Jaime Correa (born September 19, 1957 in Colombia) is an urban planner, architect, and professor at the University of Miami.
Correa is a respected authority in the fields of architecture, urban design, and sustainable development. He is the founding principal of Jaime Correa and Associates, the Miami-based design firm, as well as a former founding partner of several other New Urbanism firms in the State of Florida. He is one of the 14 architects and urban planners who instituted the New Urbanism movement in America and one of its most important representatives and critics in Latin America.
He held the Knight Professorship in Community Building at the University of Miami for seven consecutive years. Since 2021, he has served as director of the University of Miami's undergraduate program and was responsible for teaching and coordinating the Master in Urban Design and the graduate program in Suburb and Town Design at the School of Architecture, where he is currently an Associate Professor in Practice.
Early life and education
Correa holds a master's degree in City Planning with emphasis in Historic Preservation and a master's degree in Architecture with a certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He also received a certificate in Classical Architecture and Medieval Iconography from Cambridge University, in England with the sponsorship of The English Speaking Union of the United States. He received his bachelor's degree in architecture and urbanism from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia in 1981.
Career
Publications
Correa is the author of "Unbuilt Intentions: towards a new phenomenology of cities and architecture" and "Redacted Distillations: Le Corbusier's transformative erasures". He was the editor of THE CORREA REPORT, a newsletter developing a new consciousness of traditional sustainability. He is the author of "Seven Recipes for the New Urbanism." This book presents an irreverent view of seven magical recipes at the heart of the New Urbanism movement: memory, suburban dysfunction, intellectual precedents, region and ecology, urban form, building type and cultural representation. A number of admonitions and a thrilling professional agenda (cleverly disguised as metaphysical denials and affirmations) are followed by a portfolio of breathtaking projects, drawings and photographs. This is one of the freshest expressions of New Urbanism by one of its most zealous practitioners and scholars. He has also written a chapter in "Reflections of Seaside" a book edited by Dhiru Thadani and winner of the Gerd Albers Award in 2021. His chapter on Latin American for Routledge's "Routledge Companion for Global Heritage Conservation", edited by Vinayak Bharne and Trudi Sandmeir, is an enlightening essay on complexity theory applications to redevelopment.
In 2008, he published a small pamphlet titled: "Self-Sufficient Urbanism: a vision of contraction for the non-distant future." Self-Sufficient Urbanism is the most comprehensive town design mitigation and adaptation plan available in the transitional market of today. It encourages the creation of sustainable urban villages and rural settlements where almost everything needed for daily living is found, produced, created, used, re-used and recycled at walking distance from an identifiable center and in closed economic loops. Self-sufficient Urbanism focuses on the "re-localization" of resources, and on the advocacy and development of technologies attempting to eliminate the existent fossil fuel dependency and reduce the current rate of carbon emissions. His introductory pamphlet reviews the social, economic and design implications of combining the existing predicament of global warming and Peak oil and offers a positive solution of contraction, simplicity and human dignity.
He has been a frequent collaborator of the Town Paper, New Towns, the SNU Report, The New Urbanism: Comprehensive Report and Best Practices Guide, PLACES, the New Urban News, the New Urbanism Council Reports, and other national publications. Correa is a member of the editorial board of "Cuadernos de Arquitectura y Nuevo Urbanismo", in Mexico. He was a research collaborator for "The New Civic Art: elements of town planning" and the author of the initial Sustainability Module for the SmartCode. In a New Towns article, Correa was characterized as a person who "… approaches each day's task with the weight of the world on his shoulders then unburdens himself by sharing his discoveries with an engaging demeanor that seeks to make you both friend and follower."