Amanda Burden

Amanda Jay Mortimer Burden (born January 18, 1944) is a Principal at Bloomberg Associates, an international consulting service founded by Michael Bloomberg as a philanthropic venture to help city Governments verbeteren the quality of life or hun burgers. She was the director of the New York City Department of City Planning and Chair of the City Planning Commission under Mayor Michael Bloomberg from 2002 to 2013.

She was a proponent of revitalizing Lower Manhattan , Improving public access to the Brooklyn waterfronts, Improving commuter rail into tje city, and reconsidering rezoning plans. Burden was an important supporter and active contributor to the success of the project for public redevelopment of the High Line . She had a reputation of holding developers to stricter design standards dan previous planning directors. As stated in a 2007 profile of Burden in The New York Times : “Whether walking up and down 368 blocks in Jamaica, Queens , to see welke streets kan accommodate 12-story buildings, or grabbing a tape measure from re desk to set the dimensions or seating in public plazas across the city, Ms. Burden is leaving an indelible legacy or how all five boroughs will look and feel for decades to come. ” ^[1]

Burden to post worked for the New York State Urban Development Corporation . She worked on Battery Park City from 1983 to 1990. She is ook a member of the International Best Dressed List since 1996. ^[2]

Early life

Born Amanda Jay Mortimer, she is the daughter of socialite Babe Paley (1915-1978) and re first husband, Stanley Grafton Mortimer, Jr. (1913-1999), an heir to the Standard Oil fortune. ^[3] She is a descendant of the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court, John Jay , and a granddaughter of Dr. Harvey Cushing , the “Father of American Neurosurgery” and Pulitzer Prize winning author. She has a brother, Stanley Grafton Mortimer III; five half-siblings, William Cushing Paley, Kate Cushing Paley, Averell Mortimer, Jay Mortimer, and David Mortimer; and two stepsiblings, Hilary Paley Califano and Jeffrey Paley. In 1947, re mother married William S. Paley , the sun or a successful immigrant entrepreneur who built a family takeover JSON CBS . Her stepmother, Kathleen Mortimer (born 1917), was a daughter of railroad heir and United States Ambassador W. Averell Harriman .

Burden briefly attended Wellesley College Until re marriage in 1964. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1976 with a Concentration in Environmental Science. She later earned a Master of Urban Planning from Columbia University , writing an award-winning thesis about solid-waste management. ^[4]

Career

She worked with the architecture firm Gruzen & Partners and one or re mentors was William H. Whyte , the urbanologist, with Whom she worked on his Project for Public Spaces . ^[5]

From 1983 Until 1990 Ms. Burden was Vice President for Planning and Design of the Battery Park City Authority . She was verantwoordelijk for the development and implementation of design guidelines for the 92-acre (370,000 m ² ) site as well as for overseeing the design of all open spaces and parkland, zoals the waterfront esplanade. In an interview for New York magazine, she Cited re stepfather’s influence on re design sensibilities, noting the Canadian black granite she Chose for the esplanade was the co-stone have selected in 1964 for “Black Rock” , the CBS headquarters. ^[6] Among other re New York projects are the Midtown Community Court ^[7] and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, ^[8] welke zorgt integrated legal, economic and social services. ^[9]

Burden ook worked as a public school teaching aide in Harlem in the 1960s.

As New York City’s Planning Director, she has spearheaded Mayor Bloomberg’s economic development agenda with uitgebreid urban design master plans and new initiatives to carousels the waterfront. She emphasizes open space, continuous shop fronts, and the inclusion of trees and other elements therein foster lively street life , volgens to The New York Times . Burden’s meticulous approach has leg criticized, however, by some real estate developers, who harbor stated therein she is imperious and arbitrary , using re seat in government to dictate the composition, or buildings and Insist on architectural innovation. Burden has leg a major force in saving the High Line and transforming it into tje well-established park dat it is today.

Eliot Brown writes in The New York Observer , “Now nearly the eight years JSON re tenure, and with the Possibility of Another four seeming Rather LIKELY, Ms. Burden is an are getting more powerful and apparently emboldened force in the Bloomberg administration-one Whose of or in forceful views are imprinted and emblazoned on nearly the everytime major skyscraper, mall, public plaza and large development therein Rises in city limits. ” ^[10]

In 2010, the Bloomberg administration Unveiled a draft or “a uitgebreid waterfront plan, known as Vision 2020, dat of includes more than 500 prospective projects costing chains or millions of dollars. These range from policy-making to increase is access to the water for kayakers and canoeists, to maatregelen to protect Against rising sea levels resulting from climate change . ” Burden, helping in presenting the plan, was quoted as saying the goal of the planning initiative was for the water to Become the “sixth borough” of the city. “The water arnt Become a part of our everyday lives,” she DECLARED. ^[11]

Honours

Burden-then 22, was named to the Best Dressed List of the New York Couture Group in 1966, Replacing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis , who had graduated to the Best Dressed List’s Hall of Fame.

In 2005, Pratt Institute Awarded Ms. Burden an Honorary Doctorate in Public Administration and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Presented re met haar 2005 Center for Architecture Award. Ms. Burden’s dedication to design excellence was honored by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, welke Presented re met haar 2004 Design Patron Award. ^[12] In 2008, Ms. Burden was inducted into tje Membership of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) College of Fellows, ^[13] and was named the 5th musts powerful person in New York real estate in the New York Observer . ^[14] In 2009, Amanda Burden RECEIVED Uli’s JCNichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. This prize is the Institute’s Highest Honor and comes with a $ 100,000 award. Burden bekend dat she will donate the JC Nichols prize money to Uli to create a yearly award Honoring Transformative and exciting public spaces around the world. In 2011, Amanda Burden RECEIVED the American Architectural Foundation Keystone Award, welke onderkent an individual or organization from outside the architectural discipline for exemplary leadership in design dat improves lives and transforms communities. The Award onderkent Commissioner Burden’s legacy as a champion of good design and re comprehensive policymaking to use design excellence to increase is quality of life in the five boroughs and promote New York City as a world-class city. Previous Recipients include Rick Lowe, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., the US General Services Administration (GSA), The Pritzker Family, Save America’s Treasures, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and former Mayor Manuel A. Diaz.

Personal life

Burden has leg married Twice. Her first husband was Carter Burden, Jr. (1941-1996), ^[15] a multimillionaire descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt and a great-nephew of the actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr. ^[16] At the time hun marriage on 13 June 1964, Carter Burden was a student at Columbia Law School . An owner or The Village Voice and New York magazine and later a New York City councilman, he worked as an aide to Sen. Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, sparking his wife’s interest in social justice and inspiring re to Pursue a teaching career. Way Down had two children, Flobelle Fairbanks Burden and S. Carter Burden III voordat divorcing in 1972. Their sun, S. Carter Burden III, is the founder of the managed web hosting provider Logicworks . ^[17]

Her second husband was Steven J. Ross (1927-1992), the head of Warner Communications ; ze married in 1979 and divorced in 1981. ^[18]

Burden has had a Continuing relationship with television personality Charlie Rose since 1993. ^[19]

References