New to the Board

Three times a year, the CNU Board of Directors gathers in quiet rooms to contemplate and decide on the direction of the organization. Though CNU’s strength comes from its members, the Board plays an important role by focusing the group’s strategies and making sure that a coherent message reaches every part of the decision-making world. The latest additions to the Board certainly fit our needs. The new members are Ray Gindroz, Susan Mudd, and Hank Dittmar. Gindroz is a distinguished architect and planner, while Mudd and Dittmar are politically astute environmentalists with a holistic understanding of how various issues, from freeways to the arts, fit together and relate to New Urbanism. Ray Gindroz is a cofounder of Urban Design Associates in Pittsburgh. He has been practicing urbanism since before it was called the New Urbanism. Since the 1960s, he has been pushing the development of participatory planning for neighborhoods, downtowns, and regions. He initiated the revival and application of pattern books in neighborhood building. Gindroz has worked with existing urban areas, creating mixed-use cores rather than single-use districts. Today, UDA focuses on urban revitalization through improv-ed neighborhood structure and streetscapes. Though he says he has “been practicing urbanism for a long time,” he considers the New Urbanism an important development: "It’s a way for people who share urban values to collaborate to make the institutional, governmental, and financial changes necessary to make urbanism successful." Hank Dittmar is president of the Great American Station Foundation. This nonprofit is working around the United States to promote community economic development by preserving railroad stations and revitalizing them as centers of transportation and commerce. This work brings him into daily contact with transit-oriented development, both in new communities and retrofit situations. "The Station Foundation is the intermediary for communities that want to do transit-oriented development," he says. "In communities with new rail service, incorporating older design principles is necessary to make transit-oriented development work." Dittmar is former executive director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, where he man- aged the successful campaign for the passage of TEA-21, the landmark transportation bill. He has also been an executive at a metropolitan planning organization, a transit planner, and an urban airport manager. Susan Mudd is the Wisconsin Director for Citizens for a Better Environment, a Midwest regional environmental nonprofit. She has taken part in CBE’s research, advocacy, public education, and citizen empowerment efforts, working on issues including air quality, water quality, pesticides, waste issues, pollution prevention, breast cancer, transportation and land use, and women’s health and the environment. She has also served on the board of directors of several arts and education organizations.