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Author,
strategist, domestic and global regionalist, Marc Weiss is founder and CEO of Global Urban Development (formerly the Prague Institute), a global cities think tank with operations in Washington, D.C., Barcelona, Beijing, Prague, Singapore and Sydney. He is executive editor of Global Urban Development Magazine, vice president of the United Nations North-South Network for Urban Sustainability, and a member of the Steering Committee of the UN-Habitat's Best Practices and Policies Program.
Weiss made his
initial mark in academia, teaching and authoring books on urban
development. He was tapped as a key urban policy adviser in the
1992 Clinton campaign and developed national urban policy under
HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Subsequently
Weiss activated the economic potentials of key Washington, D.C.
neighborhoods, then shifted his focus to global cities and today
consults as far afield as Baltimore and South Africa (though he remains active on the local scene as president of Metropolitan Investment Strategies and chairof the the Action 29 -- New York Avenue Metro Station Corporation in Washington). At
HUD Weiss was a key architect and senior adviser of such Clinton
Administration initiatives as expanded homeownership, empowerment
zones, the HOPE VI program to transform public housing, and Secretary
Cisneros' Metropolitan Economic Strategy -- the first federal policy
initiative focused on American urban regions and how to connect
the future of inner cities with metro-wide economic prosperity.
A good
chunk of Weiss' hands-on urban experience came in the late '90s
when he coordinated the strategic economic development plan for
Washington as senior adviser to the director of the D.C. Department
of Housing and Community Development, authoring The Economic
Resurgence of Washington, DC: Citizens Plan for Prosperity in the
21st Century (1998).
Weiss
authored The Rise of the Community Builders (1987), co-authored
a best-selling textbook, Real Estate Development Principles and
Process (2000), and contributed to two recent books, Charter
of the New Urbanism (1999), and Replicating Microfinance
in the United States (2002).
In
recent years, Weiss coordinated a three-year initiative for the
Woodrow Wilson International Center on the global future of cities
and regions and served as editor of Global Outlook, an international
urban policy quarterly published jointly by the Wilson Center and
HUD.
For
many years he was associate professor of urban development, planning
and preservation at Columbia University, where he also served as
director of the Real Estate Development Research Center.
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