Jim Heid

Jim is a strategic real estate advisor and developer focused on the tools and techniques that lead to a more sustainable built environment. Since 2000, through his consultancy UrbanGreen® he has advised government agencies, real estate companies and legacy landowners on approaches for building more sustainable communities. With a desire to move from advising to doing, in 2017 Jim founded CRAFT Development, a real estate development company focused on incremental development and place building.

A resident of Healdsburg, in the heart of California's wine country, Jim has developed a range of innovative projects to show how it is possible to 'do development different'. These include CraftWork - a new adaptive use co-working space and RiverHouse - an eight unit cottage court, in addition to several smaller renovations and infill projects.

An active member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), he has authored numerous publications, chaired Panel Advisory Service programs and speaks regularly on sustainable design, resilience, and the value of small scale, incremental development. He helped found ULI’s Real Estate Entrepreneurs program, and serves as the lead instructor for the Small Scale Developers Forum - semi-annual tours that look at innovative approaches to incremental development in a new city each time. These tours formed the basis for his new book Building Small: A Toolkit for Real Estate Entrepreneurs, Civic Leaders and Great Communities.

Trained as a landscape architect at University of Idaho, Jim went on to receive a Masters in Real Estate Development from MIT as way to more effectively integrate economics, development and design thinking.