BOARD

The Board of Directors of LAPHG is responsible for advancing the organization’s mission of learning from the past to inform planning for the future by actively sponsoring colloquia, webinars, seminars and conferences.

Prominent Southern California leaders in urban planning, city management, transportation, development, planning education and planning history serve on the Board. Biographical sketches of Board members are presented below followed by those of emeriti Board members and those comprising the Advisory Council.

ADVISORY COUNCIL

In order to increase outreach to the community and broaden its experiential resources LAPHG has established an Advisory Council of distinguished planners, developers, and academics to advise the Board of Directors on issues relating to LAPHG’s mission. While not responsible for the functioning and financial aspects of LAPHG, the role of the Advisory Council is to provide advice on a periodic basis on topics for programs and colloquia, peer review, and other supporting activities. Invitations to join the Advisory Council are based on experience in planning practice, the academy, governmental policy development, and associated disciplines and fields. The following are LAPHG Advisory Council members.

Vinayak Bharne is formerly Principal and Director of Design at Moule & Polyzoides, is now Associate Partner/Director of Urban Design and Planning, Gruen Associates. He is a leading thinker and practitioner in the fields of urban design and planning, bringing significant experience in domestic and international urbanism at all scales, with projects in North and Central America, Asia, Africa and Australia. His work has received numerous awards including the National Award for Smart Growth Overall Excellence in 2013; the American Planning Association Planning Excellence in Implementation Award in 2012, and six Charter Awards from the Congress for the New Urbanism. Mr. Bharne is an Adjunct Associate Professor of urbanism at the University of Southern California School of Architecture. He is the editor/author of numerous books including Affordable Housing: Inclusive Cities, and Urbanism Beyond 2020. Mr. Bharne is the executive editor of the international urbanism journal, My Livable City. He earned a B.Arch. from Goa University in India and an M.Arch. from the University of Southern California, followed by a year-long Presidential Fellowship in leadership studies at the USC Marshall School of Business. He currently serves on the editorial board of the research journal in India, Conscious Urbanism, and on the Board of Directors of Union Station Homeless Services in Pasadena, California. Mr. Bharne is recipient of the John Chase Visionary Award from the American Planning Association Los Angeles Section for excellence in urban design and city planning (2024); the Allied Professional Appreciation Award from the Indian Society of Landscape Architects for significant contributions to landscape architecture (2023); and the Academic Leadership & Impact Award for Urbanism from the USC Pacific Asia Museum (2023).

Vaughan Davies, ISAA, is Principal of Perkins Eastman Architects’ Los Angeles office, a national and international practice with over 1200 architects and designers. He has more than 30 years of experience as an architect and urban designer, having developed dozens of successful plans for downtowns; urban waterfronts; retail, resort and entertainment districts; transit-oriented developments; and large-scale mixed-use projects, all with an emphasis on walkability and sustainability. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Davies served as Principal/Director of Urban Design with EDAW-AECOM, and before that as Principal-in-Charge of EE&K Architects’ Los Angeles office. A native of South Africa, Vaughan Davies immigrated to Los Angeles via New York City where he earned a Master of Science degree in Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar in New York City.  His projects have been instrumental in transforming the way New York City and Los Angeles have approached urban downtowns and waterfronts with “pedestrian-first” development focus. Precedent-setting projects in the Los Angeles region include Paseo Colorado in Pasadena, Gateway Intermodal Center at Union Station, Hollywood & Highland, the Echo Park Lake Revitalization, a master plan and implementation of the public realm for San Pedro’s Waterfront for the Port of Los Angeles and the Queensway Bay master plan and design for Rainbow Harbor in Long Beach. He is currently working on the expansion of METRO’s Eastside extension of the Gold Line, a re-imagining of UCSF’s Parnassus Campus in San Francisco, a master plan for UC San Diego’s Health Sciences West Campus, and one of the largest planned expansions of an American city’s downtown in Nashville, TN.   

Alan Jutzi is the retired Curator of Rare Books for The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens where he served with distinction for 45 years. Alan earned a M.A. in Library Science at UCLA in 1974 and by the early 1980s he had become a curator in the Rare Book Department, overseeing millions of rare historical materials and an entire department of professional colleagues. Mr. Jutzi was an “activist curator,” building The Huntington Library archives in architectural materials, medical history, cookbooks and food culture, and urban and regional planning. In honor of his scholarship and devotion to The Huntington, the Alan Jutzi Fellowship for Non-Traditional Scholars, an endowed fellowship was established to provide at least one month of residential funding annually to someone chosen from outside the customary academic tracks that produce The Huntington’s readers. Mr. Jutzi was one of the original founders of LAPHG in 1984.

Kenneth McCormick, a longtime resident of Pasadena, served as an investment banker for most of his career at Kleinwort Benson in London and J. P. Morgan in New York and Los Angeles. He now is the CEO of Mill Creek Properties in Pasadena, an urban planning and development firm in the Playhouse Village, where he has recently completed two housing projects with a third under construction. These projects have had a major positive impact on the Village and has been the spark for its reinvention as an urban village. Ken McCormick has a commitment to civic affairs, having served on numerous City of Pasadena boards and commissions. He is a member of the Huntington Library Board of Overseers, the Playhouse District Association Board, and the Flintridge Prep Board. He has been honored at the Pasadena Museum of History’s Contemporary History Makers Gala. Mr. McCormick graduated from Harvard College with a degree in History and from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Deborah Murphy is the founder of Deborah Murphy Urban Design + Planning that serves public and non-profit agencies across Los Angeles County. Ms. Murphy’s firm is a highly regarded and dedicated to providing leadership in urban design and planning of communities. The firm is well-recognized for its strong team building skills that promote synergistic relationships among stakeholders of a project from property owners and merchants to residents, visitors, and city staffs and officials. The firm’s specialty is working with complex and dynamic built-out cities that are transforming themselves into new mixed use, multifamily residential and commercial development projects integrally linked to multimodal transportation systems and open space amenities. During Ms. Murphy’s over 30 years of dedicated urban planning and design work, she has been a prominent advocate of active transportation, the founder of Los Angeles Walks, and Chair of the City of Los Angeles Pedestrian Advisory Committee. She serves on numerous transportation boards, committees and panels and regularly speaks about pedestrian safety and design at colleges and universities, schools, and local, state and national professional planning organizations. She also speaks at transportation advocacy forums, summits and conferences. Ms. Murphy earned her B.A. in Design and her M.Arch from UCLA.

Dowell Myers, Ph.D., is a professor of policy, planning, and demography in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he also directs the Pop Dynamics Research Group. Professor Myers is an interdisciplinary scholar who links scientific knowledge to applied problem solving and is expert in all things demographic. In the planning field, his program of research has pursued two sustained contributions: bringing people back in as the focus of planning success and emphasizing planning as a temporal process of developing the future. Best known as an expert on changing housing needs over time, he was an early pioneer in the field of housing demography that closely links the two sides of the census of population and housing. Recipient of the 2017 Dale Prize for Scholarly Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning from Cal Poly Pomona, his future-oriented articles have twice won the article of the year award from the Journal of the American Planning Association. He also authored Immigrants and Boomers (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007). Professor Myers earned a B.A. from Columbia University in Anthropology, a Master of City Planning degree from UC Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT (with substantial work in demography at Harvard University).

Steven A. Preston, FAICP, is the former city manager of San Gabriel, California. During his tenure, the city received numerous awards for its planning, communications, economic development and redevelopment programs. Mr. Preston is the winner of the American Planning Association President’s Award for Distinguished Leadership in the advancement of the profession. A former President of both the American Planning Association’s California Chapter and the California Planning Roundtable, Mr. Preston served as a planner in the communities of La Verne and Glendale, California, as well as in the private sector. He contributed a chapter on management to an International City Mangers’ Association volume on community planning, as well as a chapter in the 2012 anthology, “Planning Los Angeles.” Consistent with an impressive resume in historic preservation, he is past Co-Historian of the California Chapter of APA and past President of Pasadena Heritage. He lectures part-time at Cal Poly, Pomona. Mr. Preston served on the LAPHG Board of Directors. 

David Sloane, Ph.D., is a professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Professor Sloane researches both contemporary and historical topics in urban planning, community health, cultural landscapes, and public safety. He is editor of Planning Los Angeles (2012), a multi-author look at the past, present and future of planning in the City of Angeles. He has written extensively about neighborhood level institutions and activities, especially related to food systems, street gangs, and commemoration. Much of his work explores how community advocates can mobilize to affect their environments and thus their well-being. He has written three books beyond the edited volume, as well as publishing many articles in professional journals. His book, Is the Cemetery Dead? (2018), examines changing approaches to mourning and commemoration. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Syracuse University. Professor Sloane served on LAPHG Board of Directors.  

Josh Stephens is the contributing editor to the California Planning & Development Report, the state’s foremost independent publication dedicated to urban planning. Mr. Stephens previously edited The Planning Report and the Metro Investment Report, monthly publications covering, respectively, land use and infrastructure in Southern California. The CP&DR website is organized according to a wide range of themes and types of articles that Josh has written over the years including long-form feature stories covering urban planning news, book reviews, blogs and opinion, education and college admissions, and miscellany. Mr. Stephens also is a contributing editor to Planetizen.com and conducts its “Planners Across America” interview series. Mr. Stephens has contributed to publications such as Next City, Planning Magazine, Architect Magazine, The Architect’s Newspaper, Los Angeles Magazine, Sierra Magazine, Grist.org, Los Angeles Review of Books, Santa Monica Next, Darling Magazine, TheAmerican.com, L.A. Downtown News, Los Angeles Times, The Harvard Citizen, English Journal, Princeton Alumni Weekly, and The Malibu Times.  Mr. Stephens is the author of the book The Urban Mystique: Notes on California, Los Angeles, and Beyond published by Solimar Books. Mr. Stephens earned a B.A. in English from Princeton University and a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Stephens serves on the Board of Directors of the Westside Urban Forum.

Michael Woo is the Dean Emeritus of Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design, which he headed for ten years. He was the first trained urban planner and the first Asian American elected to the Los Angeles City Council. As the Councilman representing the Hollywood area for eight years, Mr. Woo spearheaded the Hollywood Redevelopment Plan and played a key role choosing the route and station locations of the Metro Red Line subway. He also served as a member of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission for six years. Mr. Woo helped to start the Hollywood Farmers Market, now the largest certified farmers’ market in the City of Los Angeles.  Mr. Woo served on a committee overseeing a predevelopment analysis of the 308-acre former Lanterman State Hospital property in Pomona, one of the largest contiguous parcels of land available for potential development in Los Angeles County that was transferred from state control to the Cal Poly Pomona campus. Mr. Woo graduated with honors in 1973 from University of California, Santa Cruz, and earned a Master of City Planning from UC Berkeley.