Hope Cohen

Hope Cohen, deputy director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Rethinking Development, is joining the Regional Plan Association as associate director of its new Center for Urban Innovation. Since coming to the Manhattan Institute in 2006, Cohen has focused principally on issues of urban environment and infrastructure, publishing Rethinking Environmental Review and The Neighborly Substation, in which she analyzed electrical substations in London, Edinburgh, Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, as well as Anaheim and New York. She served as the Manhattan Institute’s voice in the debate over congestion charging,  an issue that originated in London.

Cohen worked for many years in the city’s public sector, in areas ranging from urban planning to capital budgeting to strategic information technology. She was at MTA New York City Transit for more than a decade, concentrating for much of that time on bringing the technology used for New York’s subway and bus systems into the twenty-first century. Since 1995, she has supplemented her professional work with voluntary public service as a member of Manhattan’s Community Board 7 (Upper West Side), where she has served as board chairperson as well as land-use cochairperson.

Cohen holds a BA from Harvard and an MA from the University of Chicago.

Source: University Programs and Events Planning Resources, September 2009