Jeffrey Shumaker

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.