WPCNR REPORTER ABOUT TOWN. From Anne Brady, Purchase College. February 11, 2005: Roberta Brandes Gratz, who visited with the City of White Plains when the city was considering the City Center project, well-known  urban critic, award-winning journalist, observer of cities and author of two highly regarded books on urban development issues, will discuss “Cities Rebuilt, Cities Reborn: Is There a Difference?” at a Natural and Social Sciences Lecture at Purchase College on February 17 at 5:30 PM, Room 1001, Natural Sciences Building.

Ms. Gratz speaks in cities and towns across the country and often spotlights the development problems and prospects of local places. She will answer questions from the audience following her presentation.

A former award-winning reporter for the New York Post, Gratz is the author of The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way and Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown. In February 2003 Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed her to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. She serves as Trustee and former head of Public Policy of the New York State Preservation League; Vice President of the Salzburg Conference on Urban Planning and Development; founder and President Emeritus of the Eldridge Street Project, the effort to restore the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and to establish a Jewish Heritage Center on the site; a founder and current board member of the Writers Room, the first urban writers’ colony in the United States; and a board member of the Project for Public Spaces. She has served on the New York Governor’s and Mayor’s Task Force on Planning Manhattan’s West Side Highway and Waterfront, and as a trustee of the Village of Ocean Beach. She also founded the Fire Island Historical Society.

 Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Tikkun, Planning Magazine, New York Newsday, the Daily News, and New York Magazine, among others.

 Ms. Gratz travels frequently across the United States and to Central Europe and Great Britain to lecture and consult on urban revitalization issues.