Our Consultants
The Smart Growth Leadership Institute closely works with:
- Deepak Bahl
- Tridib Banerjee
- Will Fleissig
- Bill Fulton
- Susan Weaver
Deepak Bahl
Associate Director, USC Center for Economic Development and the Community Development
Associate Director, Design Forum
University of Southern California
Deepak (M.Pl., 1996; M.Arch., 1991) is a lecturer in the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development and has more than seven years of professional experience in economic development, transportation planning, and urban design. His work experience includes project and organizational management; teaching at the graduate level in the University of Southern California; grant proposal and report writing; policy research and analysis; setting up survey instruments; and mapping and design.
Mr. Bahl has conducted research studies for various agencies including the Federal Highway Administration, Fannie Mae, Department of Housing & Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration, local governments, and nonprofits. He received the Gordon Whitnall Award for Exceptional Promise for Achievement in the Field of Planning (1996). He has worked in architectural firms in a variety of capacities on residential, commercial and industrial projects in Bombay, Los Angeles, and San Diego. He received his Master's of Planning degree from USC School of Urban Planning and Development, Master's of Architecture from Clemson University, Clemson, and Bachelor's of Architecture from Punjab University, India.
Tridib Banerjee
James Irvine Chair of Urban and Regional Planning
University of Southern California
Professor Banerjee serves as Director of the Community Development and Design Forum and is the principal investigator of USC's Center for Economic Development. His research and consulting activities include both domestic and international projects spanning a broad range of topics. His areas of interest include comparative urbanism and urbanization, user perceptions of residential environments, privatization of public life and space, and social equity in urban form among others.
His publications include:Beyond the Neighborhood Unit (with William C. Baer.), City Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch (co-edited with Michael Southworth), Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form (with Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris). Recent projects conducted through the Community Development and Design Center include several projects in transit-oriented development, such as the Growth Response Study conducted in partnership with RAND in the San Joaquin Valley.
William Fleissig
University of Colorado
Mr. Fleissig is a developer, urban designer and architect who has devoted his career in both the public and private sectors to creating vibrant, mixed-use communities. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute, and has been an active member of the Congress for the New Urbanism since 1992, serving as the local co-chair for the 1998 Congress held in Denver. He is currently CNU's chair of the Greyfield Mall Advisory Committee. He is the principal author of the Smart Scorecard for Development Projects, funded by the CNU and federal EPA.
In addition to his academic activities, Will also has worked on the public side of the planning counter. He served as the Director for Community Design, Planning and Development for the City of Boulder, Colorado, from 1994 to 1997. For the seven years prior to that, he was the managing partner of Equity Community Builders, a firm which focused on mixed-income and transit-based housing. From 1984 to 1987, he was Denver's Director of Downtown Planning and Development.
William Fulton
Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southern California
William Fulton holds a Master of Arts degree in Journalism/Public Affairs and in Urban Planning. He has extensive experience both as a university lecturer, teaching classes at USC, the University of California-Santa Barbara, California Polytechnic Institute-Pomona, and the University of California - Davis Extension. He has also serves as a land use and urban policy consultant to a wide variety of government agencies, think tanks, universities, and private clients through Solimar Research Group, which he founded.
Mr. Fulton is author of Guide to California Planning, The Regional City, The Reluctant Metropolis, and is founder, editor, and publisher of California Planning and Development Report, a widely read and highly respected monthly newsletter.
Susan Weaver
M.Pl., MA (Econ)
Ms. Weaver holds both Master of Planning and MA (Economics) degrees from the University of Southern California. She has more than a decade’s experience working on planning and urban economic issues in the public and private sectors. As a consulting economist, she has conducted socioeconomic and fiscal impact analyses of a wide variety of projects throughout California. As a consulting planner, she handles land use entitlement cases, and advises on intergovernmental relations. In addition, Susan has had extensive experience in policy research and analysis of land use and housing issues, government finance, and air quality regulation, and has worked on these issues at the local, regional, and state levels.
Ms. Weaver’s prior experience includes heading the Kern Transportation Foundation, a non-governmental organization focused on regional transportation planning and construction funding, and coordinating a regional growth management project for the Kern County, California, Resource Management Agency. She is currently a member of the Planning Commission of Ojai, California. She previously served on the Ojai Redevelopment Commission, the Bakersfield (California) Planning Commission and on several advisory committees for the County of Kern (California).