Ronald Shiffman, FAICP

During Ronald Shiffman's 50 years as a city planner, he has provided program and organizational development assistance to community-based groups in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. His development of the model for community development corporations is a direct result of this groundbreaking work in the 1960s to rebuild Bedford-Stuyvesant through economic development programs. Trained as an architect and urban planner, he is an expert in community-based planning, housing, and sustainable development. He has had extensive experience bringing together private and public sector sponsors of housing and related community development projects.

Shiffman co-founded one of the country's first university design centers — Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development; established one of the nation's first community development corporations in one of the nation's most distressed neighborhoods; pushed for New York City's first inclusionary zoning policy as a commissioner on the NYC Planning Commission; and pioneered the city's mixed-use zoning, which has preserved many of the city's most vital neighborhoods.

Ron Shiffman meets Nelson Mandela (1990) while working in South Africa on Community-Based Strategies.