Chris Leinberger

Christopher B. Leinberger is a land use strategist, teacher, developer, researcher and author, balancing business realities with social and environmental concerns. He is a professor emeritus and former chair of the Center for Real Estate Studies at the George Washington University School of Business.

He is also the president of Locus: Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors, a political advocacy organization working on the national and state levels. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program in Washington, D.C. Finally, he is a founding partner of Arcadia Land Company, a new urbanism and transit-oriented development firm based in Philadelphia.

For twenty years, Professor Leinberger was the managing director and owner of Robert Charles Lesser & Co., a leading international market, financial feasibility and strategic planning firm for the real estate industry.

His most recent book is the Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream. He is the author of Strategic Planning for Real Estate Companies and has contributed chapters to 12 other books. He is an op-ed contributor to the New York Times, writes regularly for the Atlantic Monthly and numerous other magazines. CNN, National Public Radio, the Atlantic Cities Channel and the Washington Post, among others, have profiled him.

Leinberger was voted one of the “Top 100 Urban Thinkers” in a 2009 poll conducted by Planetizen, the international urban planning website. He was the 2010 William H. Whyte Urbanism Award winner by Partners for Livable Communities.

Leinberger is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Harvard Business School and lives within walking distance of GW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.