Wayne Feiden is Director of the Center for Resilient Metro-Regions and Lecturer of Practice at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he focuses on assisting communities in placemaking, resilience, downtown revitalization, housing, economic development, transportation, open space preservation, regulatory streamlining, and community engagement. Previously he was Director of Planning and Sustainability for Northampton. He led that city to earn a LEED for Cities GOLD rating and the nation’s first Five-STAR Communities rating for sustainability.
Wayne's publications include five American Planning Association PAS reports: Strategic Planning, Planning Management, Assessing Sustainability, Planning for On-Site and Decentralized Wastewater Treatment, and Performance Guarantees, as well as other peer-reviewed and research papers. Wayne’s Eisenhower Fellowship to Hungary, Fulbright specialists to South Africa and to New Zealand, German Marshall Fund Fellowship to Europe (2015), State Department Fellowship Exchanges to Indonesia and Malaysia, and Bellagio Residency in Italy all focused on planning and resilience.
Wayne has a BS in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina.
Courses
State and Local Mechanisms of Design Leadership
Thursday, February 19, 2026 | 2-3pm ET
The AIA was a critical partner to the early Community Design Centers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today, there are dozens of community design centers across the country. The Civic Design Center represents one important model that emerged out of local advocacy efforts and has gone on to have a profound impact on the future of Nashville. The Minnesota Design Team embodies a Component-led model at the state level. Established in 1983, the MDT has served over 100 communities across the state, leveraging the contributions of hundreds of volunteer professionals. The University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Center for Resilient Metro-Regions has partnered with Communities by Design in recent years to deliver technical assistance to 9 towns in Vermont and Massachusetts, offering another model. This session will explore comparative approaches to design leadership and volunteer mobilization to impact communities.