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.
Seattle's 'Oh So Human' Hesitations About Change
Seattle's recent Housing and Livability Agenda (HALA) recommendations have created a sensational dialogue about zoning, affordability and neighborhood change. Chuck Wolfe explains how this may create an unprecedented basis for consensus in the city.
Visioning Edges in Cities, and the Spaces Beyond
In an inspirational essay about the undeveloped boundaries of the public domain (such as street-ends), Chuck Wolfe urges innovation in city spaces where we "blend the familiar with the edge of the unknown."
Using Urban Observation to 'Ghost-Bust' Cities
Chuck Wolfe champions urban observation, emphasizing "ghosts" that are important to the authenticity of today's urban change, like oral histories among indigenous peoples passing on cultural traditions from one generation to the next.
Reading Cities Cover to Cover, and Why
Chuck Wolfe underscores the importance of a holistic view of urban places, referencing themes of common experience, aesthetics, feelings of happiness, safety, or security—a basic narrative of the city that often goes beyond first impressions.
The Human Dimension of the Physical City
In his latest two contributions from the south of France, Chuck Wolfe reminds urbanists of the backdrop of the human dimension of affinity, conversation and daily rituals that stand behind the physical, human scale.