William Fulton

William Fulton (born September 26, 1955) is an American author, urban planner, and politician.

In the 1980s, he was a planning commissioner of West Hollywood, California.

In 1981, he moved to Los Angeles and worked as a journalist.

He subsequently earned a master's degree in urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles.

Fulton is best known as a commentator and expert on urban planning in California, writing hundreds of articles on the topic, including more than 40 Sunday Opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times between 1982 and 2009.

He is the author of several books, including Guide To California Planning, the standard textbook on urban planning in California.

His book The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles was a Los Angeles Times best-seller upon its publication in 1997.

Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, calling it "a surprisingly lively case study of the battles and alliances of politics, business and people that formed – or deformed – a great American city."

Almost 15 years later, Christopher Hawthorne, the architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times, writing in the newspaper's "Culture Monster" blog, called The Reluctant Metropolis "highly relevant" and said Fulton is "one of the most level-headed analysts of the built environment to emerge in Southern California in at least two generations."

He also co-authored The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl with architect Peter Calthorpe, a founder of the New Urbanism movement, as well as California: Land and Legacy, an appreciation of California's natural environment and how it has been manipulated for human use.

He is a longtime contributor on economic development issues to Governing Magazine; many of his columns dealt with the industrial decline of his native Upstate New York.

From 2000 to 2008, Fulton ran Solimar Research Group, a consulting firm and think tank dealing with land use issues.

Among his most prominent Solimar works was "Who Sprawls Most," a 2001 study for the Brookings Institution Center for Urban & Metropolitan Policy (now Metropolitan Policy Program) that debunked myths about sprawl in metropolitan areas around the nation.

Among other things, "Who Sprawls Most" concluded that the West is growing densely while other parts of the nation have serious sprawl problems.

For many years, "Who Sprawls Most?"

was among Brookings' most downloaded publications.

In 2003, following his involvement in a campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would have permitted a large hillside development project, he ran for the city council in Ventura.

In the election, he received more votes than any other candidate.

Fulton also served as a Senior Fellow at the USC Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California from 2004 to 2014, where he taught land use policy and smart growth.

He is also the longtime publisher of the periodical California Planning & Development Report, an online platform covering planning news throughout California.

Fulton has long been active in local politics.

In 2007, Fulton sought re-election as a moderate.

After a successful re-election campaign, Fulton was selected deputy mayor by his colleagues.

In 2008, Solimar was merged into the Berkeley-based planning consulting firm Design, Community & Environment, where Fulton became a Principal and Shareholder.

He served as mayor of Ventura, California, from 2009 to 2011, and later as the Planning Director for the City of San Diego.

In 2009, he was named to Planetizen's list of "Top 100 Urban Thinkers".

He is the founder and publisher of the California Planning & Development Report.

Fulton was born and raised in Auburn, New York.

His ancestors moved to Auburn from Scotland after the Civil War to work in textile mills there.

Fulton earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from St. Bonaventure University and a Master of Arts degree in mass communication from American University in Washington, D.C. At St. Bonaventure, he studied and worked with Neal Cavuto and Dan Barry.

In early 2009, Fulton was said to be considering running in 2010 to represent California's 35th State Assembly district, a seat being vacated by the term-limited Pedro Nava.

However, he chose not to run for the Assembly seat, which was eventually won by Das Williams.

Fulton instead was selected as mayor by his city council colleagues in December 2009.

In 2010 Fulton published his fifth book, a collection of columns from Governing titled Romancing The Smokestack.

DC&E subsequently merged with The Planning Center to become The Planning Center / DC&E, where Fulton served as a Principal and Shareholder from 2011 to 2013.

He served as mayor until his term on the city council ended in December 2011 and did not seek re-election.

The fourth edition of Guide to California Planning was published in 2012 and the fifth edition is scheduled for publication in 2017.

From 2014 to 2022, he was the head of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

He is considered an advocate of the "Smart Growth" movement in urban planning.

The firm is now known as PlaceWorks; Fulton served on the company's board in 2019 and 2020.