NACTO is proud to introduce Matthew Roe as the new Director of the Designing Cities Initiative. Matthew is an urban transportation planner with nearly a decade of experience in city street design, planning, and policy, with a focus on knowledge-driven, low-cost pedestrian safety projects. In his new position, he will be working with city professionals across North America to bring state-of-the-art design to urban streets.
NACTO’s Designing Cities Initiative helps cities to bring cutting-edge design techniques and operational expertise together with community knowledge, creating safer, more economically active, more sustainable and more civically engaging streets. Matthew has experience training planners, architects and engineers in this multidisciplinary, knowledge-driven approach to city streets, both in North America and abroad. “Working in New York taught me to tap into a city’s vast institutional knowledge about what’s possible, match that with a vision for how great city streets could be – and then bring that knowledge to communities and leaders so we can make great streets together,” said Roe.
“From New York to Mexico City and beyond, Matt has a grasp on the inner workings of urban streets and knows how to analyze and design them so that they work better and save lives,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, NACTO Chair. “The population of the world’s cities is growing and Matt’s hand’s-on planning experience makes him the perfect person to help NACTO meet its 21st-century challenges.”
“Matthew will be an amazing resource for our member cities as they work to bring their infrastructure into the 21stcentury,” said Ed Reiskin, SFMTA Director and President of NACTO. “His experience improving both safety and traffic flow on city streets gives him a uniquely qualified perspective.”
Across seven years at the New York City Department of Transportation, Matthew led the High-Crash Corridor Program, helping to transform dozens of miles of the city’s most challenging thoroughfares into pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly streets. He introduced a modern data-driven approach to the Department’s globally recognized street redesign programs, leading a safety research program and data team and co-authoring the 2010 New York City Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan. He also oversaw the development of a geographic interface for safety-based prioritization and evaluation, used for hundreds of projects and underpinning the 2013 Making Safer Streets report. Other highlights include traffic planning and safety analysis for the Times Square and Herald Square plazas, and responding to Hurricane Sandy. More recent projects include the first statewide and citywide safety plans in Mexico, as well as pedestrian safety designs for bus rapid transit and light rail corridors in large developing cities.
Matthew’s academic publications focus on the relationship between safety and street design, including the causes of pedestrian injuries and effects of street redesigns on safety, as well as broader policy and geographic analysis techniques. He has also contributed to the NACTO Urban Street Design Guide and the NYC Street Design Manual. He holds a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Social Studies from Wesleyan University.