CHUCK WOLFE is a Santa Fe-based 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 University of Washington, 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 GeekWire, The Atlantic, The Atlantic Cities/CityLab, Governing, CityMetric, Planetizen, The Huffington Post, Grist, and Crosscut. He has blogged at myurbanist.com and sustainingplace.com.
From 2023 on, the best way to access his writing is via Substack, at Resurgence, A Journey.
He is the author of Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character (Bloomsbury (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.
Why Urban History Matters
Chuck Wolfe's recent reconnaissance of Edinburgh provides a foil for his rallying cry: Going forward, let’s not discount the influence of history’s recurring themes in how we redevelop the urban realm.
Placemaking Lessons Learned from Seattle's Super Bowl Parade
Last Wednesday, an estimated 700,000—more than the city's population of 635,000—welcomed the Seahawks home, without major incident. Writing in The Atlantic Cities, Chuck Wolfe describes five lessons for placemaking through words and photographs.
The Mythical Search for 'Congruity' in the City
In the eighth installment of the Urban Juxtapositions series profiled in Planetizen on January 16, Chuck Wolfe asks if we are using the right language when it comes to densifying urban spaces.
New Series: In the Urban World, Juxtapositions Matter
In an ongoing series, Urbanism Without Effort author Chuck Wolfe argues the importance of the overlaps, overlays and convergence points that define city life, and emphasizes the importance of reading and interpreting their everyday expression.
The Urban Election Onstage in Seattle
Chuck Wolfe comments on this week's mayoral election in Seattle, suggesting the pending populist model for New York City is already on display.