FOUNDING DIRECTOR

Alan M. Berger is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies & Planning, and Director Emeritus/Norman B. and Muriel Leventhal Professor of Advanced Urbanism at MIT's Center for Advanced Urbanism. His classes on Green Infrastructure, Carbonless Urbanization, and Sustainable Landscapes are open to the entire MIT community regardless of background. Berger has published, lectured and exhibited worldwide, including with The World Economic Forum, New York Times, Economist, NPR, and over 100 other top media outlets. He currently serves on the steering committee of the Center of Excellence on New Mobility and Automated Vehicles of the U.S. Federal Highway Administration at UCLA. Since 2008 Berger has served as a “Urban Futurist” for Toyota Research North America and Toyota Mobility Foundation, researching new city form based on carbonless mobility and autonomous vehicles.

His most recent book is A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation: Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy (with Carolyn Kousky and Billy Fleming: Island Press 2021). His other recent award winning book is Infinite Suburbia (with Joel Kotkin, Celina Balderas Guzman), a global perspective on suburban expansion. In addition he has published the award winning books Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America, and Reclaiming the American West. His other books include Designing the Reclaimed Landscape, The Infrastructural Monument and Scaling Infrastructure (with Alexander D'Hooghe), Nansha Coastal City: Landscape and Urbanism in the Pearl River Delta (with Margaret Crawford), Systemic Design Can Change the World and Landscape + Urbanism Around the Bay of Mumbai (with Rahul Mehrotra).

Prior to MIT, Berger was Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard-GSD, 2002-2008. He is a Prince Charitable Trusts Fellow of The American Academy in Rome.