International Experience

Rich Bradley

Rich Bradley has a long history of international involvement in city-building work.  He has worked for decades to assist in the organization of business improvement districts in South Africa.  As apartheid was coming to an end, he advised leaders in the business community in Johannesburg, and later, other cities, to help establish place management organizations to promote economic development, deal with a variety of urban problems and promote civic culture.

As Executive Director of the International Downtown Association, he formed coalitions with town center management associations in Great Britain and Sweden.  Over the years, he has advised leaders from countries as diverse as Japan, Canada, Singapore, China and Brazil on the state of the practice in urban revitalization and place management.

Ellen McCarthy

In Spring 2018, Ellen traveled to Liberia to work with a small team of consultants to develop the first land use framework for the country’s Land Authority.  The project involved conceptualizing an entire land use control system for a country which had no formal zoning process outside of the capital city, and no system for developing and adopting municipal or regional comprehensive plans in a land of 4.7 million people experiencing continued migration from rural to urban areas.  The report recommended the creation of a national comprehensive plan which included all existing or proposed infrastructure, a process for the development of regional and local plans based on that initiative, with a structure for a decentralized control and permitting function.

Design clearly plays a key role in creating successful public spaces.  Ellen moderated a panel at the international Future of Place Conference in Vancouver, Canada in 2017.  The panel examined the “Architecture of Place”, and included developers from Denver and Brasilia, in addition to architects/urban designers from Amsterdam, Delhi and Washington, DC.  The diverse participants agreed strongly on two major themes – that cities need to focus on what happens at the street level, and that public engagement was critical to making places work for residents and visitors.