Alexis Smith

Department: Land Use – Housing
Email: asmith@mapc.org
Phone: 617-933-0728

Biography:

Alexis joined MAPC as a housing and land use planner in March 2018, bringing a broad range of experience from across the design, planning, and development fields. Her work has focused on leveraging good design and planning towards the creation of safe, affordable homes and equitable neighborhoods.

Alexis works directly with communities in the Boston metropolitan area to develop strategies to meet their housing goals. Her recent work has included an inclusionary zoning ordinance grounded in a financial feasibility assessment, a zoning and buildout analysis to inform multifamily and mixed-use development, and new zoning and design guidelines for a planned transit-oriented district. She has also performed research and analysis on a range of subjects including middle-income housing, displacement risk, and barriers to housing affordability.

Prior to joining MAPC, Alexis was an Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow with Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly, where she oversaw campus master planning, authored organization-wide building design best practices, and managed new affordable housing projects in predevelopment. She previously worked for the San Francisco Planning Department, where she focused on urban design, neighborhood planning, and policy implementation. She has also worked for various affordable housing developers in Washington, DC in both a design and construction capacity.

Alexis has been a registered architect since 2008. She holds a Master of City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, where her research analyzed the development potential for affordable housing near transit stations in changing neighborhoods. She also holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University.

Areas of expertise: Affordable housing design and development, urban design, master planning, land use and zoning, senior housing, capital planning, design guidelines