 Maurice Cox is an urban designer, architectural educator at the University of Virgina, School of Architecture and former Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia. He most recently served as Director of Design for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) where he presided over the largest expansion of direct grants to the design fields, oversaw the Governors' Institute on Community Design, the Your Town Rural Institute, and the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD). To strengthen urban design implementation by MICD alumni mayors, Cox developed the MICD Technical Assistance Workshops and assisted in the creation of the NEA’s MICD’s 25th Anniversary Initiative celebrating the program’s 25-year history of transforming communities through design. Cox served as a Charlottesville City Councilor for six years before becoming the mayor of that city, from 2002-2004. His experience merging architecture, politics and design education led to his being named one of “20 Masters of Design” in 2004 by Fast Company Business Magazine. He was a founding partner of RBGC Architecture, Research and Urbanism from 1996-2006. The firm received national acclaim for its partnerships with communities traditionally underserved by architecture. The firm’s design for a New Rural Village in Bayview, Virginia, received numerous national design awards as well as being featured on CBS’s "60 Minutes" and in the documentary film "This Black Soil". A recipient of the 2009 Edmund Bacon Prize, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design 2004-05 Loeb Fellowship and the 2006 John Hejduk Award for Architecture, Cox received his architectural education from the Cooper Union School of Architecture.
 Thomas R. Dunbar, FASLA, is the Executive Director of the Center for Resilient Cities, an organization with projects in Madison and Milwaukee that uses resilience design to weave green landscapes into the built environment, creating organic opportunities for social and economic development. From 1982-2007, Dunbar was Principal, Landscape Architect and Planner with Dunbar/Jones PLC in Des Moines, Iowa, focusing on landscape architecture, urban design and planning. Prior to moving to Des Moines to join the Environmental Design Group in 1978, Dunbar worked in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Manhattan, Kansas; Madison, Wisconsin; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has taught at Iowa State University, the University of Manitoba, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Kansas State University. Dunbar is active in many professional organizations and has been recognized many times for his accomplishments and community service. He is a Past President of the American Society of Landscape Architects and currently serves on the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board and the Leadership Development Committee. Dunbar received his Master of Science/Landscape Architecture and Master of Business/Administration degrees at UW-Madison in 1974, and the University of Iowa in 1985, respectively.
 Jim Heid, President and Founder of UrbanGreen is a real estate advisor, land planner and sustainability expert, whose focus is the creation of developments that provide a positive contribution to their environment, region, and residents. In 2000, he founded UrbanGreen to advise established development companies, governments and legacy nongovernmental organizations that seek better development models. With more than 30 years experience in the design and development of new community, urban infill, and resort developments, Heid is known to effectively resolve the complex layers of community design and real estate development using a variety of proven tools and best practices. He is motivated by the need to deliver high quality developments to a broader market—in an increasingly complex world of entitlements and financing—without compromising environmental, economic or placemaking objectives. Over the past decade he has pioneered many of the Urban Land Institute’s evolving contributions to sustainable land development, climate change and real estate investment. For ULI he serves on the Climate, Land Use, and Energy Committee. He frequently presents at national conferences and is the primary instructor for ULI’s Sustainable Communities Development Workshops. Prior to founding UrbanGreen, Heid worked as an urban designer/ land planner and real estate strategy advisor with Design Workshop and EDAW, where he also served as Chief Operating Officer. In 1994, he earned a Master’s of Real Estate Development from MIT.
 McDuffie (Mac) Nichols, Managing Principal for the Washington, DC office of Economics at AECOM, has more than 25 years of experience in downtown revitalization and redevelopment, urban neighborhood commercial district revitalization, historic real estate development, retail and mixed-use development, community development, smart growth and public-private partnerships. He has extensive experience developing revitalization projects and implementation strategies for private corporations, nonprofit organizations and government. He joined AECOM’s Economics group (formerly Economics Research Associates) in 2005, working on urban mixed-use projects. Prior to joining ERA, Nichols served as Director of Preservation Development Initiatives at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, DC, managing a pilot program combining urban commercial development, residential neighborhood revitalization in historic and older districts, cultural heritage tourism and targeted financial incentives. As the Senior Program Manager for Technical Services at the National Trust’s National Main Street Center, Nichols oversaw a nonprofit consulting practice serving 43 statewide Main Street revitalization programs. He consulted on downtown and neighborhood commercial revitalization programs in more than 200 local Main Street revitalization programs in 49 states in the US, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, India and Singapore. He consulted on the development of urban neighborhood commercial district revitalization programs for Boston, Baltimore, Detroit, and Los Angeles. He directed a project creating a “community-initiated development” process for nonprofit revitalization organizations. He developed rural Main Street revitalization programs for communities with populations under 5,000.
 Shelley Poticha, Senior Advisor for Sustainable Housing and Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has also been a Co-Chair at Transportation for America since its launch in 2008, president and CEO of the national nonprofit Reconnecting America since 2004, and former executive director of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Throughout her career, Poticha has become a national leader for the reform of land-use and transportation planning and policy and has helped stimulate a national conversation about the role of transportation in shaping communities and making them more sustainable and affordable. Poticha has co-authored several books, including The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development, Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the 21st Century, and The Next American Metropolis, as well as the Charter of the New Urbanism.
 Alexandros E. Washburn, AIA, is the Chief Urban Designer of the City of New York, Department of City Planning. He is a professional architect whose approach to urban design combines ecology and urbanism. He has a Master's of Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and practiced as an architect in Washington, DC, before joining the Capitol Hill staff of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1996, he founded the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corporation, now known as the Moynihan Station Development Corporation. In 2000, he began teaching the Design of Infrastructure at Princeton University and in 2001 became a partner of W Architecture and Landscape Architecture in New York City. In 2007, he joined the Bloomberg administration as Chief Urban Designer at the Department of City Planning. His daily responsibilities include the design of various public projects, city-wide urban design policy development and design review of individual projects seeking approval under the City’s Uniform Land Use Review Process to ensure that they support the overall urban design and environmental goals of the city. From individual buildings to the most complex infrastructure projects, he judges success in urban design from the point of view of the pedestrian. In his daily work, he tries to achieve the “quantity of Robert Moses with the quality of Jane Jacobs.” And for this missing link—between the human-scale and the mega-project—he turns to another great New Yorker, Fredrick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park, for inspiration. He sees the integration of urbanity and ecology as the next great wave in city-building. Washburn lives with his family in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and is currently writing a book, The Nature of Urban Design. MODERATOR: Paul F. Morris, FASLA, President and Principal Consultant of Greenleaf Strategies, is an expert community planning, design and development consultant. He specializes in advancing government and private sector initiatives which merge ecology and economy to realize the best of the built and natural environment. He facilitates efficient resolution of complex and controversial problems requiring broad-based consensus among large and diverse stakeholder groups. He is recognized internationally for his expertise in urban regeneration, transit oriented development, sustainability and public-private partnerships. Morris has been involved in more than 400 projects around the globe ranging in scope from regional open space, to land use and infrastructure plans; to urban design and development projects; to economic diversification strategies for rural communities; and regenerative investment for emerging economies and world heritage sites. He has received numerous honors and citations throughout his career and has been widely published. Prior to forming Greenleaf Strategies, Morris spent eight years at Parsons Brinckerhoff rising through the ranks to executive vice president and global director. In his two years at the private equity firm Cherokee Investment Partners, he developed and directed the firm's sustainable investment policies, green-building programs and signature public-private real estate partnerships; leading planning and design activities across the firm's $2 billion international portfolio. Previously, he was managing partner of McKeever/Morris, Inc. Morris earned his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Oregon and graduate certificate for Innovations in Zoning, Planning and Development from Harvard University.
NOTE: Previously confirmed speaker Joan Busquets is unexpectedly unable to present at the conference. |
