Egon Terplan

Egon Terplan is a leading expert in place-based economic development, competitiveness strategy, regional planning, land use, and transportation policy, as well as fiscal policy and government reform. He consults, teaches, writes, lectures, and advises numerous government, civic, philanthropic, and private sector organizations on infrastructure, land use, climate, and economic development. In 2023 he helped the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development draft their Roadmap to San Francisco’s Future, the revitalization strategy for downtown San Francisco.

Terplan is a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Transportation Studies at University of California, Berkeley, and previously held the Robert S. Cornish Endowed Chair of Regional Planning in the Department of City & Regional Planning at University of California, Berkeley. For five years he was an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and affiliated with the Bill Lane Center for the American West.

From 2019 to 2022, Terplan was a California Governor appointee serving as the Senior Advisor for Economic Development and Transportation within the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and the California Strategic Growth Council. In that role, he helped launch and manage “Regions Rise Together,” a statewide inclusive economic development and sustainable growth initiative. Through that effort, Terplan helped design and create two innovative regional implementation programs – the $600 million Community Economic Resilience Fund and the $600 million Regional Early Action Planning Grants of 2022. He was also the project director for the California Transportation Assessment (AB 285), a review of the state transportation planning and funding system developed, working in collaboration with UC ITS. He  also led and participated in several interagency and external working groups and partnerships focused on land use and transportation, freight and logistics. Egon relaunched and coordinated a working group of the 18 metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) with senior state staff across eight state agencies. He also provided strategic advice on economic development, regional planning, land use, transportation, and station area planning to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, the Strategic Growth Council, the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, the California High Speed Rail Authority and other state agencies.

Prior to his appointment with the Governor’s Office, Terplan was the Regional Planning Director for SPUR, a nonprofit civic organization and public policy think tank focused on good planning and good government in the Bay Area. At SPUR he led research, education and advocacy campaigns including authoring or co-authoring dozens of reports and policy studies such as a statewide strategy for how to use high-speed rail to reshape urban development and economic opportunity in California, a Bay Area-wide strategy to lift lower-wage workers to middle-wage jobs, a strategy to prepare for a shift towards an urban future of work, an analysis of environmental tax shifting in San Francisco, and the first-ever analysis of the Northern California megaregion.

Prior to SPUR, he was a Senior Associate and Project Manager for ICF International where he led regional economic strategy projects and cluster-based economic initiatives for public and private sector clients throughout the world. He has also worked for the Mayor of New York, was a teacher on Riker’s Island, and a union organizer and researcher for several labor unions.

Education

Terplan is a frequent public speaker and university lecturer and instructor. In addition to teaching at UC Berkeley and Stanford, Egon was previously an instructor in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of San Francisco and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at San Jose State University.

Terplan graduated from University of California, Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design with a Master of City and Regional Planning and holds an undergraduate degree, Phi Beta Kappa, from Swarthmore College.