Max Stember-Young.
Max Stember-Young, 33
Senior Project Manager at Langan Engineering & Environmental Services
While he was a planner with New York’s Department of City Planning, Max Stember-Young faced community opposition to a 14-block rezoning project he was managing in the Stapleton community of Staten Island. As it happened, Stember-Young had a keen sense of the bond between a physical community and the people that live there.
“Growing up in suburban New Jersey, a lot of my friends didn’t live close to me. To visit them, I would have to rely on my parents or my bicycle,” Stember-Young said. “I became very interested in how we choose where we live and get around in that space, and how space encourages certain uses. That built my interest in urban planning.”
To assuage the project’s opposition, then, Stember-Young waged an informational campaign to stress how the project’s benefits would outweigh the costs.
“The neighbors were skeptical of the amount of traffic the project would cause, and other issues such as additional strains on sewer systems,” Stember-Young said. “I facilitated a number of community meetings and would be there for three or four hours, talking to community members, gaining feedback, building trust, and talking through the benefits versus the cost. The project was [eventually] adopted by the City Council.”
Stember-Young, who has a bachelor’s in planning and public policy from Rutgers and a master’s in urban development and design from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, joined Langan in 2019. There, he manages city environmental quality review applications, develops project scopes and budgets, and manages technical specialists and engineers on projects. This has lately included overseeing the environmental impact statement for River North, a mixed-use development on Staten Island’s North Shore that includes around 900 housing units and 1 million square feet.
Looking ahead, Stember-Young hopes to continue working on projects that benefit the city in multiple ways. “I want to continue to build up a great New York that’s equitable and allows it to grow as a global city, and a very walkable and more sustainable city throughout the future,” Stember-Young said.—L.G.
