I was born in Edinburgh, of Polish parents, raised in London, and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. I studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal, where I also taught for twenty years. Currently I’m Meyerson Professor of Urbanism emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve designed and built houses as a registered architect, as well as doing practical work in low-cost housing, which took me to Mexico, Central America, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, the Philippines, and China. I’ve written for the Atlantic, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, and been architecture critic for Saturday Night, Wigwag, and Slate. From 2004 to 2012 I served on the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts. These experiences were shared with my wife of many years, Shirley Hallam (1944-2021).

I live in a loft in an old industrial building near the Schuylkill River in downtown Philadelphia. I don’t think of myself as someone with hobbies―I used to garden under pressure. I don’t collect anything, but I have a lot of books. Well, fewer since we downsized.

If you want more, there’s always Wikipedia, a Salon interview here and others here and here. There’s a video clip made in connection with an Olmsted documentary film here, and a podcast of a recent talk with Marc Steiner of WEAA Baltimore here. You can read a Huffington Post interview here. A podcast about my current book is here. There are several YouTube lectures.

Follow me on X @witoldr, though I post rarely. Oh, and by the way . . . it’s pronounced Vee-told Rib-chin-ski.