18 Urbanists You Should Know About
They all have one thing in common (hint: a subscription to The New Urban Order)
Every year, I turn my platform over to my nearly 400 paying subscribers and ask them to share a little about the work they’re doing or what passion projects they’re pursuing. It is always fun to learn more about my readers, to have them learn about each other, and to share all that with the full audience of 8,000+ of you. Enjoy these brief bios of people and their projects! And if you forgot to chime in with the work you’re doing, feel free to add it in the comments! And if you want to see some past editions of this annual post, here is last year’s version and the one from 2023.
I’m an urban planner for the City of Cleveland. On my “free time” over the past 5 years, I’ve been running every street of the city and documenting it on my blog, EveryStreetCleveland.com. The project has been featured in news outlets like PBS News Hour and Bloomberg. It even won a regional Emmy! I’ve received some great feedback from folks across the globe, many of which have been inspired to do the same in their towns. Please check it out if interested in learning more about Cleveland vicariously through my 1,500+ mile journey. -Phil Kidd
I’m 80% retired from freelance grant writing, mainly on issues of homelessness services and affordable housing. (My last remaining clients are a domestic violence organization and a workforce development social enterprise for people who have been unhoused and/or incarcerated). When I retired and moved from Santa Monica to Santa Rosa I determined to devote my retirement to getting much more housing built. I started showing up at city council and planning commission meetings and writing letters to the editor. Once I found them, I joined a couple of local pro-housing organizations, including Santa Rosa YIMBY.
I now spend time doing direct outreach to expand the number of people who support abundant housing and are willing to speak up for it. I pack my old car with a shade canopy, a table, chairs, kid-sized tables, signs, a roulette wheel, a bunch of cheap prizes, clipboards with petitions, a huge container of Duplo, and a wagon to haul it all in, that I take to community fairs and set up. We attract the kids with “build your own house” out of Duplo and the prize wheel, and then talk to the parents when the kids are engaged.
We can’t just talk among ourselves! We have to reach people who really need new housing! I’ve spoken with hundreds of people this year and now have inspiring stories of people who commute several (unpaid) hours each way to get to homes that they share with parents, or rural homes that they can afford. People who lost their home in the 2017 fire and haven’t been able to afford to return. People who are thinking of moving to Idaho or Texas so they can afford to have kids, and so many others.
I don’t have to make dinner or supervise homework or take my kids to soccer practice, so I’m hauling my YIMBY setup and staffing outreach. On a good night some of my young YIMBY friends join me at the booth. It’s fun, inspiring, and exhausting, and exactly what this retiree wants to do: expand the YIMBY movement! - Abbyinsm
I’m an economic developer/planner working in the Pittsburgh region focused on creating walkable downtowns and commercial corridors with built-in housing and jobs. My side project is an account called neighborhood.moms (https://www.instagram.com/neighborhood.moms/) where I share observations about raising kids in a walkable in-town neighborhood. I started it to combat all the trad-wife adjacent parenting content I saw. And to highlight how parents can influence walkability, green space development, school policy, and housing choice (and why they might want to.) I would love to connect to other urbanism-minded parents! - Emily Brown
I’m Ryan Puzycki, author of “City of Yes,” where I write about urbanism in theory and practice. As an Austin-based zoning commissioner and board member of a pro-housing advocacy group, much of my writing looks at the politics, policies, and culture of land use reform. But I’m also interested in understanding (and writing about) how cities work, and how to change what I call the “Culture of No” that has made cities work less well as engines of upward mobility. Thanks so much for doing this, Diana! ❤️ - Ryan Puzycki
I created and manage This Must Be The Place (thismustbe.org), bi-monthly newsletter for professionals seeking opportunity in between and adjacent to easily defined fields like city planning, architecture, and urban design. It’s for people with diverse educational and professional backgrounds who bring a lot to the table, but whose skills are not easily distilled into search terms on traditional job boards. It’s also for people who want to hire those people!
The hope is that it helps everyone from students to emerging and mid-career professionals, as well as experienced leaders to connect with others, find a new role, and further legitimize the field of placemaking. And yes, I’m also a Talking Heads fan. - Carolyn Levine
I’m Erin Peavey, I am an architect with a background in psychology - focusing on helping advocate and build awareness of the important of place in our social, mental, and physical health.
As a highly-sensitive person, I’ve always felt the impact of place, but for a long time I didn;t have words for it - now, as a Principal and Health & Well-being Design Leader at the global design firm, HKS, I get to help bridge research and practice to advance design for happiness, wellbeing, and human connection - to create environments where people truly thrive together.
My forthcoming book — Design for Connection — launches in Fall 2026, exploring how we can use the built environment can be a catalyst of connection, belonging, and collective well-being in a disconnected and often lonely world.
As part of the book’s launch, I’m partnering with organizations, conferences, and communities interested in hosting talks, workshops, or events around design for connection.
If this resonates with you, I’d love to collaborate — and I’d love to hear from you.
👉 Subscribe to stay updated on the book release and upcoming events: erinpeavey.com/newsletter, and reach out on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinpeavey/ - Erin Peavey
I research urban history and publish some of this on *What Are Streets For*. Over the last five years, I have been focusing on nineteenth-century Houston. I published “Preliminary Investigation of the 1870 Census Canvass to Houston: Notes on Sources” as the first piece of a three-part series. Much of this series considers the problems with the primary sources available from 1870, but there is some mapping of the locations of dwellings and a few neighborhoods in the Second Ward. There is also a study of household structure.
I published a longer series on residential boarding titled, “Hotels in 1880 Houston.” First, I considered the backgrounds of the hotel proprietors and the household structures of all the hotels. After researching work locations for hotel residents, I mapped as many commutes as possible. - bnjd
Hey, I’m Josh! Philly boy here and I head up a small-but-mighty collaborative consultancy that works with downtowns, districts, DMOs and cities nationwide. Working at the intersection of placemaking, economic development and MarCom, everything we do is underpinned with qualitative metrics to ensure success for the communities you serve. To keep our fingers on the pulse of the latest trends in urbanism, design, placemaking, events, activations and place branding, we read hundreds of eblasts, articles, blogs and publications from around the globe to bring the top trends, tidbits, insights and strategies to our readers. Twice-monthly we publish the Bright Brothers Bulletin that collates and curates the best news we’ve come across, and always endeavor to spotlight the WIIFM or ‘what’s in it for me?’ aspect of why the story or trend is relevant — and how place-based orgs and planners can actualize and deploy the info we share. I’ve frequently featured Diana’s illustrious writing and those of her uncanny ilk of industry luminaries. I’m always on the lookout for the best case stories, use case examples and published reports of what works, and I invite you to subscribe (for free!) and contribute. Please sign-up on our website and/or shoot me an email from it. We’d love to connect with more New Urban Order readers and thought-leaders — especially if you have a product or service that our subscribers may find valuable. https://www.bright-brothers.com/contact/ - Josh
I am an engineer working for a consultant in Philadelphia. I do design work on active transportation and urban mobility and safety projects, mostly for the City of Philadelphia, but also for the surrounding counties on both the PA and NJ sides. I am passionate about creating a more equitable and resilient built environment, and am particularly interested in anti-displacement strategies as related to greening projects. I am incredibly proud to be working and living in Philly! There is so much cool stuff going on here, both on institutional and grassroots levels. - Ramya Sivakumar
I’m an independent journalist in Brooklyn, NY, writing a watchdog blog (and now a Substack) and freelance articles for 20+ years about the complicated, contested (well, less so now, after legal challenges failed), partly successful, and deeply flawed megaproject launched in 2003 as Atlantic Yards and renamed in 2014 as Pacific Park Brooklyn, though many people still use the old name.
I’m also working on a book about the project, which has paralleled--and contributed to--big changes in both the built environment and identity of Brooklyn.
Eight towers and the Barclays Center arena have been built, with eight more towers to go, six of them reliant on an expensive platform over the railyard. A third master developer entered the picture this month. We’re waiting to see how they envision rebooting the project and what kind of concessions--extra bulk, direct subsidies, new timetable--they will seek. Frank Gehry, who designed the master plan, never got to design a building.
Here’s an explainer I did last year for Urban Omnibus, though it’s now slightly out of date: https://urbanomnibus.net/2024/05/watch-this-space/
Here’s the latest news: https://citylimits.org/new-development-team-promises-atlantic-yards-progress-but-housing-penalties-called-insufficient/
My Substack is the best way to follow everything.
Hi friends! I’m the executive director of the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Albany, NY. On my Substack I write behind-the-scenes director’s cuts of what it’s like to build new homes along with reflections on neighborhoods, small cities and connection. www.neighboring.substack.com - Christine Hmiel Schudde
Hi, I’m Catalina, an urban strategist exploring the intersection of planning and visual communication. Our field can be dense, filled with lengthy documents, technical terms, and plans that are hard to grasp for anyone outside the profession. “I love living in this Transit-Oriented District,” said no one ever :D
I love to help people and teams making their strategies and ideas more visual, accessible, and actionable, bridging the gap between expert knowledge and real people. Whether you’re working on a new urban strategy, a participatory project, or an upcoming workshop, I can help you clarify your vision, structure your process, and communicate it through engaging pieces that people actually understand. See more about me here: www.visualfield.studio - Catalina
Hi, I’m Kat Vellos! I’m the author of the book We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships (published Jan 2020) and I have twenty years experience as a facilitator and designer (emphasis on user experience design and qualitative research). That gives me a unique angle and approach to any conversation about what it means to design places that are more livable and usable for the humans that will need to live there.
My cocktail party answer to “What do you do?” is “I help people foster friendship and community in places not built for connection (which is most of them here in the U.S.!), and I advocate for urban design that makes it easier.” I support individuals via 1:1 coaching, group coaching, and classes/workshops, and I welcome speaking gigs if the alignment is right.
I publish new articles every week via my newsletter and site columns: We Should Get Together (focuses on friendship) and Better Places Studio (which is about steps people can take to increase their feelings of connection in the places they live -and- how urban design impacts how lonely or connected we feel.) Similar to Josh, I’m always on the lookout for great case studies that need more light shined on them, and have been happy to link to Diana’s and Erin’s work in my previous articles.
Learn more about me and what I’ve been up to lately at katvellos.com and you can see my existing articles at weshouldgettogether.com and betterplacesstudio.com. I welcome friendly hellos, double opt-in intros, and heads ups about professional opportunities that could be a good fit for me.
Thanks for doing this and inviting us to share, Diana! 🙌🏾 - Kat Vellos
I am a father in Hudson, New York advocating for new forms of civic engagement and democratic participation. First, I did this through a series of solutions-oriented storytelling events in 2017 called FUTURE HUDSON. Then, I ran for Mayor as an independent on the FUTURE HUDSON line with a proposal to rewrite our city charter through citizens assembly. I have a newsletter and conversation series called THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING.
FUTURE HUDSON
https://www.futurehudson.com/
INSTA
https://www.instagram.com/futurehudson/
THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING (with Diana Lind!!!)
I’m an economic developer with the Port of San Francisco, and spent much of my career in economic development for the city of S.F. My favorite work has been orchestrating big, cross-sector strategies to improve places, but I don’t often get to do that. More often, I orchestrate small, incremental projects with private partners that improve places and, in doing so, teach my government colleagues how to get things done quickly. - Amy Cohen
I run a geography firm (https://henryspatialanalysis.com ) focused on health and sustainable development in cities. Some of my projects include Close (https://close.city ), a multimodal travel time map for the United States; the MBG package (https://henryspatialanalysis.github.io/mbg/) for user-friendly geostatistics; and RESPOND (https://respondtohealth.ibaiseri.me/ ), a spatial framework for improving HIV service delivery in Malawi. I also support the open-source spatial community and safe streets projects around Seattle. I’d love to meet your other readers who share an interest in maps and spatial data! - Nathaniel Henry
I’m an urban planner with IMEG in Hartford, CT, where I lead community engagement on transportation, economic development, and neighborhood planning projects. My path into this work was accidental—my grandparents bought our family’s small farm, home to the country’s oldest operating cider mill, to keep it from becoming a subdivision in the ’70s. Their decision shaped how I think about land use and value. I love the energy of cities, appreciate the importance of rural communities, and stay skeptical of sprawl.
That connection to place eventually took shape as Herd Supply Co., a passion project that began with a few leftover fleeces and experiments with sheep milk on the farm. Born out of a love of sheep and my family’s land, Herd Supply makes high-quality, handmade bath and home goods like sheep milk bar soap, wool sponges and dryer balls, and wool pillows that reinterpret our rural roots for a modern context.
You can learn more at HerdSupply.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. - Leah Beckett
My urbanism book posing as a biography, THE EINSTEIN OF SEX: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin (Norton), is out and has been called “elegant [and] timely” by The New Yorker and “jaunty [and] engaging” by The Washington Post. I’ll be doing readings in the coming months in cities including San Francisco and Philadelphia. Details can be found here: www.daniel-brook.com/events
If you want to join this great community, don’t forget to subscribe!
Thanks again for doing these shout-outs, Diana! I love to see so many fabulous urbanists here, and happy to be among such excellent company. 🫶🏾
Hey! Thank you so much for the shoutout! I have been off these platforms for a couple weeks due, primarily, to momming (specifically solo-parenting two toddlers) and neighborhooding (i.e. buying a building, I guess?). Appreciate the recognition and excited to follow the other folks here too!