The Urban Institute’s work provides a critical foundation of knowledge and evidence that is grounded in the realities that practitioners face. I am excited to help serve as a bridge between that critical research and the challenging implementation.
Andrew Trueblood is a nonresident fellow in the Housing and Communities Division, supporting housing, economic development, and land-use policy research. He is the principal of Trueblood.city, a housing and economic development consulting firm. He supports inclusive regional coalitions across the country and has supported DC’s Downtown Action Plan. He is also a senior adviser for housing at the DC Policy Center, an adjunct curator for the National Building Museum, an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University, a trustee of the DC Public Library Board, and a board member of the Urban Libraries Council.
Between 2018 and 2021, Trueblood was director of the DC Office of Planning, where he prioritized agency efforts around housing and equity and shepherded the update of DC’s Comprehensive Plan. Before that, he was chief of staff at DC’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, where he supported economic development policy and projects and created the Economic Intelligence program to improve the agency’s data and analysis capacity and provide more open and accessible data and analysis. Before joining the District government, Trueblood helped start up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, worked at the US Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institution Fund, and worked on redevelopment planning and finance for the DC Housing Authority. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Urban experts are permitted and empowered to work and affiliate with outside organizations, whether serving on boards, volunteering their time, or providing advice and counsel. And Urban welcomes visiting scholars, nonresident or affiliated fellows who work for other organizations. These outside affiliations enrich our perspectives and our learning environment. We also require all paid and unpaid experts to disclose their affiliations to Urban leadership and follow rules governing their engagement to ensure transparency for audiences and independence of experts.