Peter Calthorpe is a San Francisco-based architect, urban designer and urban planner. He is a founding member of the Congress for New Urbanism, a Chicago-based advocacy group formed in 1992 that promotes sustainable building practices.
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Calthorpe was born in London and raised in Palo Alto.[1] He attended the Yale School of Architecture.
In the mid 1970s, Calthorpe left Yale to work with California governor Jerry Brown on sustainable building projects. In 1983, he formed Calthorpe Associates, which has worked on several neighborhood development projects in Northern California including Laguna West[1] and a Sacramento County plan,[2] other locations in the mid-west including the decommissioned Stapleton airport redevelopment in Denver,[3][4] and "from coast to coast and overseas."[5] He has co-authored several books on sustainable development.[6] A recent planning project of Peter Calthorpe's was the massive Mesa del Sol project in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[7]
In 1989 he proposed the concept of "Pedestrian Pocket" an up to 110 acres (45 ha) pedestrian friendly, transit linked, mixed-use urban area with a park at its centre. The Pedestrian Pocket mixes low-rise high-density housing, commercial and retail uses. The concept had a number of similarities with Ebenezer Howard's Garden City, and aimed to be an alternative to the than usual low-density residential suburban developments.[8]
Calthorpe has been a visionary leader in the field of urban regional planning, beginning with the LUTRAQ and Vision 2040 projects for the Portland metropolitan region. His firm, Calthorpe Associates, has worked on regional projects across the country, including: Envision Utah for the Salt Lake City, UT region; Compass Vision for the Los Angeles, CA region; and Louisiana Speaks for the state of Louisiana following the Katrina disaster. Currently, Calthorpe Associates is working on Vision California, helping that state developer a smarter land use plan to guide growth through the year 2050.
Calthorpe was named the 2006 Laureate of the Urban Land Institute J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, for his work in walkable communities and land preservation.[4]