Robert Gibbs, AICP, ASLA has been appointed by the National Endowment for the Arts to serve as an expert adviser to the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. Gibbs will be providing advanced urban planning assistance for U.S. mayors to address their cities downtown challenges. Gibbs teaches at Harvard University and has been named one of the 100 most influential urban planners of the past century, by his peers and Planetizen. Gibbs was recently honored for his life’s contributions to urban planning and development by the Clinton Presidential Library, the City of Auckland and as Oakland University’s Distinguished Alumni. 

Gibbs has managed Gibbs Planning Group’s offices in downtown Birmingham for 29 years and has consulted for over 500 cities, institutions and real estate developers in all 50 states and around the world including Alexandria, Auckland, Beverly Hills, Charleston, Disney, Dublin, Hilton Head, Houston, Melbourne, Naples, Palm Beach, Palm Desert, Panama, Portland, Santa Cruz, Sarasota, Singapore, Southampton and Warsaw. 

In Michigan, the company has also consulted for Bedrock, and the cities of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Grosse Pointe, Kalamazoo, Mackinac Island, Marquette, Northville and Southfield. Locally, Gibbs planned Troy’s proposed town center, the Village of Rochester, Westwood Common and the Rail District’s Eton Station. Gibbs, a registered landscape architect and professional planner and has served on Birmingham’s Historic Design Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals. He has authored numerous award-winning books and has also co-authored the City of Birmingham’s 2016 Master Plan with Andres Duany.