Elliott Sclar is professor of urban planning and public affairs, director of the MPA concentration in urban policy, and director of the Columbia University Urban Planning Program. An economist and urban planner, he is the director of the Columbia Earth Institute's Center for Sustainable Land Use and Transportation. Professor Sclar's research interests include urban economic development, transportation, and public service economics.

Sclar is a cocoordinator of the Taskforce on Slums and Urban Planning, one of eight task forces set up to aid in the implementation of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. He is a nationally recognized expert on privatization: his book You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (Cornell 2000) won two major academic prizes: the Louis Brownlow Award for the Best Book of 2000 from the National Academy of Public Administration and the 2001 Charles Levine Prize from the International Political Science Association and Governance magazine for a major contribution to public policy literature. He has coauthored Shaky Palaces: Homeownership and Social Mobility in Boston's Suburbanization, with Mathew Edel and Daniel Luria and Access For All: Transportation and Urban Development with K.H. Schaeffer.

Professor Sclar is also very active outside of the classroom. He is the chairman of the board of directors of Trillium Asset Management and a member of the Board of Directors of the Wainwright Bank and Trust Company in Boston. He also serves at the Institute for Transportation Development Policy, New York City and as a panel member on the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C. Sclar is also a member of the American Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute, and the Society of American City and Regional Planning History. He is the research director of the Project on the Economics of Public Service Privatization, the Twentieth Century Fund, as well as a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute.