People
Raimi + Associates has a small but dedicated staff of professionals who are committed to making communities more livable and environmentally sustainable. Our work environment is highly collaborative and encourages the free-flowing, creative exchange of ideas.
Matt Raimi
AICP, Principal
Contact Matt
Matt Raimi has over a dozen years of experience in planning and has managed numerous comprehensive plans, open space plans and site planning projects across California. He focuses on creating more livable and sustainable cities, and has spoken extensively on applying the principles of new urbanism to comprehensive plans, incorporating public health concerns into the planning process, and promoting sustainable development at the local level.
Prior to founding Raimi + Associates, Matt worked for the planning and urban design firms of Design, Community & Environment in Berkeley and SMWM (now Perkins + Will) in San Francisco. Previously, he worked as a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Matt is currently the co-chair of the Environment Task Force of the Congress for the New Urbanism, is a Senior Fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program, and is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Market Advisory Committee. He has also assisted with development of the LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System and Reference Guide as a sub-consultant to the U.S. Green Building Council. Matt Raimi is the co-author of a seminal book on smart growth and the impact of sprawl titled Once There Were Greenfields: How Urban Sprawl is Undermining America’s Environment, Economy and Social Fabric. He is also the author of several other publications, including Understanding the Relationship Between Public Health and the Built Environment (USGBC, 2006) and Five Years of Progress: 110 Communities Where ISTEA is Making a Difference (STPP, 1996).
Matt holds a master's degree in regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a BA from the University of Rochester, and is a an AICP-certified planner.
Back to Top
Jose Antonio (Tony) Perez
Principal Director of Southern California Operations
Contact Tony
Jose Antonio (Tony) Perez, Principal of Raimi + Associates, has led or substantially assisted in the preparation of over two dozen master plans and regeneration-oriented specific plans for widely differing places and needs, including California communities such as Visalia, Downtown Cotati, Downey, Placentia, Uptown Whittier, Downtown Newhall, and Center City Santa Ana. Mr. Perez has prepared form-based codes for each of the plans in which he has participated or authored. Over the past two years, Mr. Perez was also the principal author of a form-based General Plan for Tehachapi, California. In the last year, Mr. Perez has led the planning and coding effort on a 2.5 square-mile area of unincorporated East Los Angeles featuring four Gold Line Stations.
Mr. Perez has managed and helped execute over a dozen five-day charettes with multi-disciplinary teams comprising architects, technical consultants and stakeholders on behalf of public agencies. Mr. Perez is particularly interested in and experienced with urban design and implementation as well as with leading form-based code training workshops for public agencies. These collaborations have resulted in a variety of regulatory planning documents on behalf of public agencies.
Prior to entering the private sector, Mr. Perez served as city planner for several California cities ranging from small towns to medium-size cities; he was a redevelopment staff person on three significant main street improvement projects that promoted significant revitalization in Fillmore, Oxnard and Camarillo.
Back to Top
Aaron Welch
LEED AP, Senior Planner
Contact Aaron
Aaron Welch has broad experience with sustainability, comprehensive and neighborhood planning, planning for public health, and green building. Many of his current projects involve implementation of the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System. He wrote portions of USGBC’s LEED-ND Reference Guide, has reviewed LEED-ND pilot project for USGBC, and has assisted several clients pursuing LEED-ND certification. He has served as a planner for multiple general plans throughout California, including for the cities of West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Encinitas, South Gate, Murrieta, Redwood City, and Mountain View. Aaron also wrote the chapter on sustainable neighborhoods for the 2009 Wiley book Fundamentals of Integrated Design for Sustainable Building, and is working on an "Advocate's Guide to LEED-ND" for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Prior to joining Raimi + Associates, Aaron was a consultant at Stockholm Environment Institute, where he focusing on how local transportation, land use, and consumption patterns trigger a country's carbon dioxide emissions, material resource flows, and Ecological Footprint. Aaron has also worked as a research associate and consultant to the Global Footprint Network (the global regulating body of the Ecological Footprint) and as a UC Berkeley post-graduate researcher.
Aaron holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.A. from Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, though his professional interest in planning and sustainability stems from around the time he traded his first car for a hand-made Italian racing bike, which he still commutes to work on. He provides an international perspective on land use and sustainability, having lived and worked in The United Kingdom and The Netherlands and having traveled extensively in Europe, Asia and New Zealand.
Back to Top
Andrejs Galenieks
Urban Designer
Andrejs Galenieks has a strong background in traditional and sustainable design principles, having contributed to a number of small and large-scale design projects throughout the country as well as overseas. He has taken a part in numerous public charrettes and workshops, working on projects ranging from conceptual design of transit-oriented developments to form-based codes, as well as general and specific plans at all scales. Collaboration with professionals across multiple disciplines has been typical in his experience. Andrejs has also participated and contributed to award-winning projects such as The North End Plan for Michigan City, (IN), among many other projects, including the General Plan for Tehachapi (CA), the Lancaster Boulevard Streetscape Mater Plan (CA), and Pasadena City Guidelines (CA).