Jeffrey Shumaker, AICP, is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia GSAPP and has been working at the
intersection of architecture, urban design, and planning for more than twenty-five
years, in both the public and private sectors, and in cities across the globe. He
served the City of New York as its Chief Urban Designer and Director of Urban
Design and held leadership roles in some of the world’s top architecture, urban
planning, and design firms, including SOM, KPF, and BIG.
Jeffrey is currently President of Urbanscape, an international urban design and
planning consultancy he founded in 2002. Taking a place-based approach to his work,
Jeffrey is helping communities, architecture and planning firms, private and non-profit
institutions, towns, and cities create better places to live, work, study, and play. Jeffrey
provides a full range of services from urban design, planning, and illustration to liaising
with city agencies and advising clients on strategy and public approvals. Globally,
Jeffrey is serving as expert advisor to UNHabitat on implementing the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) – participated in two recent expert panel discussions in
Seville and Madrid - and is working with cities around the globe to build internal urban
design capacity, most recently in Pretoria, S. Africa and Seoul, S. Korea.
Jeffrey holds dual Masters Degrees in Architecture, Planning, and Urban Design from
MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture with Honors from Syracuse University. He is the
recipient of the Public Architect Award from AIANY and the Michael Weil Award from
the NYC Department of City Planning, both recognizing excellence in urban design in
the public realm. Jeffrey teaches and lectures frequently and is currently an adjunct
professor of urban design and planning for Columbia University and the Syracuse
Architecture program in NYC.