Dan Burden

Principal at Dan Burden Consultants, and Walkability’s Director of Innovation and Inspiration at Blue Zones

Dan is known by his peers for his inspirational pioneering work in Active Transportation helping people, organizations and governments transform their communities into places for people first; all while still accommodating the car, and not the other way around. Seen as a visionary, innovator and source of inspiration and builder of collaboration throughout his career, Dan is a nationally recognized authority on most built environment topics including active transportation, livable and sustainable communities, age friendly communities, complete streets, traffic calming, trails development, Safe Routes to School and bicycle and pedestrian facilities and programs. In his new consultancy role, Dan continues his now 14-year title as walkability’s Director of Innovation and Inspiration. Dan oversees many additional community-built environment transitions, making dozens, and eventually hundreds of communities healthier, more active places to live. Dan uses walkability as a foundation and energy source to advance communities.

As a constant innovator in his work, Dan stays current and advances transportation and land use, becoming a sought-after master of bringing people, organizations, and agencies together to implement change. In 1980, staff for Governor Bob Graham, chose Dan to help transform the Florida Department of Transportation, which made it one of the first multi-modal and complete streets focused transportation agencies in the nation. As early as 1991, well before the term complete streets was coined, Florida became known for its holistic look at street making, helping create place out of space. Dan pushed for change and became the nation’s first full time pedestrian and bicycle coordinator, a position now required in all 50 states. At the age of 60, Dan broadened his skill sets, embracing urban design and land use while serving as a principal and senior urban designer with the community-planning firm Glatting Jackson (from 2005-2009). Dan currently gives inspirational keynote addresses to many state and national conferences, and helps inspire and guide many plans, projects, and policies at local, state and national levels. He also serves as an advisor for several national organizations, including Walkscore (www.walkscore.com).

Dan’s efforts to get the world “back on its feet” earned him two of the first-ever awarded lifetime-achievement awards – the first from the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals; the second issued by the New Partners for Smart Growth. He has more than 45 years of experience helping create livable communities and in 2014 the White House Honored Dan as a champion of change in transportation. In a peer-driven process, Planetizen Magazine ranks Dan as one of the 100 most significant urban thinkers of all time. In 2001, Time magazine named Dan as one of the six most important civic innovators in the world. That same year, the Transportation Research Board (National Academy of Sciences) honored Dan by making him their Distinguished Lecturer for that year. Early in 2023 Dan Burden transitioned to become the first Fellow for Blue Zones, LLC. an international health organization which honored him as a lifelong innovator in successfully rebuilding communities for human and community health. Dan pioneers change in fields he helped create.