About CATS

Mission Statement
The Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS) promotes understanding of the built environment as part of the natural environment, through the planning methodology of the rural-to-urban transect. CATS supports interdisciplinary research, publication, tools, and training for the design, coding, building and documentation of resilient transect-based communities.

Practitioners and scholars associated with CATS are committed to transect-based environmental and land development principles that guide and encourage the following outcomes:

• provision, protection and repair of walkable, transit-connected communities, including existing downtowns and first ring suburbs
• comprehensive zoning reform to legalize and protect traditional neighborhood patterns, halt the proliferation of auto-dependent sprawl, and encourage the evolution of single-use areas into towns
• context-based thoroughfare design and engineering for safe and efficient multi-modal transit that includes pedestrian, vehicular, and mass transportation options
• affordable housing and community-based income diversity
• regional, local, and individual food production
• passive climatic response in building and urban design through local patterns and character
• reduction in the environmental impacts and costs of infrastructure
• reduction of waste and harmful emissions as byproducts of human settlement, and the promotion and study of renewable energy technologies.
• repair and infill of unsustainable sprawl patterns at the community and building scales, including the retrofit of thoroughfares for walkable environments.
• reduction of waste and harmful emissions as byproducts of human settlement, and the promotion and study of renewable energy technologies.

Transect Codes Council
The TCC is an advisory board to CATS on code-related matters.

President - Andrés Duany, F.A.I.A.
Andrés Duany practices architecture and town planning in Miami and leads design charrettes nationally and internationally. Mr. Duany and his partner Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are the founding principals of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Town Planners and Architects (DPZ). The firm is a leader in the New Urbanism, the national movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. Mr. Duany and Ms. Plater-Zyberk were among the co-founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). Beginning with the design of Seaside, Florida in 1980, DPZ has prepared more than 200 greenfield, infill, and urban revitalization plans, including those for Providence, Baton Rouge and West Palm Beach. In 2005, Mr. Duany led the Mississippi Renewal Forum six weeks after Hurricane Katrina. The 200-person charrette team produced regional plans for the Gulf Coast and transect-based community plans for all eleven damaged cities, and Forum architects launched the Katrina Cottage initiative. Subsequently he and DPZ also worked in New Orleans and other Louisiana parishes. The firm has also worked extensively in Europe and Asia. Mr. Duany co-authored the books Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, and The New Civic Art. Mr. Duany specializes in the writing of regulations, notably the SmartCode model ordinance.

Vice President - Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, F.A.I.A.
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is the Dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture, where she has taught Architectural Design, Urban Design, Town Planning, and New Urbanism since 1979. She received her undergraduate degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University and her Master's of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. She holds Honorary Doctorates in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, Rollins College, and Johnson and Wales University, and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Notre Dame University. For their collaborative DPZ and CNU initiatives, Ms. Plater-Zyberk and Mr. Duany have received numerous design awards, including the Brandeis Award for Architecture, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Medal of Architecture from the University of Virginia, the Vincent J. Scully Prize for exemplary practice and scholarship in architecture and urban design, and the 2008 Richard H. Driehaus Prize for traditional, classical and sustainable architecture and urbanism. From 2006-2009, Ms. Plater-Zyberk led the transect-based planning and rezoning of the entire City of Miami for Miami 21.

Executive Director - Brian Falk
Brian Falk worked as a writer and editor for ten years in Charlotte, NC, occasionally writing articles about New Urbanism and Smart Growth. From 1999-2002 he was Editorial Director of Business Properties, a magazine dedicated to the commercial development industry. He was one of the first inhabitants of First Ward Place, an early Hope VI project, where he became a committed urbanist. After completing Duke University's Nonprofit Management program, he now lives in the South Beach neighborhood, where the rural-to-urban transect was discovered.