Nicholas You

Nicholas You, “imagineer” and world citizen.  That’s the best way to describe this veteran urban and intergovernmental expert, architect-planner and organizer of international city activities who recently wound up 28 years of service to various United Nations agencies with five years as senior policy and strategic planning adviser for UN-Habitat.

Nairobi-based, You travels the globe advising governments and local authorities in public policy, strategic planning, best practices and benchmarking in support of sustainability.

His final formal activity with the Habitat was to spearhead the formation of a World Urban Campaign — an alliance to promote the sustainable cities cause worldwide including new types of partners such as media groups, development banks, academics, trade unions and leading international corporations.  A top goal is socially, economically and environmentally sustainable land use, infrastructure, housing, energy  and transportation policies.

The campaign’s start-up was enthusiastically supported by Anna Tibaijuka, UN-Habitat’s Executive Director from 2000 to 2010.  In designating You to lead its formation, she described him to the UN-HABITAT governing board as “a man of new ideas, a free spirit, sometimes difficult to find and follow, but someone whose capacity to work defies imagination.”

You in the 1990s initiated Habitat’s Best Practices and Local Leadership Program, which built a database of more than 2,000 entries, coordinated with the biannual Dubai Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment. But by 2010 he was moving a step farther to form a “100 Cities” worldwide competition inviting cities to go beyond “best practices” to “living practices” of sustainability with mandatory periodic reports on their progress,

You is chair of the World Future Council’s Commission on Cities and Climate Change, a board member of PressGroup Holdings, and a consultant to such firms as Philips, Siemens and the China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce.

His native tongue is Chinese, but he is also fluent in English and French with knowledge of Spanish and Italian.  He was educated at the Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne, the University of Geneva, UCLA and Columbia University.