Dr. Elijah Anderson is Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, and a recent Stockholm Prize Laureate. He is one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States and an expert on social inclusion in downtown public spaces. His publications include Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999); Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990); and the classic sociological work, A Place on the Corner (1978). Anderson’s most recent ethnographic work, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, was published by WW Norton in 2011. He has received numerous awards for his work in sociology and ethnography, including the 2021 Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Mr. Bobby Boone is Founder and Chief Strategist with &Access, an equitable retail and economic development consultancy. With nearly a decade of experience immersed in retail real estate, Bobby is impassioned about empowering engaged tenants, developers and cities to create community-serving retail. He ensures the viability and sustainability of retail environments with tailored solutions that draw on his market analysis, planning, and strategic merchandising expertise. Prior to founding &Access, Bobby led a citywide effort to attract and maintain small businesses in Detroit and tackled wide-ranging retail challenges as a senior strategist at Streetsense — from repositioning Fortune 500 brands and malls of yesteryear to crafting expansion strategies for emerging brands and commercial corridors.

Dr. Karen Chapple is a Professor in Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto and its Director of the School of Cities. She is the team lead on the Downtown Recovery research project, which tracks how North American downtowns have overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, Chapple studies inequalities in the planning, development, and governance of regions in the Americas, with a focus on economic development and housing. Her recent books include Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions: Towards More Equitable Development (Routledge, 2015) and Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities, co-authored (2019).

Mrs. Carol Coletta is a Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. Coletta has deep experience driving impactful public-private partnerships, leveraging networks of civic assets, and fostering the prosperity of communities and individuals across the United States. Her work includes Reimagining the Civic Commons, a multi-funder effort to demonstrate that transformative public spaces can connect people of all backgrounds, cultivate trust, create more resilient communities, and generate greater value in neighborhoods nearby. Coletta has worked for a range of foundations, non-profit organizations, and think tanks, reimagining the future of public spaces and cities. Coletta has received numerous awards for her work, including the 2025 ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, and she has been named one of American’s top 100 urbanists by Planetizen in 2017 and 2023.

Mr. Thomas Fisher is a Professor at the University of Minnesota’s College of Design and director of the Minnesota Design Center. Fisher served for 19 years as a dean at the University of Minnesota and became the director of the Minnesota Design Center in 2015. His research has focused on sustainable architecture, design ethics, and community-based service design. Recognized in 2005 as the fifth most published writer about architecture in the United States, he has written 9 books, over 50 book chapters, and over 400 articles about architectural design, practice, and ethics. Named a top-25 design educator four times by Design Intelligence, he has lectured at 36 universities and over 150 professional and public meetings.

Dr. Conrad Kickert is an Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning, specializing in urban design, urban form, and the urban experience. He is also the director of Programs for the Rudy Bruner Center for Urban Excellence and the organizer of the 2026 Debate on downtowns. Dr. Kickert has multiple decades of experience researching and designing downtowns and their public spaces in Europe and North America, yielding several award-winning books that include Dream City – Creation, Destruction, and Reinvention in downtown Detroit (2019), Street-level Architecture (2022), and Place and Placemaking (2026). His insights on cities have featured in news media such as the New York Times, the Independent, Bloomberg, Fast Company, and National Public Radio.

Mr. Alex Krieger is Professor in Practice of Urban Design, Emeritus at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He served as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Director of the Urban Design Program, and as Associate Chair of the Department of Architecture. Mr. Krieger is also a principal at NBBJ, a global design practice. For over forty years, he has provided architecture, urban design, and urban planning services to a broad array of clients in numerous cities worldwide, focusing primarily on educational, institutional, healthcare, and public projects in complex urban settings. His publications include City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present (2019), Urban Design, co-authored (2009), and Remaking the Urban Waterfront, co-authored, (2004).

Dr. Vikas Mehta is Professor of Urbanism at the University of Cincinnati and an expert on urbanity and public space. Dr. Mehta’s work focuses on the role of design and planning in creating a more responsive, equitable, stimulating and communicative environment. He is interested in various dimensions of urbanity through the exploration of place, design and urban social life. Dr. Mehta’s work on the urban street emphasizes the street as a heterogeneous, multicultural, multigenerational and multiuse public space. He has developed new measures of sociability that have advanced existing methods to study human behavior in public spaces, published in books such as Public Space: notes on why it matters, what we should know, and how to realize its potential (2023) and The Street: a quintessential social public space (2013).

Mrs. Larisa Ortiz is Managing Director at Streetsense, a retail and downtown development consultancy. Larisa brings 20+ years of experience advising public/private sector clients on retail strategy in urban environments. Prior to joining Streetsense, Larisa led award-winning projects as the founder of LOA, including The City of Cambridge Massachusetts Retail Strategy and New York City’s Commercial District Needs Assessment. A Fulbright Scholar and Watson Fellow, she received her Masters in Planning from MIT. She is the author of Improving Tenant Mix (ICSC) and served on the NYC Planning Commission, and of the forthcoming book Storefront Streets with Princeton University Press.

Mr. Stephen Paynter is Regional Growth Director and Principal at Gensler, a global architecture, design, and planning firm. Steven is widely recognized as an industry leader on the conversion of (downtown) office buildings to residential, shaping the future of cities, and design of post-pandemic office building. Engaged in original research, he has led the development of a tool for rapid assessment of existing office building stock for ESG performance. Steven was recognized by Business Insider as one of the Top 100 People Transforming Business in 2022, and his work and leadership have been featured in PBS, BBC News, CNBC, Daily Mail UK, Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, RTE, and Architectural Record. His ability to combine technical execution with elegant design and his commitment to each project makes him sought-after by clients across all industries.

Mrs. Carol Ross Barney is the Design Principal and Founder of Ross Barney Architects, a Chicago-based architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture studio. She is the recipient of the 2023 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and has been in the vanguard of civic space design for over four decades. Her body of work includes the award-winning redesign of the Chicago Riverwalk, which reimagines over a mile of underutilized waterfront into the sociable, inclusive, and sustainable heart of downtown Chicago. With a career that spans nearly 50 years, Carol has made significant contributions to the built environment, the profession, and architectural education, and she relentlessly advocates that excellent design is a right, not a privilege.

Dr. Lynne Sagalyn is Professor Emerita of Real Estate at Columbia Business School. An expert in real estate development and finance, Sagalyn has published extensively on a broad range of downtown issues in the fields of finance and public/private partnerships. Dr. Sagalyn is widely known for her research on downtown development and its long history of overcoming social, cultural, and political transformations. Her books include Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan (2016), Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (2001) and, Downtown Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities, co-authored (1989).

Thank you to our 2026 Rudy Bruner Center Debates on Urban Excellence (DUE) sponsors and partners.