Arun Jain

Biography: Arun Jain is a US and Indian educated urban designer and urban strategist with over 38 years of US and international experience in practice and academia. His insights come from being a consultant, city executive, advisor, academic and mentor over the full range of allied urban development disciplines. Arun engages with, consults and advises city and regional administrations, development companies, institutions, and foundations to improve cities and urban life. He has planned, designed, and directly influenced over 90 new private and public projects with a combined investment capital of over US $14.5 billion. He has spoken in over 150 major keynotes, conferences, seminars, and workshops. He has held academic positions at six universities and his published contributions span print and digital media. His professional involvements span across 47 countries and over 117 cities. Leveraging leadership roles on professional boards and in academia, Arun instigates think tanks, expert meetings, and strategic interventions to address difficult urban problems. He enjoys focusing on urban decision support tools, behavior sensitive infrastructure strategies, and development frameworks. More recently (2018-2022) he was Bellevue, Washington's Chief Urban Designer. In 2016 Arun was a German (DAAD) funded Guest Professor at the Institute for Urban & Regional Planning (ISR), Technical University of Berlin. From 2014-16 he was a strategic planning advisor to the Indian State Government of Karnataka (pop. 64 million). Arun was Portland, Oregon’s first Chief Urban Designer from 2002-09. In 2001, he helped create a national policy structure and ecology sensitive development tool for the island country of Palau. The United Nations frequently calls upon Arun. He was a lead expert for UN Habitat’s Urban SDG development process (Goal 11), and a 2016 policy unit expert for UN Habitat III, Quito. In 2017, he gave the UNODC (UN Office of Drugs and Crime) an urbanist’