Meet Philly's new deputy director for planning, zoning

“In my new role, my focus as deputy director for planning and development is to oversee how those four organizations can work better together—how the Zoning Board, Historical Commission, Art Commission and Planning commission can align what we do so that centers can serve the citizens of Philadelphia together,” Sharpe said.

She will also serve as Executive Director of the City Planning Commission, a role interconnected with her leadership over the department.

Sharpe, a native of Jamaica, has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Howard University. She first came to Philadelphia when she attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania where she received her master’s in city planning.

During her time at Penn, Sharpe met a professor named Ira Harkavy, founding director of The Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the school. She eventually joined Dr. Harkavy at The Netter Center where she served as Associate Director from 2006 until 2010.

The organization was established to improve Penn’s relationship with the surrounding West Philadelphia neighborhood as did Sharpe’s role there. Sharpe was tasked with focusing on how universities can help improve the community in terms of housing, good use of public space, economic development and the like. One example of things Sharpe would implement there is the use of Penn planning students to help community members who may have needed some type of professional consultant but could not afford one.

Sharpe left Philadelphia to serve as the director of planning for New Rochelle, New York but returned three years later to work as the director of legislative and intergovernmental affairs at the City Planning Commission.

Now, she said her work as come full circle as she returns to a post focused on making a Philadelphia entity work best for the city’s residents.

“It does have an impact externally,” Sharpe said, “to make sure work is working better together in here so public facing efforts are aligned internally and so the product on the outside is the best.”

Making things work better, Sharpe said, can be as simple as aligning meetings so that things take place in the correct order and with the right actors.

“That alone we will count as a win,” Sharpe said. “And it’s not that it wasn’t done before, but this gives us greater opportunity to check and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.”

And outward public engagement is still a piece of Sharpe’s mission. As part of the Planning Commission Philadelphia 2035 initiative, a plan to manage Philadelphia’s growth and development and to achieve a vision of that plan by year 2035, the commission holds public meetings, neighborhood meetings and zoning meetings with several opportunities to interact with members of the public.

For Sharpe, her role with the Department of Planning and the City Planning Commission is about bridging the gaps between what the city does in the realm of zoning and planning and how the community can contribute to the city’s plans and efforts.