President
Scott Bernstein is president of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), an urban sustainability innovations laboratory which helps local leaders understand and use their hidden assets. CNT was the 2009 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Organizations. Mr. Bernstein was a founding board member at the Brookings Metropolitan Program. President Clinton appointed him to the President’s Council for Sustainable Development. He helped write a climate strategy for the first 100 days of the Clinton administration, and helped create the Chicago Climate Action Plan at the request of Mayor Daley. He is a board member of the Congress for a New Urbanism, and was appointed by Governor Quinn to the Illinois Economic Recovery Commission.
Mr. Bernstein codeveloped the Location Efficient Mortgage® and the new H + T Affordability Index. On the web, http:/htaindex.org provides this index, maps, and data for all 337 metro areas. An agreement of HUD and DOT Secretaries Donovan and LaHood and EPA Administrator Jackson committed to “redefining affordability” to include transportation costs.
Mr. Bernstein cofounded and chairs the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership (STPP), a national coalition which shifted federal policy toward greater local control. The resulting Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act legislation was reauthorized twice. He cofounded the Center for Transit Oriented Development (TOD), which created the National TOD Database for the Federal Transit Administration, the nation’s first database covering all 4,300 existing and developing TOD sites in the United States. These resources provide new performance benchmarks for TOD.