ABOUT
David Dixon
FAIA
David Dixon, FAIA, has built a North America-wide reputation for transforming cities and suburbs into places where diverse people choose to live, work, play, gather, and invest. His work focuses on creating “five-minute places”—walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods that connect people to opportunity, strengthen communities, and unlock investment.
A fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), he received its highest honor for achievement in the public sphere, the Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture. The award recognizes "a lifetime of creating livable neighborhoods, vibrant civic spaces, and vital downtowns." Architect Magazine named him to its Hall of Fame, describing him as “the person we call to ask about cities.” His work has received dozens of additional national awards from organizations including the AIA, American Planning Association, Congress for the New Urbanism, International Downtown Association, and American Society of Landscape Architects.
A leading advocate for walkable density, Dixon helps communities realize the potential of downtowns and urban districts, transform innovation clusters into globally significant ecosystems, rebuild public housing as mixed-income neighborhoods, and reinvent suburbs around walkable centers. Over the past decade alone, his work has helped shape more than $10 billion in transformative investment.
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Seeking to inspire and support colleagues, clients, and communities in embracing and managing transformational change.
Nationally recognized planner and urban designer helping cities and suburbs become more walkable, vibrant, equitable, and resilient.
Signature examples of his work include:
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Leading the creation of New Orleans’ post-Katrina master plan, helping chart the city’s path to recovery and renewal.
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Reimagining Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA and Kanata North in Ottawa as globally recognized innovation ecosystems that drive talent, investment, and discovery.
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Launching transformative urban districts, including Boston’s Seaport District, Water Street Tampa, and East Franklinton in Columbus, OH.
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Unlocking new eras of downtown opportunity for cities large and small including Memphis, TN, Birmingham, AL, Albany, NY, and Moorhead, MI.
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Transforming Chicago’s Cabrini-Green and Boston’s Bunker Hill public housing communities into vibrant mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods.
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Creating walkable, mixed-use downtowns in suburban Dublin, OH, and Sandy Springs, GA, establishing new hearts for growing communities.
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Revitalizing civic spaces through the Charles River Esplanade Plan in Boston, MA and citywide parks and public realm strategies for Fort Worth, TX and Miami, FL.
Dixon's professional leadership and public service reflect his commitment to walkable communities and the future of cities. He serves as a commissioner on the Boston Landmarks Commission and on the boards of America Walks and the Congress for the New Urbanism, New England. He is a former president of the Boston Society of Architects, former chair of the AIA’s Regional and Urban Design Committee, and former advisor to the International Downtown Association’s “Value of Downtowns” initiative. He has also served on national awards juries for the Urban Land Institute and the American Institute of Architects.
Dixon is the author of the forthcoming In Walking Distance: How 5-Minute Neighborhoods Are Reinventing Downtown (Island Press, an imprint of Princeton University Press), co-editor of Suburban Remix: Creating the Next Generation of Urban Places (Island Press), and co-author of Urban Design for an Urban Century: Shaping More Livable, Equitable, and Resilient Cities (Wiley). He holds master’s degrees in architecture and urban design from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
recognition & leadership
National Awards
David Dixon has received more than three dozen national awards from leading professional organizations for transforming urban environments and creating inclusive communities, including the below highlights.
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Thomas Jefferson Award
David Dixon received the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture in 2007, recognizing a lifetime of significant achievement in creating livable neighborhoods, vibrant civic spaces, and vital downtowns. Now called the AIA Award for Excellence in Public Architecture, the honor recognized his leadership in advancing urban places that serve the public.
David Dixon's work has consistently focused on building community understanding that empowers every community member to be an informed participant in planning for their community’s future.
The recognition also highlighted Dixon’s extensive outreach to communities, public agencies, and real estate developers alike to build shared support and a sense of co-authorship for positive change. His approach connects public policy, community aspirations, real estate economics, and physical design, demonstrating how planning and urban design can help cities and suburbs alike become more inclusive, vibrant, and livable.
As principal in charge of planning and urban design at Goody Clancy, Dixon became the first urban designer honored in the award’s private-sector category. His work was characterized by building strong support for increasing density, mixed-income housing, mixed-use redevelopment, and similar building blocks for smart growth that helped reverse decades of urban decline. Notable examples included Boston’s Civic Vision for Turnpike Air Rights Development, lifting the development moratorium in Cambridge’s Kendall Square—today the heart of New England’s life science economy, and helping suburban communities like Dublin, OH, and Sandy Springs, GA, embrace more walkable, urban futures.
American Institute of Architects
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Hall of Fame
In 2012, Architect Magazine named David Dixon, FAIA, to its Hall of Fame, recognizing his national influence on urban design and his role in advancing smarter, more livable approaches to the growth of cities and suburbs. Describing him as “the person we call to ask about cities,” the magazine highlighted a career focused on understanding how demographic, economic, and cultural change could help reshape American communities.
Sketch of East Franklinton
East Franklinton (Before)
East Franklinton (After)
Aerial View of East Franklinton (Before)
Aerial View of East Franklinton (After)
David Dixon's project, the five-year transformation plan for East Franklinton, was highlighted.
The Hall of Fame profile emphasized Dixon’s ability to combine research, market realities, community engagement, and design to build support for ambitious urban change. One project highlighted was the five-year transformation plan for East Franklinton, a gritty 200-acre urban neighborhood next to downtown Columbus, Ohio. The plan envisioned new mixed-use development, affordable housing for artists, and a riverfront park that could together trigger neighborhood revitalization as a center for arts and innovation.
Architect Magazine portrayed Dixon as a thinker, researcher, communicator, and consensus builder who helped communities recognize possibilities they had not previously imagined. His Hall of Fame recognition reflected decades spent connecting urban design with the economic and social forces shaping how people want to live, work, and experience their communities.
Architect Magazine
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American Planning Association
Awards of Excellence in Planning
David Dixon’s work and the planning practice he led have been recognized with four national American Planning Association (APA) awards. These honors celebrate planning that creates safer, stronger, and more just communities—from post-disaster recovery and neighborhood revitalization to the implementation of lasting change.
1. Planning Firm Award — Goody Clancy, 2013
Goody Clancy received the National Planning Excellence Award for a Planning Firm during Dixon's tenure leading its planning and urban design practice. The APA recognized the firm’s commitment to social equity, economic opportunity, and environmental responsibility, supported by intensive community engagement. In an interview celebrating the award, Dixon emphasized that a plan’s success depends on whether communities believe in it, support its implementation, and see it make a difference.
The APA produced a video celebrating Goody Clancy’s 2013 National Planning Excellence Award.
2. Hard-Won Victory Award — New Orleans, 2011
The post-Katrina master plan Dixon led, Plan for the 21st Century: New Orleans 2030, received the National Planning Achievement Award for a Hard-Won Victory. The planning effort helped bring together a New Orleans community long divided along lines of race and social class. It transformed disaster recovery into a shared, citywide framework for New Orleans’ future, pairing a master plan with work on a new comprehensive zoning ordinance.
3. Economic Development & Planning Award — East Franklinton, 2014
The East Franklinton Creative Community District Plan in Columbus, Ohio, received the National Planning Excellence Award for Economic Development & Planning. The plan envisioned renewing a distressed industrial neighborhood through a creative community of artists, makers, and entrepreneurs. Its approach combined affordable artist housing, reuse of industrial buildings, public art, and access to riverfront parks and bikeways.
4. Implementation Award — University District, Columbus, 2010
Campus Partners received the National Planning Excellence Award for Implementation for revitalizing the neighborhoods surrounding The Ohio State University through a planning process guided by Goody Clancy. Dixon joined Campus Partners’ leaders in accepting the award. The effort attracted more than $150 million in investment, including approximately 1,000 renovated or new housing units, South Campus Gateway, a police station, a public elementary school, and an early-childhood learning center.
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Gold Medal
David Dixon’s work on Boston’s Charles River Basin Master Plan received the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Gold Medal in 2002. The recognition highlights his contribution to planning one of the region’s defining civic landscapes.
As founder and leader of Goody Clancy’s planning and urban design practice, Dixon helped connect urban planning with the stewardship of public spaces. Goody Clancy served as lead consultant on the basin’s first comprehensive planning study since 1928, addressing the future of this treasured riverfront.
David Dixon’s work on Boston’s Charles River Basin Master Plan received the ASLA Gold Medal.
The award forms part of a distinguished career shaping waterfronts, downtowns, and neighborhoods. His work emphasizes walkability, resilience, and historic character, bringing architecture, landscape, and community needs together.
American Society of Landscape Architects
Leadership
David Dixon has held various senior leadership roles advancing the practice of planning, urban design, and placemaking at the local, regional, and national levels.
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Former President
David Dixon served as president of the Boston Society of Architects (BSA)—now called the Boston Society for Architecture—in 2003, using his leadership to advance public dialogue about architecture, urban design, and the future of communities. His work connected the profession with broader questions of housing, transportation, environmental responsibility, and quality of life.
Dixon initiated and led Density: Myth & Reality, a national conference challenging fears about density.
Dixon co-chaired the 2001 How We Live smart-growth conference, which helped spur the formation of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, with the BSA as lead sponsor. The initiative brought design expertise into a wider conversation about how communities could accommodate growth while strengthening neighborhoods and protecting natural resources.
During his presidency, Dixon spearheaded the first national conference to challenge widespread fears about density, Density: Myth & Reality. Through this work and subsequent BSA discussions, he encouraged architects, planners, policymakers, and civic leaders to consider how well-designed, walkable development could support more livable and sustainable communities.
Boston Society of Architects
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Former Chair
David Dixon served as chair of the American Institute of Architects’ Regional and Urban Design Committee, bringing his experience in community planning and urban design to a national leadership role. In this position, he helped shape the AIA’s response to Hurricane Katrina and build a new level of collaboration between the Institute’s national Regional and Urban Design, Housing, and Environmental committees. His service reflected a commitment to considering architecture within the larger context of neighborhoods, cities, and regions.
David Dixon sat on several AIA committees and task forces, including serving as chair of the Regional and Urban Design Committee.
Dixon also initiated and chaired the AIA’s National Sustainability Task Force and served on its Regional and Urban Design Awards jury. Together, these roles demonstrate his sustained engagement in advancing thoughtful urban design and the profession’s responsibility to the public.
His approach connects individual buildings with streets, public spaces, transportation systems, social and cultural dynamics, and development patterns that together shape everyday life. Across his work, he has championed walkable, mixed-use communities and planning that responds to local needs while addressing broader economic, social, and environmental challenges.
AIA’s Regional and Urban Design Committee
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Mayors’ Institute on City Design
Four-Time Presenter
David Dixon has served four times as a presenter and design-resource expert for the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD), a national leadership initiative that brings mayors together with leading design professionals to address complex urban challenges through better planning and design.
Drawing on his experience in urban design, downtown revitalization, and community-centered planning, Dixon worked directly with mayors and fellow experts to develop practical strategies for strengthening cities. His MICD work included advising Santa Rosa, CA, Providence, RI, Charleston, SC, and a mix of smaller Mississippi cities on downtown revitalization strategies.
David Dixon served four times as a presenter and design-resource expert for the MICD and participated in the National Mayors Summit on City Design.
Dixon also participated in the National Mayors Summit on City Design, joining civic leaders and nationally recognized design professionals. His repeated involvement with MICD reflects his longstanding role advising public officials on how urban design, development, and public policy can create more vibrant, livable communities.
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Commissioner
In 2026, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu appointed David Dixon, FAIA, to the Boston Landmarks Commission, with the Boston City Council confirming his term through June 30, 2028. The City cited Dixon’s national leadership in urban design and planning, including his work shaping billions of dollars of investment in downtowns, waterfronts, and neighborhoods.
In 2026, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu appointed David Dixon to the Boston Landmarks Commission.
As a commissioner, Dixon helps guide the stewardship of Boston’s historic places as the city grows and changes. The Commission reviews proposed alterations to designated landmarks and historic districts, balancing preservation with evolving neighborhood needs. Dixon emphasizes maintaining the critical interplay between legacy and changes. This is central to creating cities that celebrate enduring human aspirations for places that are walkable and invite community, while at the same time adapting to constantly evolving economic forces.
During the City Council process, Dixon emphasized the value of interdisciplinary collaboration in preservation decisions. His appointment extends a career connecting urban design, public policy, development, and community priorities—now in service of the city where much of his professional career began.
Boston Landmarks Commission
Professional Service
David Dixon has served several leading civic and professional organizations shaping the future of cities, downtowns, and walkable communities.
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america walks
Board Member
David Dixon serves on the Board of Directors of America Walks, a national nonprofit organization that works to advance safe, accessible, equitable, and walkable communities across the United States.
His board service reflects his commitment to promoting walkability and people-centered urban design. Throughout his career, Dixon has championed neighborhoods where housing, jobs, shops, services, parks, transit, and people of diverse backgrounds are within a convenient walk of one another.
This commitment is also central to Dixon’s writing and urban design practice, including his work exploring how walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods can strengthen communities, expand opportunity, and help cities and suburbs thrive.
David Dixon's board service reflects his national leadership in promoting walkability and people-centered urban design. Read his article on this topic.
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Commissioner
David Dixon serves on the Board of Directors of CNU New England, the regional chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism. The organization brings together planners, architects, developers, public officials, and advocates working to create stronger, more walkable, equitable, sustainable, and vibrant cities and towns throughout New England.
David Dixon speaking at the 2026 Congress for the New Urbanism Summit: The New Localism.
Dixon was one of the founders of CNU New England in 2004 and was invited to rejoin the board in 2026. In 2004, he described the chapter’s role as helping to build more cohesive communities and “weaving our society together.” His renewed board service reflects decades of leadership advancing compact and mixed-use neighborhoods, walkability, and people-centered urban design.
His work with CNU New England complements his broader career advocating for urban places that connect housing, transportation, economic opportunity, and public life. The chapter advances these goals through education, professional collaboration, policy reform, events, and advocacy across the region.
Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) New England
David Dixon served as a project advisor to the International Downtown Association’s (IDA) Value of Downtowns initiative.
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Advisor to Value of Downtowns' Initiative
David Dixon served as an advisor to the International Downtown Association’s (IDA) Value of Downtowns initiative, a national research effort demonstrating downtowns’ contributions to their cities and regions. His advisory role draws on his expertise in urban design, downtown revitalization, and community development.
Through the advisory team, Dixon helped develop the initiative’s methodology and metrics alongside IDA, downtown organizations, and research consultants. Its framework evaluates Economy, Inclusion, Vibrancy, Identity, and Resilience, extending the understanding of downtowns’ value beyond property values, employment, and tax revenue.
Dixon has also helped interpret the research, explaining how downtowns can respond to changing demographics, economic conditions, and transportation technologies. His contributions reflect his commitment to walkable, mixed-use places that expand opportunity, support public life, and help communities thrive.
International Downtown Association (IDA)
professional experience
Diverse Senior Roles
David Dixon has founded and led award-winning planning and urban design practices at David Dixon & Associates, Goody Clancy, and Stantec. Through these roles, he has helped cities, institutions, and communities across North America create more vibrant, walkable, and inclusive places. He continues this work through David Dixon Urban, his independent practice focused on helping cities and suburbs turn accelerating change into new opportunities.
David Dixon & Associates
Founder & President
David Dixon & Associates (DDA) was an award-winning planning and urban design practice. The firm played a leadership role in planning Boston’s Southwest Corridor Project—relocating the elevated Orange Line to a tunnel and transforming the surface into Boston’s signature linear Southwest Corridor Park, together with neighborhood-oriented development.
DDA also created the initial vision for transforming Boston’s outmoded industrial Fort Point District into the Seaport District, now emerging as a downtown innovation ecosystem. Elsewhere in Boston, the firm played a leadership role in reinventing the historic Bulfinch Triangle near North Station as a lively, transit-oriented, mixed-use downtown district.
1980—1991
Goody Clancy
Principal
At Goody Clancy, David Dixon was invited to create and lead the firm’s multi-award-winning planning and urban design practice. Working across North America, notable projects included the post-Katrina master plan for New Orleans, a vision for the future of Toronto’s downtown railyards, planning for air-rights development now being built over the Massachusetts Turnpike, plans for lively university districts at The Ohio State University and Drexel University, and the initial vision for Harvard University’s North Allston campus.
The practice also developed groundbreaking plans for new suburban downtowns in Dublin, Ohio, and Sandy Springs, Georgia; the first plan for Boston’s Freedom Trail; and the initial planning to transform Chicago’s challenged Cabrini Green public housing into a new mixed-income neighborhood. Other notable projects included downtown plans for Wichita, Kansas, and Albany, New York, and the mixed-income Livable Claiborne Communities Plan for New Orleans.
1991—2014
stantec
Vice President & Urban Places Fellow
At Stantec, David Dixon was invited to create and lead the firm’s North American Urban Places practice. This unique interdisciplinary practice brought together planning, urban design, landscape design, mobility planning, and real estate development expertise within a single practice.
Notable projects included downtown plans for Memphis, Tennessee, El Paso, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama; initial planning to launch Tampa’s nine-million-square-foot, mixed-use Water Street District; transformation of Boston’s largest public housing development into One Charlestown, a new mixed-income neighborhood; planning to transform Kanata North, one of Canada’s largest innovation clusters, into a globally competitive innovation ecosystem; and a citywide parks and public realm plan for Fort Worth, Texas.
2014—2026
david dixon urban
Founder & President
David Dixon has launched a new chapter of independent practice with David Dixon Urban. He looks forward to collaborating with colleagues across North America to help civic leaders, public agencies, private partners, and community leaders navigate a perfect storm of accelerating demographic, economic, social, technological, and environmental change. His goal is to translate these forces into an unprecedented era of opportunity for cities and suburbs alike.
2026—Present