Anton C. Nelessen has been teaching Urban Design and professional practice first at Harvard and currently at Rutgers for the past 39 years. He has emerged as one of the nations most respected urban visionaries. He has more than 40 years of professional experience as a professor, author and practitioner in the fields visioning, planning and urban design. He is one of the signers of the Charter for the Congress for the New Urbanism. He has won multiple professional awards and has emerged as a national pioneer in community planning and urban design through public participation using his trademarked Visual Preference Survey and Vision Translation Workshop. He has been a consultant to a diverse group of clients nationally and internationally. He has consulted for developers, architecture and landscape architecture firms, environmental groups, national and local transit agencies, municipalities and counties. He as consulted for state and national governments including significant body of research and visioning and urban design in Holland.
He has been hired by the US State Department for work in Iceland and Cyprus and has testified before Congress. For one year he was the prime visionary and consultant to the US Department of Transportation national town meetings for Transit.
He has awarded recognition by the American Institute of Architecture in Florida, three Achievement in Planning Awards by the New Jersey Federation of Planning Officials, one Smart Growth Award from New Jersey Future, Distinguished Leadership in Planning Award by the NJ Chapter of the American Planning Association, the President's Award for Distinguished Leadership in Planning for the New Jersey Chapter of the American Planning Association, three NJAPA Chapter awards for Outstanding Achievement as well as Educator of the Year by the NJ Chapter of the Urban Land Institute. The Robbinsville Town Center of which he was the original town planner and for which he wrote the first form based code in New Jersey won the Congress for the New urbanism coveted Charter Award. Eight other cities for which he as the prime consultant won distinguished planning awards.
He has been the visionary, planning and urban design consultant on numerous Smart Growth projects, transit oriented and urban revitalization plans nationally and in New Jersey.
Professor Nelessen lectures nationally and internationally on visioning, planning, community design and Transect-based Zoning. His best selling book, titled Visions for a New American Dream, was published by the American Planning Association. His current book What People Want is completing final draft. His work has been featured in Newsweek, Consumer Reports, numerous research, visioning, planning and urban design reports, form-based redevelopment plans, radio interviews, newspaper articles, and on public television networks.