About Us

A flexible skillset and collaborative way of working is what sets us apart from other firms.

Tacoma Parks Visioning Workshop & Open House. Photo credit: Russ Carmack.

Ways We Engage

We celebrate the fact that communities are complex — there is no single urban design approach that works for all. The best solutions require a multidisciplinary team and an intentionally collaborative approach.

Read more about these core service offerings here.

Principles of the new urbanism movement and the Charter of the New Urbanism guide our work. For example, we believe that neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.
Learn how we apply these principles on our blog post here.
Charrettes are multi-day events focused on achieving specific urban design outcomes. Marcy is NCI (National Charrette Institute) certified and was for many years an NCI trainer.
Marcy has used multi-day design charrettes to help clients resolve complex and sometimes controversial projects through in-depth discussion and collaboration.
Every project that involves planning for the future needs to start with a thoughtfully developed public engagement plan. Like most land use and transportation planners, Urbsworks’ public engagement plans are inclusive, thorough, and customized for the client, the community, and the stakeholders involved in the project. What differentiates Urbsworks’s approach however is our ability to describe the physical, economic, and social effect of different decisions about the future in terms of design outcomes or tradeoffs, in a way that allows the community to compare the effect of different decisions.

Our Founder

Marcy McInelly, AIA

Marcy McInelly has practiced architecture and urban design for more than 27 years in New York City and Portland, Oregon. In 1995, she founded Urbsworks, and redirected her expertise to the often-neglected space between buildings. Over time she has sharpened her focus on a multi-disciplinary, collaborative approach to sustainable urban design and placemaking, with a particular emphasis on smart, safe transportation and innovative codes for the benefit of communities.

LinkedIn Profile

Dynamic & Experienced

Our Team

David Berniker, LEED AP, AICP, Assoc. AIA

Urban Designer, Planner

Connecting people, places and policy is David’s defining focus. With an eye toward sustainability and climate resilience, he aspires to create inclusive communities, environments, and economies that are safe, healthy, and accessible to all people. For David, it is about storytelling - strategizing, developing, and communicating possibilities. David enjoys working iteratively with stakeholders—neighborhood groups, municipalities, and private groups—in a manner that aligns with the community's history and vision.

Taylor Berberich, MS

Urban Designer, Graphics Specialist

Taylor is an urban designer who focuses on creating walkable, inviting urban spaces, regulatory analysis, and graphics production for projects and outreach. Taylor has worked in both the private and public sectors on a broad range of projects including state parks, educational facilities, city planning and urban design. Her love for urban spaces emerged from frustration with cities and feeling lost among cars and traffic. The ability to shape the urban fabric into vibrant spaces for all users is what propels her work. Taylor has worked in varied locales such as the United Kingdom, Southcentral Alaska and the Aleutians, the Pacific Northwest and the Inland Northwest.

Kevin Howard

Urban Designer, Planner

Kevin Howard is a community planner and urban designer with an interdisciplinary professional and academic background. Kevin is a Founding Principal of Urbinden Design Lab, a city planning, urban design, and public policy firm focused on leveraging cross-disciplinary collaboration to build more sustainable and equitable places. In his work, research, and advocacy, Kevin focuses on promoting abundant and equitable housing, human-oriented and resilient places, sustainability through land use planning and infrastructure systems, regulatory transparency, and the democratization of city building.

Joseph Readdy

Urban Designer

Joseph has 40-years of experience in the planning, design, and implementation of projects of all scales from the individual building, to the neighborhood, district, village, town, and city. Large scale projects include: regional plans, city plans, urban design, and campus master plans in a variety of contexts, from downtowns, main streets and transit-oriented development. He is able to synthesize complex land use, transportation network, street and building design into cohesive concepts for implementation. He brings strong graphic skills and illustration skills, from hand-sketching to computerized 3-D visualization.

Trusted Partners for Complex Projects

Our Collaborators

Urbinden Design Lab

Urban Design

An urban design, planning, and policy collaborative leveraging design thinking to address contemporary urban issues.

Website

JLA Public Involvement

Community Engagement

JLA works with public agencies, project delivery teams, community partners and stakeholders to make public projects better.

Website

Rick Williams Consulting

Parking & Transportation Demand Management

Rick Williams Consulting works on a variety of parking and transportation demand management projects across the Pacific Northwest.

Website

Keith Liden

Land Use Planning

Keith offers a wide range of land use planning expertise and skills, plus significant national experience working with public agencies and developers. Keith and Marcy have collaborated on planning projects since the mid-90s.