Who We Are

Andy Wiley-Schwartz

Andy Wiley-Schwartz is a Vice President at Project for Public Spaces, specializing in transportation programs and Placemaking. Andy coordinates PPS’s key transportation projects, product and program development, including strategic planning, major program and operating grants, marketing, product development and publications. Andy currently manages PPS’s New Jersey Smart Choices program: an outreach, education and training program to help municipalities around the state plan and make sustainable land use decisions in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

As research and publications director at PPS, Andy interviewed people across the country who are seeking to rebuild their neighborhoods and cities through the development of public spaces. He has edited and compiled this research into a library of successful practices from presentations and interviews with mayors, chiefs of police, university professors, city parks directors, transportation officials, community development organizations and many others, and has turned the resulting thousands of pages of transcripts and interviews into several books that document their efforts to revitalize cities. Andy was the editor of How to Turn a Place Around (2000), PPS’s acclaimed primer on community planning and revitalization. In 1999 and 2000, he directed the research of, and edited Public Parks, Private Partners: How Partnerships are Revitalizing Urban Parks (2000). The book explores how the public and private sectors have joined together in new and innovative ways around urban parks, greenways, and other open spaces, from small friends groups to large conservancies. Andy was also chief writer and editor of How Transportation and Community Partnerships Are Shaping America, Part I: Transit Stops and Stations (1999), and editor of Part II: Streets and Roads (2001). From 1996-1999, Andy was responsible for product development, editing, research, and writing for PPS, and the Urban Parks Institute, a program of Project for Public Spaces.

Andy has led PPS tours and How to Turn a Place Around training programs, including a 2002 program to train US Forest Service grantees building living memorials to memory of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center disaster. Andy has also served as an advisor to the Greater Jamaica (Queens) Development Corporation, New Jersey DOT, and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. He has also worked on projects in Morningside Park, Allen and Pike Streets, and at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, and in Eastern Market, Detroit, Michigan, conducting interviews, observations and surveys, and delivering presentations.

Prior to working at PPS, Andy was a political analyst for Washington Analysis Corporation, an investment research firm, where he wrote and commented on political affairs and the impact of trade, monetary, and domestic policy on the financial markets. He has been a guest analyst on CNBC and The Nightly Business Report, and has appeared in Forbes, Business Week, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

Education

Support Great Places - Become a PPS Member

Email this page