Peter Calthorpe （1949 — ）

Peter Calthorpe (born 1949) is a San Francisco-based architect, urban designer and urban planner. He is a founding member of the Congress for New Urbanism, a Chicago-based advocacy group formed in 1992 that promotes sustainable building practices.

Calthorpe was born in London and raised in Palo Alto. He attended the Yale School of Architecture.

In the 1986 he, along with Sim Van der Ryn, published Sustainable Communities. In the early 1990s he developed the concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) highlighted in The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community,and the American Dream.

He has taught at U.C. Berkeley, the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and the University of North Carolina.

In 1989, he proposed the concept of "Pedestrian Pocket" an up to 110 acres (45 ha) pedestrian friendly, transit linked, mixed-use urban area with a park at its centre. The Pedestrian Pocket mixes low-rise high-density housing, commercial and retail uses. The concept had a number of similarities with Ebenezer Howard's Garden City, and aimed to be an alternative to the than usual low-density residential suburban developments.

Regarding issues of urban sprawl Visit Sprawl Net, at Rice University. It's under construction, but it should be an interesting resource. Check out the traffic in the land of commuting. And, finally, enjoy Los Angeles: Revisiting the Four Ecologies.