Randy Hester and Marcia McNally have been leaders in the field of community design for decades. They have worked extensively in the eastern and western U.S. and in East Asia at a range of scales and communities. The work began in the late 60s with design for a series of parks in Cambridge, MA; projects devised as a way to prevent freeway construction through the city’s working and poor neighborhoods. For 10 years after that the work was conducted through a partnership between North Carolina State University and cities throughout the state of North Carolina and then for 30 years at the University of California, Berkeley, where Hester and McNally taught until 2010.

In 1985 they formed the firm Community Development by Design (CDbyD) to provide similar planning services to other public clients. The firm is distinguished for applying ecological thinking to community problems resulting in innovations in city design, regional land use, and natural resource management. Their comprehensive and participatory approach has produced plans, designs, and built projects that balanced economic development, environmental protection and enhancement, and the preservation of places sacred to the community, with a need to grow wisely. By creating new landscape planning techniques that introduce citizens to the scientific information needed to solve complex issues, the firm encourages citizens to become stewards of the land.

Randolph (Randy) Hester, Jr. grew up in rural North Carolina (b. 1944). Hester earned a BA in Landscape Architecture and Sociology from North Carolina State University, and an MA in Landscape Architecture from Harvard. Following graduation, he returned to UNC where he helped to form the New Lands organization to help residents resist eviction, and published his first book, Neighborhood Spaces in 1975. His research is centered on the role of citizens in community design and ecological planning, and his publications include Neighborhood Space With People (1984), Community Design Primer (1990), and Design for Ecological Democracy (2006).

Professor and former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, Randy Hester was also co-director of Community Development by Design, a planning organization specializing in neighborhood design, community participation, and sacred landscapes from 1985-2010. The organization worked on small town community development, large-scale open space planning and public participation in natural resource management decisions in Washington, California, Hawaii, and elsewhere. In 2023, Hester was awarded the Landscape Architecture Foudation Medal for his distinguished career.

Marcia McNally grew up in suburban Chicago and earned a BA in Economics from the University of Hawaii, and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. McNally is an award-winning landscape and urban planner who uses participatory design as a vehicle for change. Her work demonstrates how merging community issues, visions, and values with science, planning, and politics can result in ground-breaking advances in city design, regional land use, and natural resource management.

McNally’s projects promote a progressive vision for society and the planet that is based on grassroots mobilization, evidence, and expert input. She cultivated her approach at the University of California, Berkeley as a faculty member in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. With her husband Randy Hester she founded the firm Community Development by Design in 1985. The firm was known for its ability to work effectively and creatively at the site, park, community, and wilderness scales with everyone from Native Hawaiians, to Taiwanese fisherfolk and Los Angeles suburbanites.

Sources: marciamcnally.com and Project for Public Spaces (https://www.pps.org/article/rhester)