Linda C. Samuels

Linda C. Samuels, RA, PhD, is professor of urban design and architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and currently serves as both Interim Director of the College of Architecture and Chair of Urban Design. She teaches inter-disciplinary studios and seminars on Infrastructural Urbanism, urban history and theory, and alternative sustainability metrics. Samuels was co-principal investigator on a grant from The Divided City initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation, entitled Mobility For All By All, which aims to increase the social and environmental benefits of the multibillion-dollar proposed MetroLink expansion in St. Louis for residents living along the alignment.

Previously, Dr. Samuels was the inaugural director of the Sustainable City Project (SCP), a multidisciplinary research, teaching, and outreach initiative of the University of Arizona where she worked with public and private partners on micro- to macro-scaled sustainability efforts in southern Arizona and the larger megaregion. Samuels earned her Doctorate in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her Master of Architecture from Princeton University. While at UCLA, she was a senior research associate at cityLAB, an urban think tank in UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

Her publications include, among others, "Top/Up Urbanism" in LOHA’s Amplified Urbanism and “A Case for Infrastructural Opportunism” published in 2019 in TAD: Technology I Architecture + Design.

Samuels’ most recent book, Infrastructural Optimism, is available now from Routledge.