferences.
Dan was twice named to Architectural Digest's 100 Foremost Architects worldwide. He is the 1998 recipient of the Seaside Prize for contributions to American Urbanism. In 2004 he received the Maybeck Award from AIA California Council for lifetime achievement in design, and in 2008 was named Housing Hero by the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition.
Jillian Sutherland
Economic & Community Development Project Manager
Sonoran Institute
Jillian is the Economic and Community Development Project Manager at the Sonoran Institute's Glenwood Springs office in Colorado. Previously, she was the Economic Development Assistant for a medium-sized municipality in the Chicago region where her work focused on community branding and economic revitalization. Additionally, she has a research background in transportation, land-use, and watershed planning and spent four years working for a real estate developer involved with the redevelopment of public housing in Chicago. She holds a master's degree in urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois and a bachelor's degree in sociology from Wheaton College. Outside the office, she enjoys exploring the many trails of the Roaring Fork Valley with her husband Zac.
Ann Daigle
Urban Regeneration - Design & Strategy
Ann B. Daigle is an urban planner and designer specializing in humane approaches to community building. Her passion is the regeneration of historic neighborhoods into vibrant, beautiful and walkable places. She happily lives and works in the great City of New Orleans, Louisiana, where she is a community activist and serves as advisor to Smart Growth Bywater. Ann’s past posts include Manager of the New Orleans “Culture of Building” and Crafts Apprenticeship Programs for the Prince’s Foundation for Community Building, Urban Development Manager for the City of Ventura, CA, and Special Advisor to the Mississippi Development Authority for the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. She is also a partner in The Company Farm Pecan Grove & Market, a family-owned farm in North Louisiana. Her educational background is in Architecture, Communications and Social Psychology.
Catherine Cuellar
Executive Director
Dallas Arts District
Nathan Norris
CEO
Downtown Development Authority, Lafayette, LA
Nathan Norris is the CEO of the Downtown Development Authority of Lafayette, Louisiana. Previously, Nathan was the co-founder and Director of Implementation Advisory for the international urban design firm PlaceMakers. At PlaceMakers, Nathan worked with developers and municipalities to plan, entitle, develop and market neighborhoods, towns and cities. Nathan is an attorney and served as the real estate broker for large scale traditional neighborhood developments. Nathan is a contributor to the Charter of the New Urbanism and the SmartCode Manual; a Board Member of the Transect Codes Council; the primary author of the Smart Growth Schools Report Card; a certified instructor for the National Association of Realtors Smart Growth course; and the project manager for the Appraisal System which rates the merits of development from the perspective of Smart Growth principles. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and his law degree from the University of Alabama before serving in the U.S. Army with the 1st Cavalry Division.
Joanna Lombard
Professor of Architecture
University of Miami
Professor Lombard co-teaches in the Ecosystem Science and Policy program and is an architect and Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Her undergraduate degree is from Tulane University and her graduate degree is from Harvard University. At the University of Miami she teaches design in the core and option studios as well as courses on the theories of landscape and professional practice. She, Denis Hector, Fernando Miralles (CE and RSMAS) and Don Olson (RSMAS) collaborate on the undergraduate course, Architecture & the Environment.
She is working with colleagues in the School of Architecture and College of Medicine on studies that examine the effects of the design of neighborhoods on the well being of children and the elderly, funded respectively by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institute of Health.
With Denis Hector, she has an architectural practice that focuses on buildings and gardens. Recently, she collaborated with Xavier Iglesias and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk of DPZ on the design of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Visitor Center in Coral Gables. Lombard and Associate Professor Rocco Ceo recently completed The Historic Landscapes of Florida, an exhibition and publication of ten years of study on twenty-seven historic landscapes throughout the state of Florida. The work was supported by grants from the University of Miami Orvitiz Awards in the Arts and Humanities and the Deering Foundation.
Brian Falk
Director of Publications
Center for Applied Transect Studies
Brian Falk worked as a writer and editor for ten years in Charlotte, NC, occasionally writing articles about New Urbanism and Smart Growth. From 1999-2002 he was Editorial Director of Business Properties, a magazine dedicated to the commercial development industry. He was one of the first inhabitants of First Ward Place, an early Hope VI project, where he became a committed urbanist. After completing Duke University's Nonprofit Management program, he now lives in the South Beach neighborhood, where the rural-to-urban transect was discovered.
Ben Fried
Editor in Chief
Streetsblog
Ben joined Streetsblog as a New York City reporter in 2008. Today he oversees Streetsblog's family of sites covering stories of significance to the national movement for safer streets and sustainable transportation. Ben graduated from Oberlin College with a concentration in architecture, and he holds a Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University.
Shagah Zakerion
Executive Director
Tulsa’s Young Professionals
Shagah serves as the Executive Director for Tulsa’s Young Professionals, a workforce initiative of the Tulsa Regional Chamber, whose mission is to attract and retain young professionals in the Tulsa region and develop the next generation of business and community leaders. Founded in April 2005, Tulsa's Young Professionals has since grown is considered one of the fastest-growing and leading YP groups in the nation. Shagah oversees the entire organization, leading the efforts of eight crews, planning and implementing approximately 80 events a year and handling member and sponsor relations.
After graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 2010 with a degree in Public Relations and double minor in Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies, Shagah’s first job was at the Tulsa Regional Chamber as Program Coordinator and then as Program Manager for TYPros.
Shagah is a member of Tulsa Area United Way’s Women’s Leadership Council and Emerging Leaders Society, and serves on the Return on Inclusion Planning Committee. She also serves on board of Kendall Whittier Main Street, and was honored as the 2013 Board Member of the Year. She also serves on the board of the Union Schools Education Foundation. Shagah was honored as the youngest recipient of the 2013 Journal Record’s Achievers Under 40 and an honoree for IonOklahoma’s 2014 30 Under 30. She is an avid volunteer and community activist.
John Massengale
Architect, Board Member & Founding Chair
New York CNU Chapter
John Massengale has won awards for architecture, urbanism, architectural history and historic preservation, from organizations and publications ranging from Progressive Architecture and Metropolitan Home, to the National Book Award Foundation (with the first architectural history book to be nominated for a National Book Award), to several chapters of the American Institute of Architects. A Board member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, he was the founding Chair of the New York chapter, CNU New York, and is a former Board member of the ICAA (Institute of Classical Art & Architecture) and FCWC (Federated Conservationists of Westchester County). Massengale is a licensed and registered architect in the State of New York.
Arti Harchekar
Associate
Townscape, Inc.
Arti joined Townscape, Inc. in 2013 as an Associate. She is a graduate from the University of Notre Dame with a Master of Architecture and Urban Design degree. Her curriculum at Notre Dame included extensive studies in Italian and North American urban environments. Arti also has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Over the past eight years, Arti has focused her professional and academic efforts on the creation of sustainable communities by way of place-making and urban design.
Prior to joining Townscape, Arti worked with Gateway Planning Group, Inc. in Ft. Worth, Texas as an intern and with Good Fulton and Ferrell as a Senior Planning Coordinator. While with Gateway Planning Group, Arti was responsible for calibrating several form-based codes within the Dallas metro area. This experience is supplemented by municipal planning positions in Austin, Mesquite and Rowlett.
In addition to her professional work, Arti serves as a Board Member for the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) North Texas Chapter and is on the Urban Land Institute (ULI) North Texas Chapter Technical Assistance Panel Committee. Arti is also an active member of the American Planning Association (APA) Real Estate Council, and the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA).
Andrew Krizman
Intern
Dhiru Thadani
Shelley Poticha
Director, Urban Solutions, Urban Program
NRDC
Shelley Poticha serves as the director of the Urban Solutions program, building NRDC’s work for better cities that support thriving people. Urban Solutions brings the place-based work of NRDC together into a coordinated strategy and includes promoting transportation choices through mobility options, scaling up building energy efficiency, model green and equitable neighborhoods, sustainable food systems, green infrastructure and climate preparedness. Urban Solutions is the culmination of NRDC’s thinking and work for sustainable communities since the organization adopted the area as an institutional priority.
Shelley is a longtime partner of NRDC in multiple initiatives including transportation policy reform, LEED-ND, and the creation of Smart Growth America. Prior to joining NRDC, Shelley was a senior advisor and director of the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Before joining HUD, she served as President and CEO of Reconnecting America, where she became a national leader for the reform of land use and transportation planning and policy with the goal of creating more sustainable and equitable development, particularly around transit stations. And prior to that, she served as Executive Director of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Shelley holds a Master of City Planning from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She works in NRDC’s Washington office.
Gui Almeida
GIS Coordinator
Scheda Ecological Associates
Gui Almeida is the GIS Coordinator for Scheda Ecological Associates in Tampa, FL. With a BA in Urban Geography and Master’s Certificate in GIS, Gui applies his knowledge in a wide variety of GIS-related projects including environmental habitat modeling and urban planning analyses. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Urban Charrette, a Tampa-based non-profit that educates and collaborates with community, business, government, and educational leaders, cultivating knowledge of leading urban design practices to build vibrant cities. His role within the Urban Charrette also includes being Project Manager for Urbanism on Tap which recently won the 2014 Award of Excellence from the Sun Coast Section of the Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association.