Amanda Burden

Burden is the daughter of socialite Babe Paley and her first husband, Stanley G. Mortimer Jr. (1913–1999), an heir to the Standard Oil fortune.

She is a descendant of the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay, and a granddaughter of Dr. Harvey Cushing, the "Father of American Neurosurgery" and Pulitzer Prize winning author.

She has a brother, Stanley Grafton Mortimer III; five half-siblings, William Cushing Paley, Kate Cushing Paley, Averell Mortimer, Jay Mortimer, and David Mortimer; and two step-siblings, Hilary Paley Califano and Jeffrey Paley.

Amanda Jay Mortimer Burden ( Mortimer; January 18, 1944) is a principal at Bloomberg Associates, an international consulting service founded by Michael Bloomberg as a philanthropic venture to help city governments improve the quality of life of their citizens.

In 1947, her mother married William S. Paley, the son of a successful immigrant cigar entrepreneur who built a family acquisition into CBS.

Her stepmother, Kathleen Harriman Mortimer, was a daughter of railroad heir and United States ambassador W. Averell Harriman.

Burden also worked as a public school teaching aide in Harlem in the 1960s.

She graduated from the Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut and attended Wellesley College until her marriage in 1964.

In an interview for New York magazine, she cited her stepfather's influence on her design sensibilities, noting the Canadian black granite she chose for the esplanade was the same stone he selected in 1964 for "Black Rock", the CBS headquarters.

Among her other New York projects are the Midtown Community Court and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, which provides integrated legal, economic and social services.

She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1976, with a concentration in environmental science.

She later earned a Master of Urban Planning from Columbia University, writing an award-winning thesis about solid-waste management.

Burden worked with the architecture firm Gruzen & Partners and one of her mentors was William H. Whyte, the urbanologist, with whom she worked on his Project for Public Spaces.

She worked on Battery Park City from 1983 to 1990.

From 1983 until 1990, Burden was Vice President for Planning and Design of the Battery Park City Authority.

She was responsible for the development and implementation of design guidelines for the 92 acre site as well as for overseeing the design of all open spaces and parkland, including the waterfront esplanade.

Starting in 1990, Burden served on the New York City Planning Commission, when she was appointed by New York City Council president Andrew Stein.

She had served on the commission since her appointment by New York City Council president Andrew Stein in 1990.

During her tenure, the department rezoned almost 40% of the city.

The department helped to create the East River Esplanade, transform the High Line into High Line Park, and develop the Brooklyn Waterfront and Hudson Yards.

She is also a member of the International Best Dressed List since 1996.

She was the director of the New York City Department of City Planning and chair of the City Planning Commission under Mayor Bloomberg from 2002 to 2013.

She was a proponent of revitalizing Lower Manhattan, improving public access to the Brooklyn waterfronts, improving commuter rail into the city, and reconsidering rezoning plans.

Burden was an important supporter and active contributor to the success of the project for public redevelopment of the High Line.

She had a reputation of holding developers to stricter design standards than previous planning directors.

She served as Commissioner from 2002 to 2013 under Mayor Bloomberg, and since then has become a Principal at Bloomberg Associates.

Burden served as Chairperson of the New York City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning from 2002 to 2013 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In her term, Burden sought to combine the large transformative change of Robert Moses with a neighborhood-sensitive ethic inspired by Jane Jacobs, writing in 2006, "Big projects are a necessary part of the diversity, competition and growth that both Jacobs and Moses fought for. But today's big projects must have a human scale; must be designed, from idea to construction, to fit into the city. Projects may fail to live up to Jane Jacob's standards, but they are still judged by her rules."

During her tenure, the commission and the Bloomberg administration as a whole were widely seen to have an "overall friendliness to development".

Burden herself characterized the administration as "unabashedly pro-development", and said, "What I have tried to do, and think I have done, is create value for these developers, every single day of my term."

The administration believed it could address issues of rising living costs in the city with new development, strategically increased density, and an increase in housing supply, while attracting a wealthier tax base through gentrification.

When asked how his administration would address the city's income gap, Bloomberg argued against the idea an income gap is negative, saying "They [rich people] are the ones that pay a lot of the taxes. They're the ones that spend a lot of money in the stores and restaurants and create a big chunk of our economy ... If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here it would be a godsend that would create a much bigger income gap."

Describing the administration's approach to development, Burden said, "Improvement of neighborhoods — some people call it gentrification — provides more jobs, provides housing, much of it affordable, and private investment, which is tax revenue for the city."

Burden also focused on managing the aesthetics of new development in a way that maintains the character of a neighborhood.

"We have tried to diagnose the DNA of each neighborhood", she said.

As stated in a 2007 profile of Burden in The New York Times: "Whether walking up and down 368 blocks in Jamaica, Queens, to see which streets can accommodate 12-story buildings, or grabbing a tape measure from her desk to set the dimensions of seating in public plazas across the city, Ms. Burden is leaving an indelible legacy of how all five boroughs will look and feel for decades to come."

Burden previously worked for the New York State Urban Development Corporation.

The Bloomberg administration also launched a "comprehensive waterfront plan known as Vision 2020", which would increase access to the water for kayakers and canoeists and address climate change.

Burden said the goal of the initiative was for the water to become the "sixth borough" of the city.

"The water should become a part of our everyday lives", she declared.