Before joining SmithGroupJJR, Dan Kinkead was Acting Executive Director of the Detroit Future City (DFC) Implementation Office. He provided overall leadership, strategic coordination and technical expertise for the DFC Implementation Office. He was previously Director of Projects and led the initial process to build the implementation team, secure operational funding, develop the organization’s steering committee and spearhead its first set of projects and initiatives.  

Prior to forming the DFC Implementation Office, he was a design principal with Hamilton Anderson Associates (HAA), where he led the design studio for architecture and urban design, and managed the land use and neighborhoods research and planning for DFC. His work at HAA also included projects such as a new Language Arts Building for Michigan State University, master plans for The Children’s Center and Pewabic Pottery, and the redesign and renovation of the Flint Mass Transit Authority’s downtown commuter hub. 

He was also an urban designer with Skidmore Owings & Merrill in New York, where he worked on large-scale innovation district designs for Europe and China.

He obtained a Master of Architecture in Urban Design (2002) from Harvard University, following a Bachelor of Architecture (1997) from the University of Kentucky.

His work has been published in Architect, The Plan, and Architectural Record, and he is a graphic contributor to several World Bank research documents on global urbanization. He is author of Detroit/Milano: Multiplicity as Resource and a chapter on Detroit in Remaking Cities: Transformation of Post/Industrial Cities in the United States and Europe (Routledge, 2016).

Dan Kinkead was a mobile workshop expert at the 5th International Forum for Sustainable Construction dedicated to “Infrastructure Space” held April 7-9, 2016 in Detroit, USA.