Alexander Altskan is an urban planner and educator based in New York City. He serves as a Senior Capital Planner at the NYC Department of Transportation, where he oversees transit infrastructure construction and streetscape design across New York City. His current projects include the Woodhaven Boulevard corridor, the Jamaica Avenue Busway, and the South Bronx Crosstown Select Bus Service.
Alexander has also served at NYC DOT in the capacity of a cartographer with the WalkNYC program, improving wayfinding systems and producing the NYC Bike Map. Prior to coming to DOT, he worked at the NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation, facilitating infrastructure reconstruction on parkland and the restoration of public space.
Before joining the municipal government of New York City, Alexander worked in consulting, conducting environmental reviews to advance affordable housing and public facilities in historically underserved areas, notably East New York, East Harlem, Jerome Avenue, and Inwood.
Since 2023, Alexander has collaborated with the Kharkiv School of Architecture in Ukraine as a lecturer teaching urban planning, street design, and mapping. He has taught courses on Urban Planning Essentials, “Whose streets?”, and led the workshop to create a navigation system for the historic Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine.
Alexander Altskan holds a M.A. in Urban Planning from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and a B.A. in Geography from the University of Chicago.