Noah Billig has a background in landscape architecture, planning and education. He recently spent five years living, researching and working in Istanbul, Turkey, and Vienna, Austria. His professional experience includes working as an Urban Design instructor at Istanbul Technical University; a landscape designer for Peyzaj Tasarim Landscape Architecture in Istanbul; and a planner for the City of Chaska, Minn. Before entering the design and planning professions, Billig taught in Minneapolis public schools.

Billig’s research interests are focused on participatory and emergent design and planning, including adapted open spaces; adaptive land-use planning; generative design and planning; informal settlements; and perceptions of environments.

Billig believes that often the most dynamic and used public spaces in a community emerge from the actions of residents, not solely as the result of top-down master-planning. In order to encourage such well-loved places, designers and planners must engage with the processes that create and sustain these adaptive spaces. His research on Istanbul’s informal settlements includes analyses of how these settlements contribute to a modern typology in generative urban design theory, as well as explorations of how the processes and patterns found in these settlements can provide lessons for designers and planners. Billig is also investigating merging bottom-up and generative development processes with designer and planner expertise. He has presented and written on these and other topics with numerous national and international conferences and publications, including the Journal of Urban Design and Landscape Journal.

Billig’s primary teaching interests include urban design, open space evaluation, public participation, theory, and land-use planning (incorporating GIS analysis).