CHUCK WOLFE is a multinational urbanism consultant, author and influencer, Visiting and Guest Scholar in Scotland and Sweden (2014 and 2017-22), a recent Fulbright Specialist in Australia for an award-winning project, and a long-time American environmental/land use lawyer. In addition to his law degree from the University of Oregon, he holds a graduate degree in regional planning from Cornell University. He has 38 years of experience in environmental, land use, and real estate law. He has held leadership positions in both the legal and planning professions. He has represented public and private clients in property redevelopment, regulatory entitlements, drafting, and brownfield remediation issues in Washington State and other venues.
He is the Founder and Principal Advisor of Seeing Better Cities Group practiced at several law firms and lived abroad from 2017-2022. At the UW, he has taught land use law and contributed to major research efforts addressing urban center and brownfield redevelopment. He has served on the Board of Futurewise. He is the former Vice Chair, Fund Development and former Treasurer of the Northwest District Council/Urban Land Institute and served on its Managing and Advisory Boards. He has been a frequent radio and podcast guest in several countries. He has written regularly for many publications, including The Atlantic, The Atlantic Cities/CityLab, Governing, CityMetric, Planetizen, The Huffington Post, Grist, and Crosscut. He blogs at myurbanist.com and sustainingplace.com.
He is the author of Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character (Rowman and Littlefield (2021), the third in a trilogy of books addressing how to determine the intrinsic identities of cities and urban places. He is also the author of Seeing the Better City (2017) (finalist for a 2018 UK National Urban Design Award), and Urbanism Without Effort (rev. ed. 2019), both from Island Press.
Three Everyday Ways to Inspire Urban Change
Chuck Wolfe suggests three, perhaps non-traditional ideas for how to inspire acceptance of change in our cities through accessible experiences.
Urban Ruins and the High Line Next Door
Chuck Wolfe suggests we all have the inspiration within us to envision how to remake our cities--from the conjecture of a Seattle restauranteur about Seattle's monorail to neighborhood examples of "we used this before, let's use it again".
The Urban Diary as a City-Dweller's Tool
Chuck Wolfe champions the 'urban diary' tool as a universal means to understand the city around us.
The Dynamic Potential of Urbanism Without Effort
Chuck Wolfe summarizes a major tenet of his new book and suggests we risk ignoring the back story of urban forms and functions by failing to truly understand the traditional relationships between people and place.
Making Better Places: Nine Lessons From Iceland
Using a set of mid-February photographs from Iceland, Chuck Wolfe describes scaled expressions of urban settlement and transport in Iceland and derives principles for building better places.