Dr. François Vigier – President (2005-2020)
B. Arch (MIT), MCP (Harvard), PhD (Harvard), AICP
François Vigier was the president of the Institute for International Development as well as the founding Director of the International Centre for Local and Regional Development. A member of the Harvard faculty since 1962 and Chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design from 1992 to 1998, he was the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he directed the School’s Center for Urban Development Studies from 1987 to 2005. He was responsible for numerous planning and design projects in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. His international activities focused on building local capacity to manage a sustainable urban environment. Professor Vigier was also an expert in the preservation of the non-monumental cultural heritage, notably the rehabilitation of the medina of Fez, medieval Baku and, most recently, Old Damascus. He also pioneered the creation of an interactive database on the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1995, he was made a Knight of the National Order of Merit (France). Dr. Vigier passed away in Cambridge, Mass., in 2020
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