Planner Justin Kollar takes helm of UC Berkeley’s city planning summer program for college graduates
UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design is excited to announce that Justin Kollar will be teaching the InCity program this summer. Kollar brings a tremendous breadth of experience in academia and practice — spanning global planning, urban design, and critical research — to the InCity studio.
“I’m excited to work with students as they explore what it means to be a planner or designer today, linking the Bay Area’s urgent challenges to the tools and questions that shape the field,” says Kollar.
The College of Environmental Design has been offering this summer program in city planning for professionals and advanced college students for over 15 years. Alums of InCity can now be found at top city planning graduate programs across the country and working in the fields of urban design and city planning.
Kollar, who earned his PhD at MIT and worked for years as an urban designer and planner at Sasaki, focuses on how infrastructure transforms land, energy, and governance systems. From leading post-conflict resilience planning in Afghanistan to designing innovation districts in Vietnam and advancing regional climate strategies in the U.S., he emphasizes equity, ecology, and institutional capacity in his planning projects. Kollar’s teaching in InCity will help students critically engage with the Bay Area’s challenges, from affordable housing to climate adaptation, while examining the deeper political and territorial forces behind urban transformation.
“I’m looking forward to teaching at UC Berkeley this summer. InCity is a great program for anyone considering a career change or applying to a master’s degree program in urban design or city planning,” says Kollar.
Alums of the Summer Institute have been accepted to graduate programs in city planning or urban design at UC Berkeley, Harvard GSD, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Rice, University of Michigan, MIT, University of Washington, University of Illinois, and Cornell, among others.
There are still a few seats left for the 2025 summer session. InCity runs from July 7 to August 15. Visit the InCity website to learn more.
“I had hoped to figure out whether urban planning was a path I would like to explore further,” says a 2022 InCity alum. “This program helped me find that answer — which was a resounding YES! — and the experience exceeded my expectations in terms of the diversity of topics we were introduced to, the types of in-depth discussions we had, and the tangible design skills we gained.”