Gary Hack, Professor Emeritus of Urban Design, University of Pennsylvania

April 8, 2016

Gary Hack is professor emeritus of urban design in the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.  From 1996-2008 he served as dean of the School and is a former chairman of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Before joining Penn, Gary Hack was professor of urban design at MIT and served as chair of the department of urban studies and planning. 

Gary Hack practices and writes about large scale urban design, and has prepared plans for over 40 cities in the US and abroad. He was principal in the firm Carr, Lynch, Hack and Sandell where he was in charge of the design and construction of Rockefeller Park at Battery Park City, an 8.5 acre park that serves as the key open space in Lower Manhattan. He was the principal in charge in the planning of New York City's West Side waterfront which required extensive involvement of over 70 groups over a five year period. He served as principal urban designer for many plans and projects including: Bangkok's Strategic Development Plan, Detroit's East Riverfront, the Hwa Shan cultural district in Taipei, Taiwan, and the redevelopment of Boston's Prudential Center. He was a member of the Studio Libeskind team that won the World Trade Center redevelopment competition and participated in the preparation its urban design guidelines.

Gary Hack authored several articles and books, including Local Planning (with Eugenie Birch, Paul Sedway and Mitchell Silver), Site Planning (with Kevin Lynch), Global City Regions (with Roger Simmonds), Urban Design in a Global Context (with Zhongjie Lin), and Local Planning (with others). 

Gary Hack was educated in architecture at the University of Manitoba (B.Arch ’64) and University of Illinois (M.Arch 66), and in planning at the University of Illinois (MUP ’67) and at MIT, where he received his PhD in 1976. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Dalhousie University in 2006.

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