Karin Sommer

Karin Sommer is project manager with MPC concentrating on land use, transportation, and community building issues in the Chicago region. Karin manages MPC’s Placemaking Chicago, Corridor Development Initiative, and Communityworks projects, and contributes technical assistance through MPC’s Community Building Initiative. She coordinated Moving at the Speed of Congestion, an analysis of the true cost of congestion to the Chicago metropolitan region. Karin also focuses on creating walkable, pedestrian and bicycle friendly communities, and the intersection of public health and planning.

Prior to joining MPC in 2007, Karin held positions at the Hudson Yards Development Corporation in New York, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and the Urban Technical Assistance Project in upper Manhattan.

Karin was born in Duluth, Minn. and lived in Montana, Nebraska, and New York before moving to Chicago in 2007. In graduate school, Karin was selected to participate in a studio in Israel, to create a development plan for the city of Bat Yam. She was also the Physical Planning teaching assistant for the Urban Planning Program during the 2006-2007 school year. 

Karin sits on the Mayor’s Pedestrian Advisory Council and the Chicago Partnership for Public Health, and is a member of the American Planning Association, Women in Planning and Development, and Friends of Downtown. She lives in the Logan Square neighborhood and enjoys exploring the city.