about Ryan Ryan P. Cambridge, PLA is an Owner and Senior Associate at Browning Day and currently serves as their Planning Practice Leader. Ryan brings a significant amount of expertise in parks and public realm planning to their team. A distinguished graduate of Purdue University, Ryan has spent the last decade traveling the United States providing public realm planning and design services for both public and private agencies in a collaborative and place-led process. Ryan graduated with honors from Purdue University, where he received multiple scholastic awards including the nomination of University Olmsted Scholar from the Landscape Architecture Foundation, a Student Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architecture, and an Award of Merit from the National Honor Society of Agriculture.
RYAN P. CAMBRIDGE pla , asla , apa PLANNING PRACTICE LEADER
Ryan has spent the majority of his professional career pursuing his passion of planning and design in the public realm; the network of “public” places and spaces which stitch a community together and
serve as the gatekeeper for its quality of life. Parks have been a consistent conduit for this passion. The direction of Ryan’s professional career was guided early on while working in the parks planning and design studio of David Barth, PhD; one of the nation’s leading writers and researchers on parks systems planning and analysis. Dave and Ryan continue to partner on projects to this day. Over the last decade, Ryan has helped lead the development of more than 15 parks-specific systems planning efforts for municipal and county governments across the United States, which together represent nearly $1B in future “public realm” investment. Ryan has also been privileged to help facilitate the implementation of dozens of individual parks and public spaces with a combined construction cost of more than $250M, and has facilitated more than 100 public meetings and/or workshops. As part of these efforts, Ryan has been afforded the privilege of working with distinguished management and research partners such as the Trust for Public Land, The Project for Public Spaces, the Urban Land Institute, and The National Park Service. Ryan’s passion for parks and the public realm also extends out of the office and into the community. Ryan is an active member of multiple professional organizations and has served on the Board of Directors for the Indiana Parks and Recreation Association (2015-2017 and 2019-2021, 2021-2023), the Board of Directors for the Indianapolis Parks Foundation (2019-current), the Advisory Board for the Indiana Chapter of the Urban Land Institute, and is one of only a handful of people in the State of Indiana on the Project for Public Spaces Placemaking Leadership Council (www.pps.org). Ryan is also an active researcher on the topics of parks and place-led, public realm planning and design, speaking at conferences across the country advocating for the transformative power of parks!