Chris Duerksen
Senior Counsel, Clarion Associates, LLC

Christopher Duerksen, Esq., is senior counsel at Clarion Associates LLC, a land use consulting firm he founded and served as managing director of from 1991 to 2010. The firm has offices in Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina and affiliated offices in Chicago, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia. He has represented local governments, nonprofits, and the private sector in a variety of land-use and zoning matters and specializes in smart growth and sustainable development code revisions, historic preservation, natural resource protection strategies, and airport-area development. He has completed ground-breaking sustainable code diagnosis, revisions and model ordinances for cities, counties, regional governments such as Salt Lake City, Washington, D.C., Tucson, AZ, and the Capitol Region (Hartford, CT) Council of Governments as well as design, sign controls, and scenic view protection regulations for communities such as Park City, UT, and Pittsburgh, PA. Chris co-founded the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute at the University of Denver Law School where he conceived the Model Sustainable Development Code project. Duerksen has written and spoken extensively on land use issues across the United States and has authored many books and articles on land use and conservation issues, including True West: Authentic Development Patterns for Towns and Rural Areas, Nature Friendly Communities, and Saving the World Through Zoning: The Sustainable Community Development Code. He is a former member of the national board of Scenic America and the Sonoran Institute and served two terms on the city council in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Duerksen directed the Gateway/Stapleton Development Office for the City of Denver prior to founding Clarion LLC. He has a law degree from the University of Chicago. Duerksen is currently conducting smart growth and sustainable code audit workshops for local governments across the nation in collaboration with Smart Growth America. He is also free-lance writing about fishing, kayaking, and conservation issues for outdoor magazines such as Florida Sportsman and Southwest Fly Fishing. His outdoor adventures and peregrinations can be followed on his blog at hooknfly.com.