Alumnus Barkha Patel MCRP '15 Helps Rethink Jersey City's Public Spaces

Dean Stuart Shapiro talks to alumnus Barkha Patel, MCRP '15 this week on EJB Talks. Initially a sociology undergraduate at Rutgers, Barkha discusses how a chance visit by Dean Shapiro to one of her classes led her to urban planning, as she realized she could tackle social problems through the built environment. She explains how starting as a transportation planner, even though it wasn’t her focus at the Bloustein School, pushed her into tactical urbanism and set the stage for her current role. As Jersey City's Director of Infrastructure, she leads a multidisciplinary team shaping everything from streets to parks to sustainability systems. She highlights Jersey City’s Vision Zero work, the effort to shift outdated traffic-safety mindsets, and her favorite project: transforming the historically significant but neglected Bergen Square area into a people-first plaza integrating mobility, culture, ecology, and design. She reflects on how the planning school fundamentals and communication skills she learned still form the basis for her work, and concludes with encouraging emerging planners to adopt an action-oriented mindset by becoming a person who figures things out and gets things done, even when they feel out of their depth.