Jose Medrano, a Director at Urbane, is passionate about community anchor development and wealth generation strategies that preserve and advance equitable, diverse, and livable neighborhoods and cities.
As an urban planner, he brings cross-sector experience on infrastructure, real estate, and economic development projects to his current work at Urbane, and lends expertise in market research, feasibility, and benefits analysis to community, government, private sector, and institutional clients and partners. Jose excels at both quantitative and qualitative data analysis, financial modeling, GIS methods, co-design, and digital storytelling that highlight on-the-ground realities, and elevate community voices.
Jose’s recent projects include working with the City of New York to investigate opportunities around how unions can leverage their vast pension funds to be catalytic investment drivers for affordable housing and other economic mobility initiatives. Similarly, at Urbane he recently partnered with NYC Kids RISE to investigate the creation of a socially responsible investment option within the NY 529 Direct Plan, which focused on community wealth building investment targets in NYS.
Currently, Jose is primarily focused on leading Urbane’s cannabis practice which helps partners understand how cannabis can be vehicle for the creation of community wealth.
Prior to joining Urbane, Jose's work includes supporting the city of Cambridge (MA) in analyzing the public and developer benefits resulting from potential zoning petitions, leading the residential and retail analysis in a redevelopment area for a municipality in New Jersey, and supporting the market analysis and affordable housing strategy for a TOD master plan in Atlanta (GA), and working in-house with the NYC Department of Homeless Services on a project aimed at decriminalizing homeless shelters and later, their COVID response. He also supported in-depth analysis on land use, the real estate market, workforce, and employment patterns, and transportation for a mixed-use district feasibility study in Long Island City, Queens.
Jose holds a dual Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Psychology from the University of New Mexico and is a Master of Science in City and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute. He is graduate of the Coro Leadership New York (LNY 33) program, a competitively-selected, rigorous 175+ hour experiential leadership development program aimed at providing mid-career and early-executive professionals the personal skills, civic knowledge and a multi-sector network to effectively lead change.
