About Dan Burden
Dan Burden is an internationally
recognized authority on bicycle and pedestrian facilities and programs,
livability, sustainability and Smart Growth. He brings together many
disciplines and issues - street design, traffic calming, living
streets, public
safety, bicycling, and greenways - into a holistic vision for creating
healthy,
livable, sustainable and prosperous communities. Dan is a master
fa
cilitator
that connects with his audience. The more controversial a topic the
more people
turn to Dan to address change, provide the latest ideas and best
practices.
Cities of the future will require more complexity, more attention to
detail,
more collaboration, and Dan helps deliver that.
Dan is now in his middle sixties. At a young age (35),
after working to
bring about change in the 70’s, Dan realized that good communities were
all
about learning to embrace change. Dan realized that he lacked
facilitation
skills to do this, returned to school, and has been perfecting this art
ever
since. It is not Dan’s academic background in the town making sciences,
but
more his ability to interact successfully with others that Time
Magazine (in
2001) listed Dan as one of the six most important Civic Innovators in
the
World.
Burden has spent the last thirty-eight years developing, promoting, and evaluating active, equitable and balanced transportation systems and sustainable communities at national, regional, state, and local levels, and, along with his wife, Lys are the co-founder of Walkable Communities.
Burden has 38 years of experience in developing, promoting, and evaluating active transportation, addressing mobility and access issues, providing the best in traffic calming practices, and sustainable community design. He specializes in joining together transportation and land use planning, and the research and implementation of state-of-the-art walkability, bicycling, traffic-calming, and street improvement projects.
Dan teaches in many
colleges and universities. His insights are becoming a model for
college
courses and lectures in civil engineering, urban planning, architecture
and
landscape architecture. Dan provides training and inspiration to many
already
practicing; such as hundreds of engineers and planners in DOT’s in a
half dozen
states. He has given staff training at the community level to traffic
engineers, planners, community developers, main street aficionados,
advocates
and developers across the country.
A former National Geographic photographer, Burden once led a bicycling
expedition from Alaska to Argentina. Burden founded six nonprofits
(five are
still operational) including Bikecentennial (now Adventure Cycling)
and, along
with his wife and thirty others, worked with 90 governmental agencies
to
develop the longest recreational trail in the world - the 4,300
mile-long
TransAmerica Bicycle Trail. In 1977, Burden worked to create the
Bicycle
Federation of America and served as its director for its first two
years of
operation.
Dan is not a town designer. He brings town designers together, and helps them get their skills implemented. During his collegiate education, Burden earned a B.S. in Forestry and furthered his graduate studies in Interpersonal Communications at the University of Montana. He later served for 16 years as the State Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator at the Florida Department of Transportation, before becoming the founder and executive director of Walkable Communities, Inc., a non-profit organization helping North America develop walkable communities.
Today Dan has launched a new non-profit, The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, Inc., which focuses on training and supporting the leaders that will engage town makers and town making to rebuild the world’s most important villages, towns and cities (see www.walklive.org)
Download Dan's full bio here.