Shlomo (Solly) Angel is Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning at the Wagner School, New York University (NYU). He also teaches history and theory of planning at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University.

He is principal investigator in a global study of urban expansion that has been financed by the World Bank, National Science Foundation, NASA, and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The results of working papers: on the decline of urban densities, the fragmentation of urban footprints, and on measuring and projecting urban land cover in all countries from 2000 to 2050 were published as The Expansion of Cities and the Atlas of Urban Expansion (2012).

Shlomo Angel studied architecture and town planning at the Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel and then obtained a degree in architecture and a PhD in urban and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

His research focuses on urban expansion in a global sample of 120 cities between 1990 and 2000 and on a global sub-sample of 30 cities and their expansion between 1800 and 2000. He has advised the United Nations, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank on housing and urban development policy, as well as conducted housing policy research in dozens of countries.

He is the author of Housing Policy Matters: A Global Analysis (Oxford UP, 2000) and published “An Arterial Grid of Dirt Roads” outlining a strategy for cities in developing countries for making minimal preparations for the impending expansion.