Peter Calthorpe

In 2018 Calthorpe launched urban-planning software UrbanFootprint that should help fight sprawl allowing non-experts to model the impacts of different urban planning scenarios.

In his 2017 TED Talk Calthorpe addressed the necessity of efficient use of space and resources in the context of climate change and identified urban sprawl an urgent trend that requires immediate attention.

In 2006 Calthorpe won the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.

In 1989, he proposed the concept of Pedestrian Pocket, an up to 110 acres (45 ha) pedestrian-friendly, transit-linked, mixed-use urban area with a park at its centre. The Pedestrian Pocket mixes low-rise high-density housing, commercial and retail uses. The concept had a number of similarities with Ebenezer Howard's Garden City and aimed to be an alternative to low-density residential suburban developments.

In the 1986 he, along with Sim Van der Ryn, published Sustainable Communities. In the early 1990s he developed the concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) highlighted in The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream.

Peter Calthorpe (born 1949) is a San Francisco-based architect, urban designer and urban planner. He is a founding member of the Congress for New Urbanism, a Chicago-based advocacy group formed in 1992 that promotes sustainable building practices. For his works on redefining the models of urban and suburban growth in America Calthorpe has been named one of twenty-five ‘innovators on the cutting edge’ by Newsweek magazine.