Cynthia Bowen

Immediate Past President
American Planning Association
Chicago, IL

Cynthia Bowen is the Immediate President of the American Planning Association. She is the Director of Planning for Rundell Ernstberger Associates (REA), a national planning, urban design and land architect firm founded in 1979. She is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. Cynthia has significant design and policy-oriented experience and has completed more than 100 multi-discipline, diverse projects in her 22 plus year career. She is a graduate of Ball State University with degrees in urban and regional planning and environmental science and design.

Cynthia manages complex, multi-discipline planning and urban design projects both in the US and abroad. Most of Cynthia’s work focuses on land use, economic development, revitalization, aesthetics, and regulations. Cynthia works with clients, stakeholders, and community leaders to create plans that transform cities and neighborhoods physically, socially, and economically. Cynthia’s strength is building consensus, creating understandable linkages between policy, design, and regulations and other implementation mechanisms. Besides her US-based work, Cynthia has led projects in the Middle East focused on creating cities and neighborhoods that were integrated, secure, and contained a mix of jobs, residential, retail, parks, schools, mosques, and gathering areas.