Christopher Leinberger
Land Use Strategist and Developer

Christopher B. Leinberger, a land use strategist and developer, combines an understanding of business realities with a concern for our nation's social and environmental issues. Currently, Leinberger is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He focuses on research and practice that help transform traditional and suburban downtowns and other places that provide “walkable urbanism,” as well as research and practice that operationalizes the Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative in metropolitan areas throughout the country.

Leinberger is also a Professor of Practice and Director of the Graduate Real Estate Development Program at the University of Michigan. This program trains the next generation of real estate developers in the building of sustainable walkable urban places. The Program is a joint venture of the Ross Business School, law school, and the Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, where it is housed.

Leinberger is a founding partner of Arcadia Land Company, a New Urbanism development firm dedicated to land stewardship and building a sense of community. His partners are Robert Davis, the developer of Seaside, Florida, and Joe Duckworth, who has run two Builder 100 home building companies and was the National Home Builder of the Year in 1992. The firm has developments in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, a 1,400-acre development in Independence, Mo., a joint venture with Forest City Enterprises, and was the catalytic developer for the revitalization of downtown Albuquerque, N.M.

For 21 years, Leinberger was Managing Director and co-owner of RCLCo, the largest independent real estate advisory firm in the country that today works on over 600 projects a year for developers, corporations and municipalities.

Leinberger has served on the boards of AMRESCO Capital Trust (NASDAQ real estate mortgage trust) and AvalonBay Communities, one of the country's most respected equity REITs (NYSE). He is a member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), serving on the jury of JC Nichols Award for Excellence in Urbanism and in the leadership of the Transit-Oriented Development Council. He is also a member of the Congress of the New Urbanism.

Leinberger has also been active on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences, including the creation of the National Biological Survey, sponsored by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, and a panel to improve metropolitan governance. He is also on the National Advisory Board of The Conservation Fund and the National Real Estate Leadership Council of Enterprise Community Partners.

Leinberger has written chapters for eight books. He is the author of Strategic Planning for Real Estate Companies, published by ULI and NAIOP, regarding corporate strategy for real estate companies, which was revised and re-published in 2008. His most recent book is “The Option of Urbanism, Investing in a New American Dream,” published in November of 2007 by Island Press. It demonstrates how the pendulum of how the country invests in the built environment, which comprises 35 percent of the asset base of the country, is swinging back toward “walkable urbanism.” This follows two generations of building the alternative, “drivable sub-urban” development, which has been the de facto domestic policy of the country. The book makes the connection between how the American Dream lays out on the ground and the economic base of the country from the agricultural era, through the industrial to the current knowledge-based economy.

He has written articles for many periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, Urban Land, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Canada’s National Post, and Los Angeles Times, among others. Leinberger has given speeches to nearly every major real estate and land use organization in the country, as well as many chambers of commerce, councils of governments and environmental organizations. His articles can be found at www.cleinberger.com.

He has been profiled by CNN, The Today Show, Canadian National Radio, USA Radio, CBS Radio, and numerous times by National Public Radio, including Morning Edition and Marketplace, regarding metropolitan development trends. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Santa Fe Institute, Harvard University, Swarthmore College, University of Wisconsin, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Virginia Tech, University of New Mexico (as an adjunct professor), and other institutions of higher education.

Leinberger received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College, where he double majored in Political Science and Urban Sociology, and subsequently acquired a MBA from the Harvard Business School. He also attended the Martin Luther King School of Social Change, the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan, and was a Coro Foundation Fellow in Public Policy in Los Angeles. Leinberger lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Lisa.