When I was an adolescent, my family came to the U.S. as refugees. We settled in Detroit — a great American city that taught me about the aspirations of urban planning and its limitations, enduring legacy of racist policies, and remarkable creativity and resilience of communities.
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In my professional practice, I heed these lessons and strive to work toward shaping more vibrant and just places. I pursue impact through writing, planning and community design, and public education. I am based in Boston and Santa Fe, NM, working nationally.
I write about the intersection of design and culture for publications including Landscape Architecture Magazine, Building Design and Construction, Places Journal, Crain’s, the Brookings Institution, and elsewhere. During my tenure as inaugural editor of the design section of Newcity, the magazine broke important stories about architectural education, published an influential annual who’s who, and provided in-depth coverage of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Once, I wrote a series of city guides that were foundational to travel reporting in Crain’s. Another time — not to brag or anything — my interview with industry crush Maya Lin enjoyed the highest readership on ArtSlant that year. My cover feature about the fate of the postmodern landmark Thompson Center helped to catalyze a preservation movement. A book chapter co-written with Gina Ford, FASLA, recruited the Freudian notion of “the uncanny” to think about encountering otherness in public space. And, when interviewing the firebrand Stanley Tigerman, I got him to say “fuck” on record — though, in truth, he didn’t need much coaxing.
My urban planning and community design practice focuses on facilitating agencies, institutions, and community groups in transformative public interest projects. Over the years, I have been fortunate to work with the Chicago Architecture Center, the Obama Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, National Park Service, and other visionary clients in developing programmatic and planning strategies that foreground local assets and connect to communities of users. My work often builds on moments of emergence — hopeful times when new ideas are fluid, not yet channeled into familiar patterns. I launched the first-ever citywide festival celebrating community spaces in Chicago, established guiding principles for the development of the Obama Presidential Center, led an unprecedented planning effort for the iconic Charlestown Navy Yard, and envisioned a pilot philanthropic and policy initiative that supports inclusive public spaces across greater Boston. I was stoked to lend startup energy to these projects and am gratified to see them grow.
I am on faculty in Boston University’s City Planning and Urban Affairs department, where I help graduate students critically construct and demystify narratives. Because every time I learn so much more than teach, I regularly lecture in the Master Developer Program at Delft University of Technology. At the Harvard Graduate School of Design, I have continuously lectured in the executive education program, as part of its long-running Resilient City course. Also in collaboration with the GSD, I helped to start a new community design resource called Co-Design.
I frequently speak about issues in equitable development and the public realm, including at Northeastern University’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, Philanthropy Massachusetts, the Boston Foundation, Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, and other professional and academic venues. Recent committee service includes a stint on the International Downtown Association’s selection panel for its annual placemaking awards, as well as on the 2021 Environmental Design Research Association “Great Places Awards” panel. My board affiliations include the Design Museum Boston and the International Downtown Association.
I am a proud alumnus of the University of Detroit Mercy, where I misspent like a decade in undergrad, and the University of Chicago. Tellingly, at Chicago I wrote extensively on the then voguish cultural figure of the “metrosexual,” an emergent identity that suggests a sexual attraction to the city. I am forever indebted to the late queer scholar Lauren Berlant, who inspired and challenged me in this work.
Lastly: for me, both vocation and guilt-free pleasure is to officiate in the unions of family members and friends. Though I am deeply skeptical of state-sponsored intimacy in the form of dyadic heteronormative monogamy, I do love a good wedding.