Raymond L. Gindroz, a co-founder and principal of Urban Design Associates, has pioneered the development of participatory planning processes for neighborhoods, downtowns and regional plans. An internationally recognized advocate and veteran practitioner of “architecture as city-building,” Mr. Gindroz leads UDA’s efforts to revitalize cities by transforming inner city neighborhoods and public housing projects into traditional mixed-income neighborhoods and by working with downtowns to attract new development including residential, commercial and civic uses. Mr. Gindroz also initiated the revival and application of Pattern Books in neighborhood building. Current projects under his leadership include:

• Downtown urban design projects, including downtown and waterfront plans for Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk in the Tidewater region of Virginia and the Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City;
• Mixed-income neighborhood master plans in Baltimore, MD; Louisville, KY; Newark, New Jersey; Jacksonville, FL; Saint Louis, MO; Chicago, IL; Charlotte, NC and a strategic investment plan for Shaker Heights, OH.

Mr. Gindroz is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a former national chair of its Committee on Design, and a member of the AIA Awards Task Force. Now on the board of directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), he previously co-chaired its Inner City Task Force. A frequent consultant to HUD, Mr. Gindroz and CNU co-developed a HUD curriculum for public housing design. Mr. Gindroz is a Fellow of the Institute for Urban Design and a member of the American Planning Association.

Mr. Gindroz is one of the Founding Directors of The Institute of Traditional Architecture at the University of Miami. He is also a member of the advisory boards of The Seaside Institute, The Seaside Pienza Society, The Charles Moore Foundation, and The Western European Architecture Foundation. He taught urban design at Yale School of Architecture for more than 20 years, as well as at Carnegie Mellon University and the City University of New York. Mr. Gindroz lectures frequently on urban design and architecture in the U.S. and Europe. Published widely, Mr. Gindroz's most recent articles appear in the journal, Places, the book, Charter of the Congress of the New Urbanism, and The Fordham Law Journal. His sketches and writings are published annually as Pages from a Sketchbook. He is principal author of The Urban Design Handbook which was released by Norton Books in Spring 2003.

Mr. Gindroz earned Bachelor and Master of Architecture degrees with honors from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and a Diploma from Centro per gli Studi di Architettura, A. Palladio, Vicenza, Italy. He received the John Stewardson Award and a Fulbright Grant for Study in Italy early in his career and continues to travel extensively to sketch and study urban space.