Allison Arieff

Allison Arieff is Editorial Director for the urban planning and policy think tank, SPUR. A contributing columnist to The New York Times, Allison has written about architecture, design, innovation, and cities for numerous publications including California Sunday, the MIT Technology Review, and City Lab. From 2007-09, she was senior content lead for IDEO. She was editor-in-chief of Dwell (and the magazine's founding senior editor). The magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence under her tenure. Allison is the author of several books including Prefab and Trailer Travel: A Visual History of Mobile America and her work has been included in several others including Urban Farms, Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York and Modern Sustainable Residential Design. She has taught at Stanford University, UC Davis, and the New School in New York City. 

Gail Brager

Gail Brager is an architecture professor in the Building Science & Sustainability area. Gail also serves as the Director of the Center for Environmental Design Research, and Associate Director of the Center for the Built Environment (CBE), which is a collaboration between UC Berkeley and over 40 industry partners in construction, engineering, design and manufacturing, focused on improving the energy performance and environmental quality in buildings.  Gail’s research and teaching reaches across multiple dimensions of sustainability, addressing the design, operation, and assessment of buildings, with a focus on thermal comfort and adaptation, occupant well-being, natural ventilation, and personalized environmental control.  She was the founding Chair of the Research Committee of the US Green Building Council, and is an American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Fellow and Past-President of the Golden Gate ASHRAE Chapter, and received the Presidential Young Investigator Award from National Science Foundation, Progressive Architecture Research Award, AIA Education Honors Honorable Mention, Places/EDRA award for Place-based research, and several awards from ASHRAE.

Dana Buntrock

Dana Buntrock, a professor of architecture and currently chair of UC Berkeley’s Center Japanese Studies, teaches courses on construction that include field site visits, lectures by construction experts, and hand-on making. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary collaborations in Japanese architecture and construction practices, starting with her first book, Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process: Opportunities in a Flexible Construction Culture, which dealt with the radical changes that occurred in structural design and their exciting architectural outcomes following the 1995 Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake. She has conducted fieldwork in Japan, the US, Taiwan, and Korea, supported by fellowships from the US National Science Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, and the Social Science Research Council. Since 2011, Dana. Buntrock has focused on how energy supply and architecture create opportunities for new approaches to architecture and construction in Japan. The author of three books and dozens of articles in professional and academic journals, Dana’s work has been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Spanish. 

Claudia Cappio

Claudia Cappio is Assistant City Administrator for the City of Oakland. Prior to joining the city staff, Claudia was Founder and Managing Principal at Sparticles, a real estate development and planning consulting firm. She has broad executive experience in public sector development and finance and public-private partnerships, serving as Director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, Executive Director of the California Housing Finance Agency, Director of Planning, Building and Major Projects for the Oakland Base Reuse Authority, and Planning and Building Director for the City of Emeryville.

Karen Chapple

Karen Chapple is a professor of city and regional planning and the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Urban Studies. She teaches courses on community and economic development, regional planning, and urban data informatics, and studies the governance, planning, and development of regions in the U.S. and Latin America. Karen’s recent book Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions: Towards More Equitable Development, focuses on sustainable development, while new books address the impacts of transit-oriented development, and governance and local economic development in Latin America. Her research focuses on job creation on industrial land, accessory dwelling units as a smart growth policy, and residential and commercial/industrial displacement in cities undergoing rapid economic growth. Prior to academia, Karen spent ten years as a practicing planner in economic development, land use, and transportation in New York and San Francisco. 

Dan Chatman

Dan Chatman is an associate professor of city and regional planning, who teaches courses on transportation and its links to urban development. He studies travel behavior and the built environment; residential and workplace location choice; "smart growth" and municipal fiscal decision making; and the connections between public transportation, immigration and the economic growth of cities. Recent projects include an analysis of which U.S. transit systems succeed and why; the implications of immigration trends for sustainable development and economic growth; the relationship of transit investments to agglomeration economies in U.S. cities; the effect of dynamic parking pricing on occupancy and use of on-street parking in San Francisco; and the relationship between residential location, commuting, and happiness. He has also taught at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University where he served as the director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center. 

Renee Chow

Renee Chow, professor of architecture and urban design, is internationally recognized for her expertise in residential and urban design. She lectures internationally on issues of housing design, house construction systems, and the design of neighborhoods. Her publications include Suburban Space: The Fabric of Dwelling that received the 2003 AIA California Council Research and Technology Award as well as the recently published Changing Chinese Cities, a book on the design of cities. Renee has developed analytic and generative design tools for integrating urban and architectural systems across sites and individual buildings. These tools are directed toward encoding and extending local conditions, increasing urban legibility and identity, differentiating agency and time, embedding resource strategies at a community scale and facilitating design collaboration. Renee is also principal of Studio URBIS whose projects include single- and multi-family residences, institutional and commercial projects as well as urban and community specific development plans and studies. The firm received an AIA San Mateo County Honor Award for the Washington Manor Branch Library, AIA Monterey Bay Chapter Design Competition Award for “New Concepts in Housing” as well as an honor award for their competition entry in a “New Canal Town in South China” sponsored by the Shanghai Qingpu District Government. Renee has been honored by Architecture Magazine as one of its “Ten Top Architectural Educators” in 2009, and by the AIA California Council with its Research and Technology Honor Award.

Bill Falik

Bill Falik practices land use, real estate, and environmental law and mediation in Northern California. During this period he has pursued a dual career as attorney and real estate developer. He graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1968 and from Harvard Law School in 1971, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Bill was a partner in three San Francisco law firms in which he chaired the environmental and land use law departments, and is Managing Partner of Westpark Community Builders which developed 1,500 acres in Roseville, California and planned and entitled 4300 residential units which were sold to the three largest builders in the United States. In addition, as CEO of Live Oak Enterprises, he developed the Whitney Oaks master planned community in Rocklin, California with a championship Johnny Miller designed golf course and 2000 homes. Bill also provides real estate development consulting services to diverse clients, and serves as a mediator and expert witness in complex real estate cases. Bill has taught real property law, CEQA, Environmental Law, Land Use Law, and Real Estate Development at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law and currently teaches real estate courses at Berkeley Law, Haas School of Business, and the College of Environmental Design.

Harrison Fraker

Harrison Fraker is a professor of architecture and urban design, and chairs the UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Group. He was the founding dean of the University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and served as dean of the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design from 1996-2008. Harrison works on energy, resources and the built environment, specializing in passive solar, daylighting and sustainable design, affordable manufactured housing, and the development of transit-oriented, resource-self-sufficient neighborhoods in China using a whole systems design approach. Currently he is the Co-PI on the Oakland EcoBlock, an integrated renewable energy micro grid and waste water treatment/recycling retrofit pilot project, funded by the California Energy Commission and the PI on a micro climate study for San Jose.  Harrison is a Fellow of the AIA as well as the Design Futures Council and a recipient of the AIA-ACSA Topaz Medallion Award for excellence in architectural education. His recent book is The Hidden Potential of Sustainable Neighborhoods: Lessons from Low-Carbon Communities (Island Press). 

Keith Orlesky

Keith has 30 years experience as both urban designer and client for large scale, complicated mixed use real estate redevelopment. He has expertise in brown and green field redevelopment, complicated entitlement processes, new towns, urban infill, campus planning, parks and open space, an urban waterfronts. His specialties are in urban design, public speaking and engagement, and real estate development. He is skilled in the design and implementation of public participation review processes and moving the ball forward. 

Jonathan Segal

Jonathan Segal FAIA redefines the role of the traditional architect by exclusively eliminating the client and developing, constructing and designing his own work. He has designed, developed, and constructed National and International award winning and trend setting single family and medium- to high-density residential, live/work, and mixed-use housing in downtown San Diego and La Jolla, California since 1988. Throughout his career, Jonathan has been as devoted to the interests of Downtown San Diego as he is to the creativity of his architecture.  Staunchly opposed to insensitive development, Jonathan is adamant about preserving historic and important architecture while sensitively integrating new development. This passion for architecture and downtown has not gone unnoticed.  He has received over eighty National, State, and local design awards, and several of those underscore that his standout talents have come at an early age: he has won seven National American Institute of Architecture Housing Honors (AIA) and Five State of California AIA Honor Awards for Urban Housing more than any San Diego architect; he was named by the San Diego Union Tribune as one of “Four Architects” in the city’s history that have made a difference; in 2003, he was named to the AIA’s College of Fellows, FAIA – the youngest San Diego architect to be named to this prestigious fraternity; Jonathan was honored as Residential Architect Magazine’s 2004 National Rising Star and has won seven Residential Architecture Magazine honor awards including project of the year in 2012. In January, 2011 Residential Architect Magazine named him as one of the top fifty architects in the nation. Last fall Arch Daily selected Jonathan as one of 9 entrepreneurial Architects in the United States who developed innovative product and services. This year Jonathan won two State of California AIA Honor Awards, the only architect to win two honor awards in the same year in the history of the awards program.         

Paul Waddell

Paul Waddell teaches and conducts research on modeling and planning in the domains of land use, housing, urban economics, transportation, and the environment. He has led the development of the UrbanSim model of urban development and the Open Platform for Urban Simulation, now used by Metropolitan Planning Organizations and other local and regional agencies for operational planning purposes in a variety of U.S. metropolitan areas such as Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle, as well as internationally in a growing list of cities in Europe, Asia, and Africa. His current research focuses on the assessment of the impacts of land use regulations and transportation investments on outcomes such as spatial patterns of real estate development and prices, travel behavior, emissions, and resource consumption. He is also working on ways to engage public participation in making complex policy choices, including the creation of interactive systems for scenario planning and 3D visualization.