Elliott Sclar is Professor of Urban Planning and International Affairs at Columbia University and is Director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) at Columbia’s Earth Institute. He holds senior appointments in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and the School of International and Public Affairs and is an active participant in the work of the Earth Institute at Columbia University (EI). Sclar was Co-coordinator of the Taskforce on Improving the Lives of Slum Dwellers. It is one of the ten taskforces set up by the UN Millennium Project to help guide the implementation of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. The Taskforce’s book length report (2005): A Home in the City, (PDF download), is available on the UN Millennium Project website (http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/tf_slum.htm) and from Earthscan. For a full description of the MDG project please access the following link: Full description of the MDG Project.

As a professional economist, Professor Sclar has written extensively about the strengths and limitations of markets as mechanisms for effective public policy implementation. Sclar’s book You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (2000), a critique of over reliance on market mechanisms, has won two major academic prizes: the Louis Brownlow Award for the Best Book of 2000 from the National Academy of Public Administration and the 2001 Charles Levine Prize from the International Political Science Association for a major contribution to the public policy literature. It is a definitive work in the field. In November 2007 he received the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the International Society for Urban Health in recognition of his work in this field.

Elliott joined the Trillium Asset Management board in 1982, and served as Chair for 21 years.

^back to top^