Princeton University

Thomas K. Wright is Executive Vice President of Regional Plan Association, the nation’s oldest private, non-profit regional planning organization. Since 1922, RPA has worked to improve the quality of life in the 31-county New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan area by creating long-term comprehensive plans and promoting their implementation across political boundaries.  RPA takes positions on major current public policy issues and works on a non-partisan basis with public and private sector interests to advance its agenda.

Mr. Wright lectures widely on growth management, regional planning and redevelopment issues, and rebuilding New York City from the attacks of 9/11. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and an adjunct professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology School of Architecture. He has served as Associate Faculty for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

From 1998 to 2001, Mr. Wright was the Deputy Executive Director of the New Jersey Office of State Planning, where he helped manage the adoption of the 2001 New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan.

Prior to joining the Office of State Planning, Mr. Wright was Director of Regional Plan Association’s New Jersey office and Director of the Governance Campaign. In addition to co-authoring, editing and overseeing production of RPA’s Third Regional Plan, his research projects included initiatives focused on promoting state brownfields legislation and the creation of a Special Improvement District and an Arts District in Downtown Newark.

Previously, Mr. Wright was Coordinator of the award-winning Mayors’ Institute on City Design, organizing forums, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to educate American mayors about urban design and city planning and their role in the design and development process.

Mr. Wright has co-authored several publications, including the Executive Summary of the New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan; A Region at Risk: The Third Regional Plan for the New York–New Jersey–Connecticut Metropolitan Area; Downtown Brooklyn: A Plan for Continued Progress; and the New York case study in Cities in Our Future, published by Island Press for Habitat II, the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements.

Thomas Wright received a Bachelor of Arts in history and a certificate in American Studies from Princeton University and a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University, where he received a Kinne Fellowship for studying and traveling in Latvia and the American Institute of Certified Planners Outstanding Student Award. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Urban Design in New York City.

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