Remembering Carl Anthony: Architect of a More Just Environmental Movement

Image: Carl Anthony with Dr. Omowale Satterwhite. Urban Habitat.

Carl Anthony was trained as an architect — but he never pursued the conventional path of designing buildings. Instead, he devoted his life’s work to answering the essential question of how the places we build, the cities we plan, and the land we protect perpetuate equality or dismantle it?  Anthony spent four decades constructing a framework that places racial equity at its center. Anthony passed away on April 4 in Berkeley. He was 87.  

After graduating from the Columbia University School of Architecture in 1969, he traveled to West Africa and Spain to study how traditional communities shaped their environment with limited resources. His academic career was spent at UC Berkeley, where he served as an assistant professor of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design in the 70’s and later as a faculty member in the UC College of Natural Resources and a senior Ford Fellow in the Department of Geography. 

He founded Urban Habitat at Earth Island Institute in 1989, establishing one of the first programs in the country to center communities of color in the environmental movement. He later directed the Ford Foundation's Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative, shaping national strategy around equitable, climate-resilient cities. He co-founded Breakthrough Communities in Oakland, trained leaders, served on the Berkeley Planning Commission, and helped produce Race, Poverty and the Environment — the nation's first environmental justice periodical.

His 2017 memoir, The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race, challenged the environmental movement to reckon with the histories embedded in landscapes — and to build something more just in their place.

His conviction that protecting nature and protecting people are inextricably linked is foundational to how we approach our own work, from public lands advocacy to building the coalitions that drive lasting change. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, his mentees, and the many communities he strengthened across decades of service. The movement he helped galvanize carries on.

Rest in power, Carl Anthony.