Moscow and Abu Dhabi are two rapidly growing and gentrifying global capitals, striving to take their place on the world stage. Like many developing cities, they’ve experimented with crass, Las Vegas-style development schemes, seeking the urban vision they’ve seen on American TV shows. Increasingly, they’ve been horrified by the result. Abu Dhabi, with a tenth of the world’s petroleum reserves, has learned from the mistakes of its better-known neighbor, Dubai, as well as those of American cities. It is now using its wealth to impose more sophisticated design, transport and sustainability requirements than most any US city. Now Moscow is starting to catch up, with new efforts to repair the urban realm of the historic city, and plan more walkable, livable communities at its burgeoning edges.
Jeffrey Tumlin is an owner and director of strategy at Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates, a San Francisco-based transportation planning and engineering firm that focuses on sustainable mobility. For more than twenty years, Jeff has led station area, downtown, citywide, and campus plans in cities from Seattle and Vancouver to Moscow and Abu Dhabi. His work at Stanford University resulted in traffic and GHG emission reductions of as much as 40%. He has developed plans throughout the world that accommodate millions of square feet of growth with no net increase in motor vehicle traffic. These projects have won awards from the U.S. General Services Administration, Institute of Transportation Engineers, American Planning Association, American Society of Landscape Architects, Congress for the New Urbanism, and Urban Land Institute.
For Abu Dhabi, Jeff led much of the transport planning framework as a consultant to the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, including plans for each region of the Emirate, a new street design manual, and a sustainability framework tailored to the area’s unique culture and climate. The Institute of Transportation Engineers recognized the Abu Dhabi Urban Street Design Manual with its 2013 Transportation Best Program Award. In Moscow, he led the transport work for an Urban Design Associates-led team that won a major award for the city’s expansion area, which will house another million residents and many federal jobs. He is currently working in Moscow detailing the winning plan concepts.
A graduate of Stanford University and a dynamic and frequent guest speaker, Jeff is the author of Sustainable Transportation: Tools for Creating Healthy, Vibrant and Resilient Communities (Wiley, 2012).