Jonathan F.P. Rose

Early life and education Rose was born in New Rochelle, New York, the son of Sandra (née Priest) and Frederick P. Rose of Harrison, New York, a Jewish family; he was raised in Scarsdale, New York. His grandfather, Samuel B. Rose, and great-uncle, David Rose, founded the real estate development company Rose Associates in 1928 and built small apartment buildings in the Bronx and then in Manhattan in the 1930s. His father, Frederick P. Rose, who later served as the chairman of Rose Associates, expanded the company with his two brothers, Daniel and Elihu. When New York City's Mayor Koch called for assistance in developing affordable housing, Rose Associates obtained development rights for the area around the Atlantic Terminal. Rose was named project developer. In 1984, Rose oversaw the design and approvals of the project, Atlantic Center, conceived of as a large scale green mixed-use, mixed-income communities, with moderate-income housing units to be built under the New York City Partnership New Homes program. Prior to the start of construction, the project was sold to Bruce Ratner's firm, Forest City/Ratner.

In 1979, Rose founded Gramavision Records, now a subsidiary of Rykodisc, producing over 75 jazz and new music recordings of artists including Taj Mahal, the Kronos Quartet, and John Scofield. In 1986, he became a founding board member for Jazz at Lincoln Center and was in charge of the design and construction of its home, the Frederick P. Rose Hall.

In 1989, he left Rose Associates and founded Jonathan Rose Companies, a national development, owners' representative and investment firm. The firm is a developer of green, affordable and mix-income housing, known for its Via Verde housing project in the South Bronx, a joint venture with Phipps Houses, and Highlands' Garden Village, a mixed use mixed income urban infill community in Denver, Colorado. The firm's planning work is focused on facilities for lower income families and addressing environmental issues. As project managers, the firm works with cities and not-for-profits on projects such as Signature Theater on 42nd St. in New York City, The Orchestra of St Luke's DiMenna Center for Classical Music, The Irish Arts Center, and the redevelopment of the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering campus in Brooklyn.

In 2025, the firm completed Sendero Verde in East Harlem, a 709-unit mixed-income residential community that is the largest residential development in the United States built to Passive house standards for energy efficiency. The project received the 2025 Urban Land Institute Terwilliger Center Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing and the Urban Land Institute New York Award for Excellence in Affordable Housing Development. In 2026, the project was selected by Time magazine as one of 25 buildings and monuments that capture the character of America as the nation marked its 250th anniversary.

The Jonathan Rose Companies’ Smart Growth Investment Fund was the country’s first real estate fund focused exclusively on acquiring and retrofitting green buildings. The firm has raised seven impact investment funds since 2005, with the majority focusing on affordable housing. In 2025, Rose Affordable Housing Preservation Fund VI raised $660 million to preserve housing affordability. In 2017, Rose's firm purchased Forest City's national federally subsidized affordable housing portfolio, as well as its affordable housing property management group and its FHA Mortgage operation.

Since 2021, Rose has served as an executive in residence at Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

Publications Rose is the author of The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life, published by Harper Wave in September 2016. Rose proposes a methodology built on five qualities: coherence, circularity, resilience, community, and compassion. Siddhartha Mukherjee commented that "...this provocative, important, and majestically composed book about the future of cities should be essential reading for our times." The review in the Stanford Social Innovation Review found that the book "overlooks organic and spontaneous responses to urban issues" and offered limited practical advice. The book received a PROSE Award for 'Outstanding Scholarly Work by a Trade Publisher' in 2017.

Honors Rose was given the Visionary Leadership Award by the MIT Center for Real Estate in 2010.

In September 2014, Rose gave the Dunlop Lecture at Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, titled "The Entwinement of Housing and Wellbeing." He became an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 2014 is. He also held the Yale School of Architecture's Edward P Bass Distinguished Visiting Architectural Fellowship in 2015. Rose was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School in 2015.

Decorations Order of the Beloved Son of the Dragon (17 December 2023).

Philanthropy In 1977, Rose joined the board of The Educational Alliance, and served as the head of its real estate committee, overseeing the development of senior, homeless and affordable housing, drug treatment centers, and social services. In 1986, Rose joined Wynton Marsalis and a leadership group to form Jazz at Lincoln Center, of which he was chairman of the executive committee from 1996-2003, and oversaw the design and construction of its home, Frederick P. Rose Hall, named after his father. In 1992, Rose became the chairman of the board of the Greyston Foundation, a community development organization in Yonkers, New York, and lead its growth in the development of affordable housing, social services and job creation and training.

In 2002, Rose and his wife co-founded the Garrison Institute "to connect the wisdom of the contemplative traditions with social and environmental action." the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and is an honorary board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Museum of Natural History, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 2007, he was named commission chair of the Green Ribbon Commission of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He was a member of New York governor Andrew Cuomo's NYS 2100 Commission formed in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy.

Personal life Rose is married to Diana Calthorpe Rose, sister of architect Peter Calthorpe. They have two daughters, Ariel Flores Zurofsky (born 1973 during Calthorpe's previous marriage), and artist Rachel Rose (born 1986). Rose describes himself as both Jewish and Buddhist stating "I think Buddhism has really advanced the science of the mind, and Judaism has advanced the process of generosity."

Selected works

- chapter "A Transformational Ecology" - chapter "Green Urbanism: Developing Restorative Urban Biophilia"