Boris Pushkarev died in Philadelphia on May 19 at the age of 96. Boris, as the Planning Director and then the Vice-President for Planning at RPA, was a central intellectual figure at the Association, taking the reins from Stanley Tankel, who died suddenly in 1968. Through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, he guided RPA’s research and planning work, beginning with his contribution to RPA’s Second Regional Plan. Over his 30 years at RPA he published seminal works on the region’s airports, pedestrian space, public transit and land use, rail expansion recommendations for US cities, expansion of New York City subways, the region’s economy, among many others.

Boris Pushkarev was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1929. His parents had left the Soviet Union in the 1920s following the Communist revolution. After the Second World War Boris and his parents emigrated to the United States. Boris received degrees in Architecture and City Planning from Yale University. While there he collaborated with Christopher Tunnard on Man Made America: Chaos or Control, which won the National Book Award in 1964. He began his tenure at RPA in 1961 and remained there until his retirement in 1990. His long-held opposition to the Soviet Union launched him on a second career when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, He then resided part-time in Moscow where he wrote about 20th century Russian history and issues related to the Fall of Communism and the requirements for the country post-Communism.

Boris Pushkarev looked at a problem using information in a way that others did not, communicating it in written form in the English language, a language which was not his first. When we were collaborating on his books in the 1970s, and I emphasize HIS books not ours--I was just along for the ride. In later years he would give me 50-50 credit out of humility and generosity. During those times, he would work at home for days, calling me only to give him a number or two. He then brought in a chapter for me to read, edit and correct. I read it, seldom needing to edit it and even less often needing to correct it. His written English was precise. And later on, when I had gone on to other things – not better things because I will always remember those years as the best of my professional life – I always would ask myself, ​“how would BP present this problem and its solution using data, graphs, and maps in an easily digestible form?”

He would often go to construction sites to check on the progress of buildings and transportation projects. Once when he did not appear for a meeting out of the office, and I learned of a bystander death at a construction site I was convinced he was under the rubble. No, he just forgot and decided to work at home. We snuck into the bowels of the World Trade Center while it was under construction to explain to me what was going on many floors underground for the building of the new PATH station.

In his later years, he kept abreast of that was happening in the New York metro region. We talked about the progress (or lack thereof) on the Second Avenue subway and the impending success of congestion pricing, both among his favored projects.

I tried to continue the lessons he taught me – how to use information to convey ideas, and how important it is was to go out in the field to get a sense of the terrain – with those who became my mentees over the years. Those were Boris’s legacy to me, my mentor and friend.

Boris was married to Iraida Vandellos for almost fifty years. They resided together in Manhattan and then in Cliffside Park, NJ until she died in 2020.

A memorial service and burial will take place on May 29 at 1:00pm in Nanuet, New York at the Novo-Diveevo Russian Orthodox Cemetery.