Tim Campbell

Tim Campbell Tim Campbell is a preeminent internationalist among Americans interested in issues of the growth and development of cities. Focusing on city leadership, learning and innovation, he has worked for more than 35 years in urban development. His experience spans scores of countries and hundreds of cities in Latin America, South and East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. His areas of expertise include strategic urban planning, city development strategies, decentralization, urban policy, and social and poverty impact of urban development.As chairman of the Urban Age Institute, a non-profit that sponsors major conferences and publishes Urban Age Magazineonline, he oversees efforts to foster leadership and innovation between and among cities, with a focus that includes strategic urban planning, sustainable environmental planning and poverty reduction.

In the recent past Campbell has concentrated on how the world’s cities actually learn, internally, and just as important,  from each other — the focus of his book Beyond Smart Cities:  How Cities Network, Learn and Innovate (Earthscan, Feb 2012). 

Tim Campbell retired from the World Bank in December of 2005 after more than 17 years in posts related to city development. He led the urban team at the World Bank Institute and was founding leader of the Urban Partnership, an internal World Bank think tank. He pioneered and was the bank’s coordinator of city development strategies (CDS), a new analytical tool that focuses on cities as the unit of analysis in national development.

Before joining the World Bank, he worked for more than 13 years as a private consultant and university professor. His consulting clients included private sector firms, governments, and international organizations. He taught at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. He lived in rural and small town Costa Rica for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Campbell has authored several books, including The Quiet Revolution, exploring the rise of political participation in cities with the onset of decentralization in Latin America from 1983 to 1995, and Leadership and Innovation, a collection of case studies about the innovation process in leading local governments in Latin America.

In 2009 he became a senior fellow of the Comparative Domestic Policy Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Last updated November 21, 2011.