Advisory Board

Dhiru A. Thadani, AIA, APA, FCNU, ISOCARP, NOMA, is an architect, author, educator, and urbanist who has been in practice since 1980. He has worked to disseminate principles and techniques of traditional town planning on five continents by sharing research, lecturing, mentorship, and working on projects. He has been the principal designer of new towns and cities, urban regeneration, neighborhood revitalization, academic campuses, and infill densification projects. Dhiru was born in Bombay, India, and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1972 to study architecture. During his forty-nine years in Washington, D.C. he has taught, practiced, and strived to place traditional architecture and urbanism principles in the public eye. Since its formation in 1993, Dhiru has been a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and served as Task Force Chair and Board Member from 1997 to 2013. Dhiru's professional work has been recognized by the AIA, ISOCARP, and eight CNU Charter Awards.
In 2022, he was elected Board Chair of the CNU DC Chapter and the chapter he co-founded in 2005. In 2016 he was elected to be Vice President of Membership and Treasurer for the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP). In 2015 he was appointed to the inaugural CNU College of Fellows and received the International Society of City and Regional Planners' Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the recipient of the 2011 Seaside Prize, an award given for significant contributions to the quality and character of communities. In 2001 he was a Knight Foundation Community Builder Fellow.
Dhiru is the author of The Language of Towns and Cities: A Visual Dictionary, published by Rizzoli in 2010, and was co-editor of Leon Krier: The Architecture of Community, published by Island Press in 2009. Since its genesis, Thadani has documented the history and influence of Seaside, Florida, the first new urbanism project. He has authored two volumes of the town. Visions of Seaside: Foundations / Evolution / Imagination / Built & Unbuilt Architecture was published by Rizzoli in September 2013, and Reflections on Seaside: Muses, Ideas, Influences, and New & Future Projects, was published by Rizzoli in April 2021. In 2022, Dhiru published Washington Drawings Abe to Zoo, a book of his drawings on the city.

Special Envoy Philip Bonn, ADC, MA (Cantab.) FRSA is the Special Envoy of the International Emergency Management Organisation (a UN Intergovernmental Organisation) the Commissioner of the International Tree Protection Commission; and the Vice-Chairman of the International Commission for Humanitarian Aid. Educated at Eton College; and at the University of Cambridge (BA (Hons.) and MA) he has worked in the UN Sector for over seventeen years. In Ghana; he is the Advisor for the Environment, of the Royal House of Sefwi Obeng-Mim; and an Advisor to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. In Nigeria, he is the Advisor for the Environment and Sustainable Development, of the Shuaibu Abubakar Audu Foundation, appointed by Prince Audu (to whom he is ADC) and he is an Advisor for the Environment to Kogi State University.
In 2009, he hosted the Hon. Nana Akuoko Sarpong, Paramount Chief of Agogo (Former Hon. Minister of Health; and later, of Culture) at the UN Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (Cop 15) as an Environmental Advisor to the Paramount Chief.
In 2020, he founded the 'World Environmental Visionaries Forum'; which comprises various Royal Families and former Heads of State; Ministers, and UHNW individuals, globally. Special Envoy Bonn has made numerous documentary films; and radio broadcasts (with the BBC, Paramount, MTV, Canadian TV, Nigerian TV, etc) and he was the Associate Editor of the Official Record (2010) and an Adviser to Andrea Bocelli's (2023) Paramount + TV Series; 'The Journey'.
He is a former National Chairman and a Councillor of the BRCS Queen Mother Memorial Fund (2002-2006). He was a BRCS Adviser for HM Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee; and was Chief Adviser; and Master of Ceremonies; for HM Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Celebrations, at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was also the Centenary Director (2009-2011) of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (Patron; HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh) and he is a past Director-General of WOHI, Special Consultative Status to UN ECOSOC; where he was Chief Representative; and Delegate at UN (Geneva) 2006-2022. A Freeman of the City of London; he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2005); a Recipient of the Plaque of the Lebanese Red Cross (2005); and he was the Winner of the (2006) 'Global Human Rights Protection Award'.

Prof. Herbert Girardet is a consultant to UNEP and UN-Habitat and an author. He is leading consultant on sustainable development and a recipient of a UN Global 500 Award 'for outstanding environmental achievements'. For many years he has focussed mainly on the challenges of sustainable urban development and he is often called the world's leading urban ecologist. He has been a consultant to UNEP and UN-Habitat and has developed sustainability policies for major cities such as London, Vienna and Bristol. In 2003 he was inaugural 'Thinker in Residence' in Adelaide, developing sustainable development strategies for South Australia. He also worked as senior adviser to the Dongtan Eco-City project on Chongming Island, Shanghai. At present he is a senior consultant to the Saudi Sustainability Initiative, based in Riyadh. From 1996 to 2008 Herbert was chairman of the Schumacher Society, UK. He is an honorary fellow of Royal Institute of British Architects, a patron of the Soil Association, UK, and a visiting professor at University of the West of England. He has produced 50 environmental TV documentaries for major broadcasters. He is author and co-author of 12 books, amongst these: CITIES, PEOPLE, PLANET – Urban Development and Climate Change, 2004 and 2008; SURVIVING THE CENTURY – Facing Climate Change and other Global Challenges, 2008; A RENEWABLE WORLD – Energy, Ecology, Equality, 2009. His report REGENERATIVE CITIES was published by the WFC in 2011. He has written many other reports and chapters for books.

Prof. Robert Ayres is one of the founding fathers of ecological economics, a physicist by training with a PhD from Kings College London, who is known all around the world for his work on the role of energy in the economic analysis, invention of industrial metabolism and pioneering work on life cycle analysis and material flows. Professor Ayres has been a Novartis Chair of Management and the Environment at INSEAD Business School. He was the founder of Center for the Management of Environmental Resources (CMER), which he directed from 1992 to 2000. The author of the first 1969 article in American Economic Review that explored the role of environmental externalities in economic systems: Ayres (1969) 'Production, Consumption and Externalities' and numerous books, including 'The Bubble Economy' (2014), 'Turning Point: The End of Growth Paradigm' (1997), 'The Economic Growth Engine: How Energy and Work Drive Material Prosperity' (2009), 'A Handbook of Industrial Ecology' (2002), 'Information, Entropy and Progress' (1997), 'On the Reappraisal of Microeconomics: Economic Growth and Change in a Material World' (2005) and many more, Professor Ayres remains one of the most innovative interdisciplinary thinkers in ecological economics. It is our strong belief that Prof. Ayres clearly deserves the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences awarded by the Bank of Sweden. A special issue in the honour of Prof. Robert Ayres has appeared in the journal, Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions, in 2013: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/.... Prof Ayres writes an active blog with reflections on contemporary economic issues: https://ruayres.wordpress.com/, which we have a pleasure to share.

Peter Söderbaum is professor emeritus in ecological economics at Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden. Previous employments include the Department of Economics, Uppsala University, the Department of Management Science, Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. Söderbaum is an institutional economist in the tradition of Gunnar Myrdal and K. William Kapp. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal Ecological Economics and has published articles in the journal for example "Ecological economics in relation to democracy, ideology and politics" (Vol. 95, 2013, pp 221-225) and "Varieties of ecologicaleconomics: Do we need a more open and radical version of ecological economics?" (201, article in press). He has written textbooks in ecological economics in English and in Swedish. The titles of the English books are "Ecological Economics. A Political Economics Approach to Environment and Development" (2000) and "Understanding Sustainability Economics. Towards Pluralism in Economics" (2008). Both books have been published by Earthscan, London, now part of Routledge.

David ELLIOTT BSc, PhD. is Emeritus Professor of Technology Policy at the Open University, UK, where he has focused on courses and research related to sustainable energy policy. Since retirement from his full time OU post, he has been teaching on a range of post graduate energy courses around the UK, and has continued to published widely. His most recent books are 'Renewables: a review of sustainable energy supply options' ,Institute of Physics, 2013, and ' Green Energy Futures', Palgrave Pivot, 2015. His weekly, monthly and bimonthly Blogs and Newsletters are accessible from http://renewnatta.wordpress.com