Alison Sant is an urban designer, author, and teacher. She co-founded the Studio for Urban Projects, an interdisciplinary design collaborative that has worked for nearly 20 years at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, art, and social activism. The Studio focuses on public programming, urban prototyping, and civic dialog that aims to bring social justice and sustainability to the design of cities. In her role as partner, Alison has been a design captain for the Market Street Prototyping Festival, a designer-in-residence at the Exploratorium’s Bay Observatory, and a member of the Bionic team for the Bay Area Resilient By Design Challenge. In 2016, the Studio for Urban Projects was honored for contributing to its field by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as a member of the YBCA100.

Alison is the author of From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities, named among the best books of 2022 by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and Planetizen. She is currently working on a new book entitled Streetlife (Island Press). Sant’s writing has been featured in U.S. News and World Report, Streetsblog, Earth Island Magazine, New Cities, City Lab, Planetizen, and Fast Company. She has taught at the College of Environmental Design, the University of California Berkeley, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of Art. Alison currently teaches at Harvard Extension School’s Sustainability & Environment Program.

Eric W. Sanderson, a landscape ecologist and Vice President for Urban Conservation Strategy at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, director of the Mannahatta Project and the author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs, and Before New York: An Atlas and Gazetteer (forthcoming). Sanderson earned his B.A.S. and Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. He was Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) where he worked from 1998 to 2023.

Tiffany-Ann Taylor is the Vice President for Transportation at the Regional Plan Association. Previously, she served as Deputy Director of Freight Programs, Education and Research for the Freight Mobility unit at the New York City Department of Transportation and as an Assistant Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. During her time in New York City Government, Tiffany lead transformative passenger transportation projects, freight policy, and truck safety and compliance initiatives. She is a first-generation American, the brainchild of the Hindsight Conference and former President of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association. Tiffany-Ann is an alum of the NYU Rudin Center Emerging Leaders in Transportation Fellowship program (among others) and has served as a mentor of Transit Center’s Women Changing Transportation Mentorship program. She holds a B.A in Government from The College of William & Mary and a M.S in City & Regional Planning from Pratt Institute

Tiffany is a first-generation American, the brainchild of the Hindsight Conference and former President of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association. Tiffany is an alum of the Coro Leadership New York Program, the Urban Design Forum’s Forefront Fellowship Program, the NYU Rudin Center Emerging Leaders in Transportation Fellowship program and is a former mentor of Transit Center’s Women Changing Transportation Mentorship program.

Danna has been building communities and fighting for positive social change for years. As a college student at SUNY Herkimer, she represented her freshman class in student government and coordinated public relations for the Black Student Union. Danna is a longtime volunteer in the Seventh Day Adventist Church where she has served as a youth leader and planned mission trips and conferences, convening more than eleven hundred people. Before joining the staff of Riders Alliance, Danna worked in the healthcare field and was a volunteer leader at Riders Alliance fighting for better C train services and affordable MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers on the Fair Fares campaign.

Clarence has been documenting advocacy transportation for 20+ years and has produced more than 1,100 videos for Streetfilms. He’s frequently referred to as “the hardest working man in transportation show biz” for his dedication to making difficult, wonky concepts more accessible and entertaining to the general public.
With no formal video training or education in urban planning, Clarence attributes much of his accumulated knowledge to never holding a driver’s license. He shoots 99% of his footage by bike, foot, train, or bus, which gives his filmmaking a unique, see-it-as-it-happens feel. The older he gets, Clarence loves commuting more and more by bicycle since NYC is a much safer place to bike then when he arrived in 1991.
In 2022, Clarence was honored with the World Bicycle Day award by the United Nations, recognizing his lifetime body of work that enlightens the public, journalists and elected officials throughout the world. They've been watched an estimated 50 million times collectively.
He lives in Jackson Heights, Queens just off the world-famous 1.6 mile long 34th Avenue open street.

Emily Weidenhof is the Assistant Commissioner at NYC DOT working closely with community organizations throughout the five boroughs to transform their streets as public space. Her focus for over a decade has been the role of the public realm in strengthening communities from plazas and shared streets to retooling the curb lane to innovative programming and concessions as well as the comprehensive Broadway Vision Plan, which employs a range of tools to reimagine the corridor from Union Square to Columbus Circle to prioritize pedestrians and cyclists. Emily lead on the creation of pandemic response programs to support neighborhoods and businesses citywide including Open Restaurants and Open Streets. Most recently Emily helped evolve Open Streets into a permanent program, helped shepherd the expansion of the Public Space Equity Program, and developed a series of public realm design strategies that have transformed corridors like 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights and the Berry Street and Underhill Ave Bike Boulevards in Brooklyn. Emily is the co-host of Curb Enthusiasm, an NYC DOT podcast, offering unique insight on what’s new, innovative, and exciting in the world of transportation and urban planning. Emily received her B. Arch from the Pennsylvania State University and her M.S. in Arch & Urban Design from Columbia University where she was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture and taught for five years with the MSAUD Studio.

As the first Chief Public Realm Officer for the City of New York, Ya-Ting Liu is responsible for coordinating across city government, community organizations, and the private sector to create extraordinary public spaces across the entire city and continue to drive the city's economic recovery. Ya-Ting has also served as Chief Strategy Officer to Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi, and has over a decade of experience leading campaigns, developing advocacy strategies, and building coalitions to advance legislation and public policy. She has fought for congestion pricing, plastic bag fee, federal transportation bill, and light rail. She has dedicated her career to building coalitions that improve the lives of New Yorkers.

Mike is an internationally recognized planner, writer, speaker, and advocate for livable cities. NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC News, Bloomberg Cities, Salon, Next City, Wired, and Monocle have featured his work, among many other publications. Having delivered more than 250 keynotes, workshops, trainings, and lectures since 2009, Mike has exerted a global influence on how people think about city transformation. In 2018, Mike was named by Planetizen as one of the top 100 most influential urbanists of all-time.
Mike is the creator of the The Open Streets Project and the globally acclaimed Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action, Long-Term Change Vol. 1 – 5. With Tony Garcia, Mike is the recipient of the 2017 Seaside Prize and co-author of Tactical Urbanism (Island Press, 2015), named by Planetizen as one of the top planning books of the past decade. Mike collaborated with Andres Duany and Jeff Speck in writing The Smart Growth Manual (McGraw-Hill, 2009).
A founding member of the New England Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a Board Member for CNU New York, and a steering committee member of the Next Generation of New Urbanists, he remains active in both local and national planning, design, and smart growth advocacy issues. He lectures frequently and leads workshops and trainings on the topics of smart growth, tactical urbanism, public space, and complete streets/active transportation. Before launching the firm in 2009, Mike worked for Smart Growth Vermont, the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, and Ann Arbor’s GetDowntown Program. From 2006 – 2009 Lydon worked for DPZ CoDesign, an international leader in the practice of smart growth planning, design, and research techniques.
Mike currently serves on Transportation Alternative’s Executive Committee for the New York City Harbor Ring project, and is an advisor to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. Mike received a B.A. in American Cultural Studies from Bates College and a Masters in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan. He encourages you to trade four wheels for two.

Kathy thinks creatively about how to bring communities together around shared goals that make our city a better place to live. She created Garden Train, the volunteer-led public school gardens network, the Korean Americans of Brooklyn group, & the Citizen Squirrel initiative to encourage families with young children to be civically engaged.
Today, Kathy is the Brooklyn Organizer for Transportation Alternatives, the advocacy organization that has led the movement for safe, equitable streets in New York City for almost 50 years. During the de Blasio administration Kathy was selected to be a mayoral appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP). Whether it's her work for our streets, students, or school and community gardens, Kathy strives to empower neighbors to help shape and improve our city for all.

Brent Bovenzi, Meryl Laborde and Solveig En- twistle are members of a larger neighborhood collective of activists who push to reimagine how to use public space across Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bushwick.
Brent and Meryl are the co-chairs of the Nor- th Brooklyn TA volunteer committee. All three are part of the North Brooklyn Open Streets Community Coalition. For nearly five years they have been volunteering to foster com- munity along nearly a mile of open streets and plazas through Williamsburg and into Greenpoint. Each space uses the same open streets program to fulfill different roles based on their specific geography.

I am an environmental scientist, an artist, and an enthusiast of nature, global cultures, community service and life. Currently I am a coalition organizer at El Puente. The mission of El Puente is to inspire and nurture leadership for peace and justice, working as a human rights institution in NYC and Puerto Rico with national and international impact. El Puente creates community-led movements of self-determination through a holistic leadership and membership program model, as a high impact youth and community development organization.

Regina Myer is President of Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a not-for-profit local development corporation that serves as the primary champion for Downtown Brooklyn as a world-class business, cultural, educational, residential, and retail destination.
Until October 2016, she served as President of Brooklyn Bridge Park, transforming 85 acres of formerly industrial Brooklyn waterfront into a world-class open space that welcomes millions of visitors a year, leading the mission to plan, construct, and maintain the sustaina- ble waterfront park stretching 1.3 miles along Brooklyn’s East River shoreline, creating a re- creational, environmental and cultural desti- nation enjoyed by the residents of, and visitors to, New York City.

Fred Kent and Kathy Madden are the founders and primary authors of the Social Life Project, an online publication dedicated to advancing public spaces as social gathering spots that enrich local life by connecting people and em- powering them to create stronger communi- ties around the world. Their work grows out of more than 40 years devoted to studying public space as co-founders of the Project for Public Spaces with Steve Davies.
Fred Kent was Mentored by William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs. In 1970 he led the organizing of the first Earth Day in New York and in 1973 co-founded Transportation Alternatives.
Kathy Madden is the author of How to Turn a Place Around, which has now been translated into over 10 languages. She taught at the Pratt School of Architecture Graduate Program in Urban Design.

As Executive Director of PlacemakingX, Ethan Kent works to support public space organi- zations, projects, and leadership around the world to build a global placemaking move- ment.
He has traveled to more than 1000 cities, in 60 countries, to advance the cause of leading ur- ban development with inclusive public spaces and placemaking and in 2019 he co-founded PlacemakingX to network, amplify and ac- celerate placemaking leadership and impact globally.
Ethan has helped initiate and grow 24+ regio- nal placemaking networks covering much of the globe, while also supporting the Placema- kingUS network, and the Social Life Project. He builds on more than 20 years of working on placemaking projects and campaigns with Project for Public Spaces.

Tamar Renaud has over 25 years of experien- ce championing large-scale access to health options, particularly for the most underserved communities.
In her role as New York State Director, she helps accelerate TPL’s groundbreaking Com- munity SchoolyardTM initiative in New York City, which has become the model for the en- tire country.
Additionally, she helps lead the charge to con- nect Long Island with a trail stretching 200 miles from Montauk to Manhattan, linking 27 key communities and 26 existing parks in the process.

Jim Burke is a longtime community resident of Jackson Heights, a well-known LGBTQ activist, safe streets advocate, Volunteer Chair of TA Queens, and co-founder of 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition. Through his advocacy and that of other coalition leaders, 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition created a vibrant open space during the pandemic and beyond, which not only provided important opportunities for socialization and community building, but also brought a wide array of cultural programs and social services to the neighborhood. 34th Avenue has become a micro mobility corridor, community center, and outdoor gym rolled into one.

Noelle Hunter is an artist and desig- ner whose passion for livable cities and social equity has helped shape public awareness of QueensLink, a grassroots group fighting for the reuse of a ne- glected transit corridor that once ca- rried LIRR trains through central and south Queens.
Noelle is responsible for the group’s messaging, social media, and design. In her free time, Noelle loves to travel around the city, making plein air pain- tings of the urban landscape.

Emily Rose has been in love with the city that is New York since she came from Kentucky almost 20 years ago to study musical theatre.
She’s since worked in operations, marketing, education, tech, and the nonprofit sector. She’s spent the last several years advocating for more equi- table transit with grassroots org Riders Alliance and joining with neighbors to organize her building’s tenant associa- tion.
These days, she’s looking for full-time work in the livable cities sector and can usually be found at a protest or biking around Brooklyn, stopping to pet dogs.