The Seaside Institute awards the Seaside Prize each year to individuals, organizations, or places that have made major contributions to the quality of built community. Recipients of the Prize have a major influence on how towns and cities can best be built and re-built to reflect and promote new urban principals including walkability, diversity, beauty, and sustainability. Seaside Prize winners are leaders in urban design, planning, architecture, development, and education.

Jeff Speck is a city planner and urban designer who, through writing, lectures, public service, and built work, advocates internationally for city planning at the pedestrian scale. He is best known for his book Walkable City, one of the most influential and widely read city planning texts of the current era.

While studying architectural history and design in the US and Italy, Mr. Speck became enamored with the work and lectures of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. After two summer internships, he joined the firm full-time upon graduation in 1993, and quickly became director of town planning.

Over the subsequent ten years, Jeff managed more than forty of the firm’s projects including Middleton Hills, Rosemary Beach, Heulebrug (Belgium), and downtown plans for Baton Rouge and Fort Myers. He also convinced Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk to turn their lectures into a book, which he drafted. Suburban Nation became the best-selling planning title of its decade, winning many converts to the cause of the New Urbanism.

Thanks in part to the book’s success, Mr. Speck was appointed Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he presided over the Mayors' Institute on City Design and created the Governors' Institute on Community Design. After four years in this role, he founded Speck & Associates, a private design consultancy now based in Brookline, MA.

Important work of Speck & Associates includes the Lowell Downtown Evolution Plan, walkability studies for fifteen different cities, and vision plans for two transit-oriented developments along the Long Island Rail Road. He also led street design for Project 180 in Oklahoma City, which has rebuilt 50 blocks of downtown city streets.

Jeff Speck’s books have been published in nine languages. With Andres Duany and Mike Lydon, he also wrote The Smart Growth Manual (2010). His most recent book, Walkable City Rules, was named a Planetizen “Best Book” of 2018. His TED talks and YouTube videos have been viewed more than five million times.

Watch a preview of Speck’s upcoming documentary on walkable cities and how Seaside inspired his work.

Speck joins a distinguished list of Fellows who have been honored with the Seaside Prize including Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Dhiru Thadani, Vincent Scully, Scott Merrill, Leon Krier, and other renowned designers and thinkers.  For a full list, visit seasideinstitute.org/fellows.  More on Jeff Speck can be found at jeffspeck.com.

The Seaside Prize Weekend will include guest lectures (some of which will be CEU accredited), the awards ceremony, the Seaside Prize Gala, walking tours of Seaside, and other social gatherings.  The Prize Weekend is a great networking opportunity for all who have an interest in New Urbanism, walkable communities, and human-scale planning and design. Architects, planners, and design students are encouraged to attend. Each year has its own unique flair, but all are exciting and engaging.

New for 2022 is the offering of three student scholarships to attend the full weekend of events.  Currently, students with a current school ID can attend the lectures for free with prior registration, but these scholarships will allow them to attend the networking and dining events as well.  Applications will be made available on seasideinstitute.org in November, 2021.

2022 Seaside Prize tickets will go on sale beginning: October 1, 2021. To secure your seat please visit seasideinstitute.org for tickets and information. To become a member of the Seaside Institute, visit seasideinstitute.org/membership.

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About the Seaside Institute

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The Seaside Institute is a 501 c3 non-profit. Our mission is Inspire livable communities.  The Seaside Institute offers strategically designed educational programs and symposia that bring together residents, visitors, architects and scholars to share ideas for building and supporting livable communities. The Institute’s three core tenets—Sustainability, Connectivity, Adaptability—work together to expand the lessons of New Urbanism and develop new strategies for a rapidly changing world. To learn more about the Seaside Institute, please go to www.seasideinstitute.org.