ALEX BELL

Project Manager, Technical Director | Durham, NC

About Alex: 

Analyst, Student and Teacher, Gooner 

Education: 

BA, Art History, University of South Florida

MS, Planning, Florida State University

Innovative | Tenacious | Hopeful

Alex focuses on plans, projects, tools, and data products that support a systematic and comprehensive approach to community and regional planning. His work deals primarily with interactions between the built environment, economic and demographic trends, travel behavior, transportation system performance, and environmental impacts of urban development. His project involvement covers database construction and management, GIS analysis and tools creation, and model development and application. He has contributed to a variety of transportation and land use studies at the local, regional, state, and federal levels.

I believe... 

We are working in a time of exceptional opportunity. We can collect and digest massive amounts of information, look at old problems in new ways, and witness technological and behavioral innovations creating new and exciting conundrums. In such a time, we have a duty to analyze our decisions – through reflection, synthesis, and projection – to inform policy and investment with a wisdom that invites fresh approaches, guided by our personal and collective values.

Our innovations are vanity unless they illuminate and respond to the needs of the people and creatures of the communities we serve.

When decisions and plans are made that differ from or even offend our understanding of what it is good and right, they are yet made by humans equal to ourselves.

Finally, we must cast our lot with our predecessors, acknowledge the limitations of our powers, and welcome with open arms the blessings and curses our innovations will bring.