Pratt Institute

Personal URL

Education

Loeb Fellow, Harvard University
M.Arch., UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning
B.S. California State University

Biography

Daniel Hernandez serves as the Director of the Planning Practice at Jonathan Rose Companies, and brings more than 20 years of experience in real estate development and urban planning of multi-phased neighborhoods, mixed-use buildings and districts, mixed-finance and mixed-income affordable housing developments, transit-oriented developments, as well as land conservation, waterfronts, parks and civic open space projects.

A devoted environmentalist and urbanist, Mr. Hernandez, with his real estate planning and program management team, provides public agencies, developers, community organizations, and major institutions with green urban solutions to achieve development, land use, and climate change objectives. Focused on an integrated planning process, Mr. Hernandez approaches urban design, planning and program management through an iterative, multi-disciplinary, community-based process to meet the social, environmental and financial requirements of projects, and to create great urban places that are sustainable and resilient.

Jonathan Rose Companies’ projects completed by Mr. Hernandez include: Elizabethport, a HOPE VI revitalization program for a historic waterfront neighborhood in Elizabeth NJ; Orange Station, a transit-oriented mixed-income revitalization plan that included a public housing site in Orange, NJ; and West Rock, a mixed-income traditional neighborhood development and land conservation plan for a public housing site in New Haven, CT. He is presently managing the design process for the Passaic River waterfront in Newark, NJ and developing a business plan for the management, programming and maintenance of the South Bronx Greenway in New York City.  Mr. Hernandez is leading a smart growth planning team to create development strategies for mixed-income neighborhoods in Connecticut, and sustainable development and green design guidelines for the EPA Smart Growth Program and Connecticut Capital Region Council of Governments.  Several of his projects have received design and management awards from the AIA, APA and NAHRO for best practices in community development.

He is a frequent lecturer on such topics as green development, civic engagement and the integrated planning process, and climate change planning for neighborhoods, and presenter at various national forums, including U.S. Green Building Council, Congress for the New Urbanism, and Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. Trained as an architect, he often serves as a speaker and design critic at universities, such as Yale School of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Berkeley School of Architecture.

Daniel Hernandez is a Core Committee member of the U.S. Green Building Council responsible for creating the new LEED-Neighborhood Development program, and has served as Chair of the Development Committee of the Congress for the New Urbanism. He is currently teaching a class at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies on “Integrated Planning in an Era of Climate Change”.