Ann B. Daigle is a new urban strategic planner, consultant and community activist specializing in humane approaches to community building. Her passion is the regeneration of historic neighborhoods and towns into characteristic, healthy, beautiful and walkable places for all people. She co-hosts the New Orleans City Building Exchange, an intense seminar on urban economic principles and best practices, to educate elected officials and community decision-makers.

Ann’s past posts include Program Manager of the “Culture of Building” and “Crafts Apprenticeship Program” for the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community. Partnering with the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center, the UK program paired apprentices with master craftsmen in historic carpentry, masonry, plasterwork and ironwork while renovating historic properties in the Katrina-devastated Holy Cross neighborhood.

As Urban Development Manager for the City of Ventura, California, Ann lead the Downtown Master Plan and Code process and the adoption of the Ventura General Plan. Katrina brought her back to the South where she served as Special Advisor to the Governor’s Commission and Mississippi Development Authority and worked on numerous recovery plans in Louisiana and Mississippi. A founding partner of PlaceMakers, LLC, Ann initiated the Smart Code Workshops with Andrés Duany and serves on the Transect Codes Council. She is also co-owner of The Company Farm, a family farm and pecan grove in Northeast Louisiana.

Ann enjoys traveling backroads, photographing cultural landscapes, urbanism and architecture, haunting farmers’ markets and gathering seeds and cuttings for her garden. She collects historic cookbooks and the works of Southern women artists. As volunteer Ann served two terms as President of the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council, was long-term representative to the Louisiana State Historic Commission and served as Grants Awards Panelist for the Louisiana State Department of Culture and Tourism.

Ann received degrees from Louisiana Tech University in Architecture and Interior Design with a focus on Universal Design and co-housing. She studied communications and social psychology at Loyola University in New Orleans and received certificates in Urban Design / Traditional Neighborhood Design from Escuela del Habitat de Arquitectura, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She credits her mentors from the Congress for the New Urbanism for her greatest insights.