Meet Christopher Leinberger

Christopher Leinberger is a land use specialist, developer, teacher, consultant and author, helping to make progressive development profitable. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, focusing on research and practices to help transform traditional and suburban downtown to places that provide “walkable urbanism.”

He is also a professor and director of the Graduate Real Estate Program at the University of Michigan. In addition, he is a founding partner of Arcadia Land Company, a progressive real estate development firm. Chris was co-chair of the New Mexico Governor Richardson’s Task Force on Our Communities and Our Future and served on the Planned Growth Strategy Implementation Task Force and the Impact Fee Task Force in Albuquerque.

He also serves on the advisory boards of The Conservation Fund and the Enterprise Foundation. Chris has written award-winning articles for publications such as Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, and Urban Land magazine. He has been profiled by CNN, the Today Show, and National Public Radio.

He lives the Dupont Circle area of Washington, DC with his wife, Lisa.

RECENT INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES

Virginia Tries New Model to Battle Sprawl, Christopher Leinberger contributes to a radio documentary on NPR, December 2008
Over the next 30 years, Fairfax County is planning to build a real city out of an “edge city,” or what people used to call places that cropped up in the outer suburbs to shop or work, but not to live.

Here Comes the Neighbourhood by Christopher Leinberger, The Atlantic, June 2010
Conventional suburbs are overbuilt and out of favour. In cities and suburbs alike, walkable neighbourhoods linked by train are the future. Here’s how a new network of privately funded rail lines can make that future come to pass more quickly and cheaply—and help reinvigorate housing and the economy.

The Next Real Estate Boom by Christopher Leinberger and Patrick Doherty, Washington Monthly, December 2010
The bottom line is this: despite the protests of orthodox adherents to liberal and conservative fiscal policy, it is now possible to unleash latent private-sector demand by implementing reforms that will end our subsidies to sprawl and focus our nation on sustainability.

A Model for Growth: Walkable Urbanism by Christopher Leinberger, Urban Land Magazine, October 2010
Ten changes found in metropolitan Washington, D.C., will be coming to a metro area near you.