Amanda Burden
Amanda Jay Mortimer Burden ( Mortimer; January 18, 1944) is a principal at Bloomberg Associates, an international consulting service founded by Michael Bloomberg as a philanthropic venture to help city governments improve the quality of life of their citizens. She was the director of the New York City Department of City Planning and chair of the City Planning Commission under Mayor Bloomberg from 2002 to 2013. She was a proponent of revitalizing Lower Manhattan, improving public access to the Brooklyn waterfronts, improving commuter rail into the city, and reconsidering rezoning plans. Burden was an important supporter and active contributor to the success of the project for public redevelopment of the High Line. She had a reputation of holding developers to stricter design standards than previous planning directors. As stated in a 2007 profile of Burden in The New York Times: "Whether walking up and down 368 blocks in Jamaica, Queens, to see which streets can accommodate 12-story buildings, or grabbing a tape measure from her desk to set the dimensions of seating in public plazas across the city, Ms. Burden is leaving an indelible legacy of how all five boroughs will look and feel for decades to come." Burden previously