Ron Shiffman

Co-Founder and Board Member

Ron Shiffman (FAICP, NYS HON. AIA) is a city planner with close to 60 years of experience providing architectural, planning, community economic development and sustainable development assistance to community-based groups in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. In 1964, Ron Shiffman co-founded the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development [PICCED], which is today the oldest continuously operated university-based community design and development center in the United States.

In addition to RETI, Ron sits on the boards of a number of local, national and international organizations committed to equitable and sustainable planning and development efforts such as The Center for the Living City, the Center for Social Inclusion, now Race Forward, and Shared Interest, a micro loan guarantee fund serving Southern Africa. He formerly served on the board of groups such as the Center for Community Change, the Urban Homestead Assistance Board, the Coalition for the Homeless and many others

Ron Shiffman is the recipient of numerous awards from community-based organizations and national advocacy groups, including local and national awards from ADPSR [Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility], the local chapters of the AIA and AICP, and the Municipal Art Society. He has authored a number of articles on urban planning, sustainable development, environmental and social justice, and community economic development. He was lead editor of “Beyond Zuccotti Park- Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space.” He co-authored a book, with Roger Katan entitled Building Together that chronicles the work of Katan and Shiffman in the early days of social and participatory architecture, and advocacy planning.  He has been a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners [AICP] since May 1985 and in April 2002 was elected a Fellow of the AICP. He was honored by the NYS American Institute of Architects in the fall of 2005 when honorary AIA membership was conferred upon him.

Since 2010 he has received two prestigious awards: Rockefeller Foundation’s Jane Jacobs Lifetime Achievement Award and the American Planning Association’s National Planning Pioneer Award. The Planning Pioneer Award is presented to individuals who have made personal and direct innovations in American planning that have significantly and positively redirected planning practice, education, or theory with long-term results.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, he worked with Tulane and Cornell Universities to organize planning professionals and educators to assist in response to the devastation that occurred. He organized Pratt Institute School of Architecture’s transdisciplinary effort to assist in the rebuilding effort after Hurricane Sandy entitled “Rebuild, Adapt, Mitigate and Plan” That effort continues today as part of an international consortium addressing the challenges facing “Delta Cities.”

He is a tenured professor at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture where he chaired the Department of City and Regional Planning from 1991 to 1999. He was appointed to the NYC Planning Commission by David Dinkins and served on the Planning Commission from 1990-1996. He retired as Director of PICCED in July 2003 and is now Professor Emeritus in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute.