Gary A. Hack, AICP is Dean and Paley Professor at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the leader of a multi-disciplinary school, which includes architecture, landscape architecture, city and regional planning, fine arts, historic preservation and urban design.

Professor Hack teaches, practices, and studies large scale physical planning and urban design. He is co-author of Global Regional Cities (with Roger Simmonds), Site Planning, 3rd Edition (with Kevin Lynch) and Lessons from Local Experiences (with Robert Eury), and numerous articles and chapters on the subject of the spatial environment of cities. Recently he has been one of the principal investigators on an international comparative study of how the form of cities has changed of the past 40 years, in response to the globalization of their economies, widespread motorization, and new communications technologies.

Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Hack taught for 25 years at MIT, and was a principal in the Cambridge, Massachusetts firm of Carr, Lynch, Hack and Sandell.

Professor Hack has prepared plans for over 30 cities in the US and abroad including, recently, the redevelopment plan for Prudential Center in Boston, the West Side Waterfront plan in New York City, and the new Metropolitan Plan for Bangkok, Thailand. He was responsible for the Hudson River Park at Battery Park City, a new 8 acre multi-use open space that is the principal amenity in that project. He has also prepared downtown development guidelines for the center of Portland Maine, design review manuals for Hendersonville and Germantown Tennessee, and guidelines for the development of the entrance corridors and downtown of Charlottesville Virginia. Earlier in his career he was responsible for the Canadian Governments housing and urban development research and demonstration programs, and initiated the development of several large neighborhoods and redevelopment of urban waterfronts in a number of Canadian cities. He has also served as an urban design consultant for projects in Japan, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia.

Professor Hack was educated in Architecture at the University of Manitoba and the University of Illinois, where he also received his first planning degree. He has a Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT.

Professor Hack is chairman of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, and a member of the board of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, the Philadelphia Historic Commission, the Landscape Architecture Foundation and Heritage Pennsylvania.