2012-2013 Fellows

Joan Byron (May-June 2012), Policy Director, Pratt Center for Community Development, New York, NY
Project: Urban Public Spaces: Livability, Equity, and Disparity
Cities: London, Paris, Amsterdam

Joan Byron is an architect and planner who has worked for many years in a university-based professional practice, the Pratt Center for Community Development. The Pratt Center’s mission is to support grassroots organizations in New York City working to address issues of social, economic, and environmental justice in the built environment. Joan has just completed a year at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she earned a Mid-Career Master in Public Administration degree.

The economies of global cities in Europe and the US are by definition increasingly polarized into high- and low-end services. Ms. Byron’s research focused on how leaders of those cities have embraced the enhancement of the public realm, especially public space and transportation infrastructure, as a strategy to attract and retain highly valued workers and companies in finance, media, technology, etc.  It also focused on how some cities have intentionally targeted public realm investments and policies to mitigate inequality, and to support social cohesion and inclusion. Importantly, she  investigated the processes through which affected residents have been engaged in their planning and implementation.

Christine Grimando (October 2012), Town Planner, City of York, ME
Project: Planning for a Typology of Sustainable Urban Places
Cities: Totnes, UK; Ferrara, Italy

Christine Grimando has been an urban planner in New England for the previous six years, and is currently the Town Planner for York, Maine. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Masters in Urban Planning from Columbia University, and a Masters in Geography from Clark University.

Ms. Grimando’s research focused on how planners might identify best practices for sustainable urban places across a range of scales. Her project explored how smaller cities and towns, largely unexamined, in aggregate comprising a vast amount of urban land area, people and infrastructure, are implementing innovative urban sustainability initiatives, with particular emphasis on spatial planning projects and how sustainability policies are best integrated with placemaking. Her bases for this project are Totnes, in the region of Devon in England, and Ferrara, in the region of Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Each of these innovating places represents an understudied scale of place, and both have developed comprehensive, integrated approaches to sustainable urbanism. Each of these places also offers an opportunity to study them in the context of their surrounding regions. Ms. Grimando dedicated a portion of her time in the village of Totnes to a newly approved Eco-Town, Sherford, its connections to neighboring places, and the planning process that led up to its approval as a new community. Ferrara, too, provided an opportunity to explore a small but pivotal city’s relationship to the surrounding towns and cities of the region. Finally, the project also evaluated the context of local leadership on the part of both government and citizen groups in influencing successful implementation of sustainability initiatives. 

Tony Mazzella (October 2012), Transportation Planner and Strategic Advisor, City of Seattle Department of Transportation
Project: Developing and Implementing a Transit-First Policy for Seattle
Cities: Munich, Zurich

Tony Mazzella is Strategic Advisor at the City of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). In this role, Tony manages long-range and comprehensive transportation planning projects. Recently, he led a team of agency staff and outside consultants to develop a Transit Master Plan, which provides a vision and implementation strategy for city-wide investments in transit service and facilities including new streetcar connections in the Seattle Center City and linking high-ridership neighborhoods with the downtown. In addition, Tony has led SDOT policy and planning efforts in the areas of neighborhood planning, transit-oriented development and climate change.  Tony holds a Master’s degree in urban design and planning from the University of Washington.

Tony visited Munich and Zurich to study how each city has prioritized surface-running transit, through implementing transit-only lanes and traffic signal priority at intersections, over general-purpose traffic. Tony interviewed transportation professionals, elected officials, community and business stakeholders to understand the policy, political and technical evolutions which occurred that have allowed each city to develop high-quality transit systems. He also observed the operation of transit priority measures in each city and reviewed the data associated with their performance. He will use the results of his fellowship to help develop transit prioritization policy initiatives and implement engineering solutions that help create the frequent, reliable and well-designed surface transit system that Seattle aspires to. 

Gareth Potts (Summer 2012), Policy Advisor, Office of Civil Society, Cabinet Office, United Kingdom
Project: Alternatives to closure: US lessons for keeping valued community assets open
Cities: Minneapolis, Detroit, Washington DC, Baltimore

Gareth Potts has been a Policy Advisor in the Cabinet Office, a Department in UK Central Government, since 2009, where he helped developed the “Big Society” awards for No. 10 Downing Street. He has also worked in the Economic Development Unit of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and between 2006 and 2008 he served as Director of Research and Policy at the British Urban Regeneration Association – a national cross-sector membership body. Mr. Potts has a PhD in Economic Geography from the University of Newcastle.

Mr. Potts’ project investigated ideas in the United States around how to keep important valued community assets (such as community centers, libraries and parks) open at a time when public spending cuts are threatening many such assets. In particular, Mr. Potts focused on novel mechanisms for funding, such as crowd-funding and special tax measures, and novel mechanisms for bringing in volunteers to help with marketing, fundraising and physical upkeep of assets. He met with key figures in community or civic groups, politicians, government officials, businesses, faith leaders, journalists, academics as well as the citizens that use the assets in question.

Andreas Roehl (October-November, 2012) Head of Bicycle Planning, Copenhagen, Denmark
Project: Promoting Liveable Cities Through Public-Private Partnerships
Cities: Portland, Long Beach-San Diego, Boulder, Denver

Andreas Roehl is the head of the City Bicycle Program of Copenhagen, and a respected international expert in the field. Despite Copenhagen’s preeminent position as the world’s “bicycling capital,” Andreas believes that the city still has much to learn from the U.S. on, for example, public engagement around bike sharing systems and alternative financing methods for such programs through private partners. Andreas’ research focused on one organization (Bikes Belong, based in Denver, Colorado) that is skilled in establishing and working with cities through public private partnerships to increase bicycling activities and enhance infrastructure. Bikes Belong, among other things, work with retailers, municipalities and schools on promoting cycling and with universities on gathering and disseminating knowledge on cycling. Andreas also spent time in several other cities to explore the role of partnership in enabling local bike infrastructure. Ultimately, Andreas will bring this knowledge to bear on his own work in Copenhagen.

2011-2012 Fellows

Nat Bottigheimer (July 2011), Former Assistant General Manager, WMATA
Project: Balancing Transit Mode of Access with Urban Design Considerations in Suburban Settings
Cities: Brussels, Copenhagen, Munich, Lyon

Mr. Bottigheimer’s research in Munich, Lyon, Brussels, and Copenhagen focused on the adopted standards that guide the programming of transit access facilities at and around suburban rail transit stations – where “suburban” means “towards the end of the line” and “not center city” – and on the interactions between the land use planning, transit planning and operations, highway department, and regional planning agencies, as appropriate, that are charged with the implementation of those standards. The goal of the information collected and interviews conducted was to identify: 1) how roles and responsibilities are assigned among agencies that affect transit access; 2) what standards, policies, and plans are in place, and how they are established; and 3) how relevant agencies collaborate to balance their competing missions and implement their respective goals for transit station area development and transit system access; and 4) to observe and document what outcomes have been achieved via each region’s distinctive approach.

Rex Burkholder (September-October 2011), Councillor, Portland Metro
Project: Building Stakeholder Support for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategies
Cities: Stockholm, Birmingham, Bologna

Rex Burkholder is a city councillor with Portland Metro. He was elected to the Metro Council in 2000, where he led efforts to reform regional transportation policy and to integrate climate change into the decisions of all levels of government in Oregon. Prior to his election, Mr. Burkholder started the bicycling revolution in Portland, Oregon as a founder and policy director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. An early leader in sustainability and equity, Burkholder also co-founded the Coalition for a Livable Future, bringing together over 100 diverse NGOs in the greater Portland region.   He has served on key task forces as well as national boards including Rail~volution and the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations. Recipient of numerous local awards, his work has been recognized internationally as well, being invited to speak in countries throughout Latin America on sustainable transportation and climate change.

Transitioning to a low carbon, low energy society is an urgent necessity as well as a tremendous economic opportunity. In many places in the world, governments, businesses and the public are acting to avoid the catastrophes of climate change and energy shortages as well as growing their economies. As an elected official of the 23rd largest metropolitan area in the US, and a leader in local efforts on these two issues, Mr. Burkholder sees great resistance to accepting the reality of climate change and energy shortages and the changes responding to these will require of residents, businesses and governments. 

Through his fellowship, Mr. Burkholder’s met with leaders in the business, government and NGO sectors in European cities to understand the arguments, actions, incentives, and sanctions that serve to motivate support for significant policy shifts around, for example, congestion pricing, energy use standards for buildings, district energy initiatives,  and investment in new technologies. By extension, his fellowship research exposed how these shifts in policy can contribute to economic growth and sustainable development in Portland.

Mr. Burkholder published an article on the lessons learned from his fellowship travel.

Frank Fernandez (July 2011), Executive Director, Green Doors 
Project: Opportunity Based Affordable Housing
Cities: Brussels, Copenhagen, Valencia
Frank Fernandez is the Executive Director of Green Doors, an Austin, Texas based affordable housing organization. He joined Green Doors in March 2006 and oversees all core functions. He is focused on growing the organization to meet the Austin community’s acute need for affordable housing. Co-founder of HousingWorks, he served as Chair of the affordable housing bond campaign that successfully advocated for the passage of the $55 million City of Austin affordable housing bonds in 2006. He co-chaired the City of Austin’s Affordable Housing Incentives Taskforce 06-2007. Frank serves as the Chair of the Texas Supportive Housing Coalition and is a member of the Board of Directors at Capital Metro, Central Texas’ regional transit agency.  Prior to joining Green Doors, Frank served as Deputy Director for PeopleFund. Before that, Frank worked on Wall Street as a financial analyst for Salomon Smith Barney providing quantitative support to municipalities across the nation. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Harvard University and an M.P.A. from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Frank’s Urban and Regional Policy Program Fellowship focused on opportunity-based housing policy in Brussels, Copenhagen, and Valencia, and strategies for promoting promoting more affordable housing of high quality and sustainability so as to increase residents’ access to the opportunities and services they need to thrive and break out of the cycle of poverty. 

Denver Igarta (October-November 2011), Urban Planner, City of Portland 
Project: Livable Streets Where People Live: Fostering People-Friendly Streets by De-emphasizing Automobile Traffic in Residential Areas
Cities: Munich, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Malmö
Denver Igarta is an urban planner with the Transportation Bureau of the City of Portland. His work involves supporting bicycle, pedestrian, and freight planning efforts within broader planning initiatives. He is currently staffing two active transportation projects: a rails-with-trails project along Portland’s Sullivan’s Gulch and a local street system plan for one of the state’s most diverse neighborhoods. Most recently, he served as one of the principal authors of the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030. He performed his graduate studies at the University of Dortmund, Germany and the University of the Philippines and holds a Master of Science in Regional Development Planning.

Portland is considered a model American city for sustainable transportation. Still, the city is struggling to reverse generations of auto-oriented development patterns and make neighborhood streets more “livable” (people-friendly) to accommodate future growth, preserve natural resources, reduce energy consumption, and realize broad health benefits. Mr. Igarta’s research evaluated how cities in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden have enacted policies to create more livable streets in residential neighborhoods by restoring the multiple functions of public rights-of-way through traffic management, green infrastructure and giving priority to sustainable travel modes. He met with local practitioners, policymakers and civic leaders involved in transportation planning, traffic safety and neighborhood livability projects, street design, and implementation of multi-modal transit policies. This study compiled a set of best practices and policies implemented in European cities that have broadened the role of residential streets beyond automobile mobility. The research also focused on acceptable policy tradeoffs are determined within city agencies and the level of public support for measures that restrict car movements, such as reduced speed zones, bicycle streets, shared spaces, residents-only streets and residential parking restrictions.

Mr. Igarta also kept a detailed blog of his travel.

Carol Kuester (July-August 2011), Principal Planning Coordinator, Metropolitan Planning Commission
Project: Providing Traveler Information to Encourage Greener Trips
Cities: Brussels, London, Berlin, Munich
Carol Kuester has eighteen years of experience delivering transportation technology projects. She is Principal at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission where she and her team of eleven staff are responsible for the regional 511 Traveler Information Program. The 511 program collects and integrates static and real-time traffic, transit, ridesharing and bicycling data. This information is delivered to the public through a phone service, web sites, and cutting-edge trip planning tools and provides responses to millions of requests for information each month. Ms. Kuester holds a B.S. in Environmental Studies from UC Davis and a Masters degree in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles. She was formerly a Robert Bosch Fellow and worked professionally in Germany. 

Ms. Kuester visited London, Brussels, Berlin, and Munich to conduct in-depth interviews with  Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program managers, policymakers, and vendors to research the effectiveness of European traveler information strategies in changing traveler behavior and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from single-occupant vehicles. Her research focused on a number of questions related to European ITS programs, including how policymakers use these tools to reduce or eliminate trips and show measureable results, whether or not ITS strategies have become a standard tool for transportation system operations, and, importantly, which new approaches show the most promise for mitigating green house gas emissions. In addition, Ms. Kuester explored which business and public private partnership models have been used to provide sustainable traveler information services. Finally, her research explored emerging sources of real-time transportation data and the ways in which that data is standardized and disseminated among transit agencies, regions, and countries. 

Thomas Straatemeier (Fall 2011), Senior Advisor, Transport and Land-use Integration, Goudappel Coffeng
Project: Transit- Oriented Development in the United States: What can the Dutch learn?
Cities: Portland, Washington, D.C.
Thomas Straatemeier is a Senior Advisor with the Dutch firm Goudappel Coffeng, a leading traffic, transport, and spatial economics consultancy. In his role as Senior Advisor on Transport and Land-use integration, Mr. Straatemeier works with different local and regional governments in the Netherlands to improve integrated transport and land-use strategy making and support a transition towards sustainable mobility and liveable cities. He holds a master’s degree in urban transportation planning, which led to a PhD project at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science of the University of Amsterdam. He has worked for the Physical Planning Department of the municipality of Amsterdam as a transportation planner and worked part-time for the ROA, the regional government of Amsterdam and its 15 surrounding municipalities. In the latter role, Mr. Straatemeier was part of the team which produced Amsterdam’s new regional transport strategy. 

Mr. Straatemeier’s fellowship examined best practices surrounding transit-oriented development (TOD) in the US, primarily in the cities of Portland and Washington, DC. He addressed the interrelated questions of which land-use and urban design strategies those cities have implemented; how city governments cooperate and engage with real estate developers and citizens to promote certain strategies in specific neighbourhoods; and finally how such strategies evolved over time to have demonstrable impacts on the livability of the area. Mr. Straatemeier will use his fellowship to facilitate discussions between practitioners in the Netherland and the U.S. around the policies implemented in each country, the barriers they face and the solutions that might be common across the Atlantic. 

Steve Wertheim (June-July 2011), Planner, San Francisco Planning Department
Project: Capitalizing on De-Industrialization to Sustainably Address the Demands of Growth and Modernization
Cities: Turin, Lyon, Copenhagen, Amsterdam
Steve Wertheim is an urban planner for the City of San Francisco. His research seeks to understand how cities can capitalize on the de-industrialization of their urban core to sustainably address the demands of growth and modernization. Specifically, it focuses on how the European cities of Torino, Lyon, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen determine which industrial areas to redevelop, what kinds of new uses to promote in these areas, and how they regulate the built environment.

To help answer these questions, Mr. Wertheim met planners and policy makers who have been working on land use and economic development issues related to repurposing underutilized industrial land. These individuals included government workers in urban planning and economic development departments, public employees and NGO advocates who promote transit-oriented development and economic sustainability, and elected officials involved with shaping and/or stewarding such policies.

 The results of this research were immediately applied upon Mr. Wertheim’s return to San Francisco into the ongoing “Central Corridor Plan” which will result in new land use controls for a historically industrial area in the city’s South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood. This 32-acre area has tremendous potential to address some of the city and region’s growth and modernization demand, as it is adjacent to downtown, and well served by transit (including a new $1.5 billion “Central Subway” line set to open in 2017). In addition, it contains many active industrial uses, as well as numerous residential enclaves and historically significant warehouse buildings. As such, this area serves as an intensified microcosm of the contentious debate regarding how San Francisco accommodates growth and modernization.

2010-2011 Fellows

Autumn Bernstein (October – December 2010), Director, ClimatePlan

Project: Regional Collaboration to reduce Auto Dependence: Lessons for Implementing SB 375 in California

Cities: Torino, Lyon and Stuttgart

 Autumn Bernstein is the Director of ClimatePlan, a statewide coalition of non-profit organizations working to advance sustainable development and transportation policy in California. As director, Ms. Bernstein built a statewide movement to support passage of SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act, which requires each of California’s 18 Metropolitan Planning Organizations to develop a regional strategy for reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Previously, Ms. Bernstein worked for Greenbelt Alliance and Sierra Nevada Alliance, where she led numerous campaigns to advance sustainable land use policy in California communities. Ms. Bernstein graduated with honors from the University of California at Davis with a degree in Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Biology.

Ms. Bernstein’s fellowship focused on successful European regional and municipal planning efforts and programs to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT). In order to identify best practices and policies, Ms. Bernstein’s research evaluated how best to encourage regional collaboration, identifying political and economic obstacles to implementing VMT reduction policies and how they were overcome and could be replicated in California to achieve the goals of SB 375.  

Ms. Bernstein also kept a detailed blog of her travel.

John Colm (September – October 2010), President and Executive Director, WIRE-NET
Project:  Manufacturing Sustainable Urban Regions
John Colm is the founder of WIRE-Net, a non-profit economic development organization that focuses on rebuilding Cleveland’s urban core through a manufacturing-based strategy.  As President and Executive Director, Mr. Colm has led WIRE-Net over the last 22 years, and recently led the formation of WIRE-Net’s Great Lakes WIND Network, an international supply chain advisory group.  Currently, Mr. Colm is a member of the Advisory Council for the City of Cleveland’s Sustainability 2019 Initiative.  In 1999, Mr. Colm was awarded the Economic Development Program of the Year Award from the Council for Urban Economic Development (now the International Economic Development Council) for comprehensive work with manufacturing firms, high schools, industrial redevelopment, and workforce development.  Mr. Colm has a BA in Environmental Design and Planning from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and certifications in economic development finance, Appreciative Inquiry and is a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD).

Mr. Colm’s fellowship explored the conjunction between emerging environmental imperatives and opportunities to connect existing manufacturing firms to new markets in order to stimulate investment and create jobs in older urban industrial areas.  His research evaluated how environmental and economic change at the local and regional level is affecting smaller manufacturers and identifies innovations in new market development, environmental sustainability and manufacturing competitiveness. As case studies for his research, Mr. Colm targeted regions working through economic transition such as Barcelona, Spain; Bologna, Italy; the Ruhr Valley and Stuttgart regions in Germany, and Denmark. 

Abby Hall (September 2010, January – February 2011), Policy Analyst, U.S. EPA
Project: Building Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience with Smart Growth and Green Infrastructure
Publication: Building Climate Change Adaptation with Smart Growth and Green Infrastructure: Adaptive Planning Policies from Rotterdam, Lyon, and Barcelona

As a Policy Analyst for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ms. Hall provides policy support to states and local communities that want to grow more sustainably.  In this role, Ms. Hall manages the EPA’s Smart Growth Implementation Assistance program for states and local communities, serves as a staff expert on green infrastructure policies for water management, and represents land use and water management issues on EPA’s Climate Change Adaption Team.  Ms. Hall initiated formal EPA partnership with FEMA’s disaster recovery and mitigation programs and manages National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement. Ms. Hall earned both her BA and MA in Anthropological Sciences from Stanford University.

Ms. Hall’s fellowship focused on exploring the policies and approaches that Rotterdam, Barcelona, and Lyon are using to adapt to the effects of climate change and build for long-term community sustainability.  More specifically Ms. Hall’s research sought to understand the ways that redevelopment and reinvestment build resiliency to the impacts of climate change. Ms. Hall’s research also investigated one place-based project around waterfront redevelopment to examine the success of policy implementation on the ground.  In addition to a policy brief, Ms. Hall presented the results of her research to the HUD-DOT-EPA Partnership for Sustainable Communities (View Powerpoint).

Milos Kovacevic (September – December 2010), Member of Savski Venac Municipal Council, Belgrade, Serbia
Project: Building Sustainable and Inclusive Businesses in Central Cities

Milos Kovacevic is a member of the Municipality Council of the City Municipality of Savski Venac in Belgrade, Serbia and has spent the last thirteen years in politics and local governance. Mr. Kovacevic is also Vice President of the Democratic Party Municipal Board of Savski Venac; member of the Supervisor Board of the Democratic Party; and President of the working commission for the development of municipal growth strategy and the establishment of municipal business incubators. Mr. Kovacevic was a candidate for the Assembly of the Belgrade Municipality Savski Venac in 2008, 2004 and 2000 and for two years served as a member of the Commission of the Development of the Private Entrepreneurship in the Municipality Savski Venac. He holds a BBA from the European University in Belgrade, program of Manhattan Institute of Management.  Mr. Kovacevic is a candidate for a Masters in Public Policy and Administration where he is currently developing his thesis “Strategic Planning at the Local Level.”

Mr. Kovacevic’s fellowship focused on the work of energy efficiency centers, business incubators and centers at universities in the United States in order to learn more about organizational models and development tools that support sustainable development and economic growth.  As case studies for this research, Mr. Kovacevic visited Boston, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Upon completion of his fellowship, Mr. Kovacevic extensively shared his findings with the municipality networks in Belgrade and opened the first municipality business network in Serbia to stimulate business entrepreneurship.

See a Serbian television program (English subtitles) on Mr. Kovacevic’s fellowship and the incubation center here. A podcast of a GMF interview with Mr. Kovacevic can be found here.

Matt Nichols (February to May 2010), Principal Transportation Planner, City of Berkeley, California
Project: Optimizing Large-Scale Transit Investment Benefits through Mobility Management and Land Use
Publication: Planning High Speed Rail Stations for Sustainable Urban Development: European Case Studies

Matt Nichols is the principal transportation planner for the City of Berkeley, California, where he is responsible for the city’s efforts in transit-oriented development, mobility management and bus rapid transit. He has contributed to the Berkeley Climate Action Plan, led the transportation planning fundraising for a major transit-oriented development at the Ashby BART station, and served on the “Parking Policy for Smart Growth” technical advisory committee. Additionally, as a result of an earlier GMF fellowship, Mr. Nichols was served on the founding Board of Directors of City CarShare, the car sharing non-profit for the Bay Area.

Through his GMF Fellowship, Mr. Nichols compared European cities that have made significant transit investments in recent years to determine what approaches they have taken to provide multi-modal accessibility to transit station areas and how those approaches might be translated to American cities facing similar investments. Within the context of the proposed East Bay Bus Rapid Transit project and the prospect of the California High Speed Train project, Mr. Nichols’ research focused on light rail and bus station TOD in France and high speed rail development in Spain, France, and Italy. Through a combination of literature review, interviews with government officials, and collaborations with researchers and practitioners in Europe, Mr. Nichols extracted and tailored his lessons learned into general recommendations for U.S. transportation planning, and specific recommendations California’s High Speed Rail development, the East Bay Bus Rapid Transit project, and BART.

2009-2010 Fellows

Oliver Mietzsch (December 2009 – February 2010), Senior Policy Officer, Deutscher Städtetag (German Cities Association) 
Publications: Non-Fiscal Instruments of Public Transit Infrastructure Funding: Engaging Beneficiaries and Private Capital at the Local Level (for a longer version of the policy brief, click here) 

Oliver Mietzsch is the head of the Transportation Unit within the Department for Urban Planning, Construction, Housing and Transportation of the German Cities Association (Deutscher Städtetag), a membership-based organization of the largest cities and towns in Germany. In that capacity, he is responsible for all aspects of urban transportation policy, including the integration of transportation plans into spatial planning, environmental protection against pollution and noise deriving from individual motorization and, in particular, all aspects of public transit. He previously worked for a German member of the European Parliament, and later became member of the German Federal Parliament, in Brussels and Bonn.

Mr. Mietzsch’s fellowship focused on alternative (non-fiscal) means of public transit funding, including fee-based funding mechanisms like transportation impact fees and public-private partnerships. He investigated how non-fiscal public infrastructure funding in select cities and regions in the U.S. fit certain criteria and how such funding is planned and implemented. As case studies for this research, Mr. Mietzsch traveled to Seattle, Washington; Portland Oregon; the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Denver, Colorado to examine innovative projects that may provide lessons for German cities. In addition to disseminating the results of his fellowship through the policy brief and paper above, Mr. Mietzsch presented the results of his research to the members of the Deutscher Städtetag and to relevant conferences and seminars.

Anne Mariani (October 2009 – December 2009), Chargée des programmes Energie Air Climat, Conseil Regional de Bretagne (Regional Council of Brittany)
Project: Energy and Climate Action Plans: A New Driver for Policies and Action at the Local and Regional Level
Presentation: Climate Action Plans: Best Practices from Pittsburgh, Denver, and Seattle and Perspectives for France (en français)
Publications: Energy and Climate Change: A New Driver for Local Policy and Action? (en français) (For a longer version of the policy brief, click here.)

Anne Mariani is on leave from the Regional Council of Brittany, France, where she was in charge of air quality, climate and energy programs and policies. In that role, she played a critical role in numerous projects, including the development of Brittany’s Air Quality and Climate Plan and a regional air pollutant and greenhouse gas emission monitoring project; several programs to improve energy efficiency in buildings and to foster consumer outreach and education on energy and climate. Prior to her position with the Regional Council of Brittany, Ms. Mariani worked for the Metropolitan District of Nantes running their solid waste and recycling programs.

Ms. Mariani’s fellowship focused on the development and implementation of Climate Action Plans in American cities, with particular emphasis on the experiences of Pittsburgh, Denver and Seattle. Through site visits, interviews and in-depth research, Ms. Mariani sought to understand the conditions that make these projects a success, to highlight the means of action on climate change that local and regional governments have in the U.S., and to see which ones can be transferable to France. To ensure that the lessons she learned are applicable and appropriate to the French context, she relied on the advice and guidance of a project committee made up of climate policy experts from city, regional and national government agency in France. Ms. Mariani is now an environmental planner with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Michelle DeRobertis (August – November 2009), Senior Transportation Planner at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority
Project: Transit-Oriented Development in Germany and Italy
Publication: Land Development and Transportation Policies for Transit-Oriented Development in Germany and Italy: Five Case Studies 
Michelle DeRobertis is currently the Senior Transportation Planner and Bicycle Program Manager at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority where she has overseen the development of a number of local bikeway projects. Ms. DeRobertis’ prior professional experience as a traffic engineer has included designing and implementing traffic calming measures, conducting traffic impact studies and working on projects to improve road safety. She earned both her B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

Ms. DeRobertis’ research examined how land use contributes to holistic transport strategies. She studied three German and three Italian cities, focusing on the key transportation considerations in the planning and approval of land use development projects near major rail stations. Ms. DeRobertis sought to identify lessons that can be applied to the traditionally car-centric cities and towns of California and to share these lessons through her extensive professional network.

Tim Campbell (May – October 2009), Chairman of the Urban Age Institute
Project: Smart Cities: Converting Knowledge to Innovation
Publication: Torino as a Learning City (click here for a version in Italian, courtesy of Cluster)
 Tim Campbell is the Chairman of the Urban Age Institute, a California based organization that seeks to increase innovative policy in cities across the world. Mr. Campbell spent 17 years at the World Bank where he worked on a number of urban related issues, including as the head of the World Bank Institute’s urban team from 2001 to 2005 and 4 years as the leader of the Bank’s Urban Partnership think tank. A great deal of Mr. Campbell’s work at the World Bank related to urban development in Latin America, a subject on which he has authored two books. Mr. Campbell earned a BA in political science and a Masters in City Planning from Berekely as well as a PhD from MIT.

Mr. Campbell’s research project as a Comparative Domestic Policy Fellow examined the process and methods through which cities learn lessons from one another and how these lessons are incorporated into practical policy making. He undertook field work in Barcelona, Turin, Charlotte and Portland and also incorporated previous research from Seattle. The dissemination process of his research will include presentations at international conferences, in-house seminars at foundations and NGOs and university lectures. Mr. Campbell also plans to publish his findings in relevant academic journals. Mr. Campbell published a book on the topic in 2012 entitled Beyond Smart Cities.

2008-2009 Fellows

Iolanda Romano (May to September 2009), President and CEO of Avventura Urbana
Project: Deliberative Democracy and Environmental Land Use Debates
Publication: From Confrontation to Cooperation: Citizen Engagement and Consensus Building in Public Policies
Iolanda Romano is the President and CEO of Avventura Urbana, a company that supplies consultation and designs for public policies. She has also worked as a consultant for municipalities, in particular for the City of Torino where she worked for seven years on one of the most important urban regeneration project in Italy, the Special Outskirts Project. She received her PhD in Public Policies of the Territory from the University of Venice in 1997.

Ms. Romano’s research in the United States continued her recent work on deliberative democracy to study the way public deliberation of planning projects takes place in American cities. She explored new techniques for public debate and consensus mediation of controversial issues and will attempt to apply the lessons to the local context of Torino and in other European cities.

Patrizia Saroglia (February to April 2009), Research Associate at A.lea Consulting
Project: Which Types of Services Can Help Persons with Disabilities to Find Jobs and Keep Them? Learning from the U.S. Experience
Publication: Strategies and Incentives for Matching Disabled Workers with Jobs: Lessons for Italy from the United States
Patrizia Saroglia is research associate at A.lea Consulting outside of Torino where she conducts research on the performance of services offered by the local employment offices to persons with disabilities. She is also a freelance consultant for the Piemonte Regional Government and the coordinator of Laboratorio di Politiche. She received her M.S. in Public Policy at the Polytechnic of Torino in 2001.

Ms. Saroglia’s fellowship allowed her to analyze the range of services and incentives offered in the United States to encourage people with disabilities to become employed and to leave cash assistance programs. She studied job development and placement services, employment strategies for long-term welfare recipients, and processes for integrating people with disabilities into the regular labor market in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and the Washington DC regions.

John Swanson (November 2008 to February 2009), Senior Transportation Planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments
Project: Engaging the Public in Responding to the Pressures of Growth: European Experiences with Public Involvement in Regional Planning
Publication: Gaining Public Support for Congestion Charging: Lessons from Europe for U.S. Metropolitan Areas (for a longer version of the policy brief, click here)
John Swanson is responsible for public involvement activities for the Transportation Planning Board at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, a regional planning agency comprising jurisdictions in the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, and Suburban Maryland. Recently Mr. Swanson has focused on the linkages between land use and transportation, overseeing efforts to get regional leaders and the public together to think about the impacts of growth. Mr. Swanson received his Masters in Public Administration and Public Policy at the London School of Economics in 1993.

During his fellowship, Mr. Swanson investigated how decision-makers and planners in European metropolitan regions have attempted to explain the challenges of urban sprawl and increases in driving to the public, with a particular emphasis on the passing of congestion pricing schemes.

Jess Zimbabwe (November 2008 to February 2009), Director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design                                                                                                                                                     Project: Beggars into Choosers: Promoting Local Leadership in Design in the Face of Weak Market Conditions
At the time of her fellowship, Jess Zimbabwe worked as the Director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) and was a Senior Director of Programs at the American Architectural Foundation in Washington, DC. Since then, she has taken on the role of Executive Director of the Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use at the Urban Land Institute. She also has three years of experience as a community design director at a nonprofit organization that advocates for neighborhood revitalization and regional sustainability in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ms. Zimbabwe received her Master of Architecture and City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003.

During her fellowship, Ms. Zimbabwe researched and wrote three case studies of European city design to share with American and European city leaders-in Torino, Essen, and Manchester. She analyzed how leadership decisions yield good results and what local, state, and national policy tools were employed in the process.

Fellows prior to 2008

Heleen Terwjin (October – November, 2006) Founder and President, IMC Weekend School
Project: How and when role models motivate children to move socially upward; learning from America for European contexts.
Publication: Role Models and Mentoring: Projects in the United States and the Netherlands
Ms. Terwjin is currently the President of the IMC Weekend School in the Netherlands. A trained psychotherapist and a doctor of social psychology, Terwjin founded the school in 1998. The charge of Terwjin’s IMC Weekend School, is to be a supplementary provider of education for underprivileged children who display serious motivation. Once at school, the children learn various life skills from successful volunteer professionals who devote time and effort to the betterment of the children. According to Terwjin, this intervention is “meant to help the participants broaden their perspectives, to enhance their self-esteem, and to facilitate their integration into Dutch society.” Heleen’s project, undertaken with help from her GMF Fellowship, examines the intersection between underprivileged children and a successful role model.

 Aaron Naparstek (October – November, 2006) Editor and freelance writer, Streetsblog
Project: Issues in Urban Traffic and the Environment
 Aaron Naparstek, a former Marshall Memorial Fellow with the German Marshall Fund, spends much of his time working with what has come to be called New York City’s “Livable Streets movement.” In an era where much of the open space in New York, namely its streets, has come to be taken over by automobiles Naparstek, in conjunction with other Livable Streets advocates, has been working to “reduce traffic congestion, improve walking, biking and public space conditions, and move local environmental issues of global significance higher up on the civic agenda.” To help accomplish this, Aaron writes and edits regularly for his blog Streetsblog. Covering issues under policy areas such as land use, transportation, the environment, and urban planning, the blog has experienced a relatively large amount of success in “generating scoops that have landed in the daily newspapers,” and putting tangible pressure on the city’s “car-oriented” Department of Transportation. This is in part because of the blog being read and “fed information” by some major officials in the Bloomberg administration. This fellowship allowed Aaron to explore the ways in which multiple European countries approach the transportation and environmental issues that New York also faces. Aaron is the author of Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage, a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by issues surrounding traffic congestion and urban life.

 Martin Rosenberg (October – November, 2006) Editor-in-chief, EnergyBiz Magazine
Project: The European Energy Industry
Marty is currently the editor-in-chief of EnergyBiz, a national publication covering the energy industry that circulates to more than 20,000 senior executives and managers of the electric and natural gas industry, energy experts, analysts and regulators. Marty’s career began as a business writer at the Kansas City Star from 1985-1998 and then went on to work for a number of newspapers in the state of Oregon. He has been a Fulbright Fellow to Japan, where he studied economics, and has previously received a grant from the GMF to study agricultural policy. Having written extensively about energy, technology, finance, and international business, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Seattle Times, and The Japan Times among other publications. He graduated from Reed College and also earned a Master’s from Northwestern University at the Medill School of Journalism.

Marty’s project explores a number of subjects, including European investment in renewable energy and the implications for U.S. businesses, Europe’s experience in developing a carbon trading system and implications for the U.S., the future of fusion technology, and the utility of business as viewed from Europe. Marty’s inquiries in this project s compliment his work here in the United States, allowing him to observe European solutions and problems, and comment on them though his role as an editor.

Eric Hoddersen (April – May, 2006) President, Neighborhood Progress, Inc.
Project: Reversing Decline in Older Industrial Cities
Eric Hoddersen is currently the President of Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI), a non-profit intermediary supporting the redevelopment of Cleveland’s neighborhoods. Founded in 1988, NPI has an annual operating budget of $6 million and a staff of eighteen. NPI provides operating support, technical assistance and training for Cleveland’s community development corporations and through its subsidiaries Village Capital and New Village Corporation finances and develops a range of real estate projects. In fifteen years, NPI and its subsidiaries have invested over $85 million with another $70 million planned for future development in community organizations and their development agendas, creating 4,500 housing units and over 1.5 Million sq. ft. of retail/industrial space. Mr. Hoddersen is the Vice Chairman of Village Capital and New Village Corporations; Vice President of the Board of Community Development Partnership Network, a national network of thirteen community development intermediaries; a Board member of the St. Luke’s Foundation and the Cleveland Shorebank Enterprise Group and a member of the Cleveland School Bond Accountability Commission.

Mr. Hodderson spent five weeks in Europe visiting older industrial cities similar to Cleveland that had begun to reverse decline by developing competitive visions tailored to their unique histories and assets. His focus included the physical aspects of design, the community process in urban place making, and the role of public-private partnerships and NGO’s in realizing that agenda. Mr. Hodderson’s tour included Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union; Lyons, France; Turin and Milan, Italy; Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Essen and the Ruhr region, Germany; and Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark.

Ilene K. Grossman (May – June, 2006) Assistant Director of the Midwestern Office of the Council of State Governments
Ms. Grossman manages the activities of the Midwestern Governors Association, which serves the governors of the region and supports their cooperative efforts on such issues as prescription drug affordability, agro-security, workforce development and agriculture policy. She also works with the Midwestern Legislative Conference (MLC), an association for all state legislators in the region. Both organizations are served by the Midwestern Office of the Council of State Governments (CSG). Her policy work with the MLC focuses on the Midwest-Canada Relations Committee. The committee brings together state legislators from the Midwest with provincial legislators from Manitoba, Ontario, and Saskatchewan to work on a variety of cross-border concerns. Before joining CSG, Ms. Grossman spent four years as a congressional aide. She has a master’s degree in political science from American University in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Grossman’s fellowship, made possible through GMF’s Trade and Development program, focused on gaining a better understanding of the EU decision-making processes on trade and agriculture policy, the pressures coming from member states and from agricultural producers that affect these processes, and how they affect the agricultural communities in the Midwestern U.S. states She also was asked by GMF to to begin to make contacts and lay the groundwork for possible future transatlantic exchanges around agriculture policy between high-level state government officials and leaders of similar rank in EU member states, which would be conducted as part of GMF’s Comparative Domestic Policy Program.

Martin Hirsch (April, 2006) Maître des requetes in the Conseil d’Etat
Project: Private Sector-Led Innovations in Combating Social Exclusion
Mr. Hirsch works for the Conseil d’Etat, an advisory body to the French government and the highest administrative jurisdiction in France. He is also the founder of Solidarités Actives (http://www.solidarites-actives.com/), a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and putting into action experimental projects to tackle societal challenges around poverty and exclusion. He currently serves as chairman of Emmaus France (and thus administrator of Emmaus Europe and Emmaus International), vice chairman of the Association for Cancer Research, and chairman of the Commission on Families, Vulnerability and Poverty. Mr. Hirsch also sits on several committees, including the National Committee for the Fight against Exclusion and Poverty, the Advisory Committee to the High Authority against Discrimination and for Equality, and the Camdessus Commission. Mr. Hirsch has published several works, including Les Enjeux de la protection sociale (LGDJ, 1994), L’Affolante histoire de la vache folle (Balland, 1996), Ces peurs qui nous gouvernent (Albin Michel, 2002), Manifeste contre la pauvreté (Oh editions, 2004), and, as chairman of the Commission on Families, Vulnerability and Poverty, La nouvelle equation sociale – au possible nous sommes tenus (la Documentation française, 2005). Mr. Hirsch is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration.

Mr. Hirsch, along with his colleague Mr. Benoit Genuini, traveled to New York, Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland in April 2006 to deepen his understanding of American innovations in social policy, including anti-poverty strategies, family support mechanisms, workforce development strategies, and micro-credit programs, and to lay the groundwork for potential future exchange of best practices between France and the United States in these areas.