Travis Crabtree is a landscape architect and urban designer. He is the founder of TREE Urban Design + Landscape Architecture Studio, established in 2020 as an interdisciplinary practice focused on creating resilient public spaces and green infrastructure systems.

TREE’s work primarily centers around post-industrial cities facing challenges of depopulation and divestment, where design can serve as a catalyst for new forms of urban life. Jackson, Mississippi has been a central testing ground for these ideas, offering opportunities to experiment with landscape urbanism approaches that integrate ecology, mobility, and public space. By reimagining the city’s landscapes as connective infrastructure, the firm aims to create places that spark economic reinvestment, strengthen cultural identity, and attract the next generation to live and work in the city rather than the suburbs.

TREE has emerged as a regional leader in design of public space, green infrastructure, complete street networks, parks and trail systems, and stormwater best management practices. From large-scale frameworks to detailed implementation plans, the firm’s approach emphasizes collaboration with public agencies, private partners, and community stakeholders to deliver projects that are visionary yet practical. By working directly with the Mayor’s office, state representatives, philanthropic organizations, and neighborhood groups, TREE is building stronger collaboration, creating more effective and community-driven outcomes. Crabtree is recognized as both a practitioner and civic leader, actively engaged in partnerships that bridge design innovation with economic development and cultural preservation. Through his work, he continues to demonstrate how landscape architecture and urban design can serve as powerful tools to connect people, places, and nature.

Several key projects led by TREE include the Museum Trail Greenway, a transformative six-mile corridor through Downtown Jackson that connects cultural landmarks, neighborhoods, and institutions while restoring native landscapes, managing stormwater, and catalyzing reinvestment in the urban core; the Pearl River Revitalization Plan, a visionary framework to reconnect the city with its riverfront by integrating flood control, ecological restoration, and public access through new trails, wetlands, and civic spaces that reclaim industrial lands for community use; and the Strategic Framework for Parks and Trails, a citywide plan that reimagines Jackson’s open space system as a connected network of parks, greenways, and public spaces, emphasizing equity, health, and long-term stewardship to align recreation and green infrastructure investments with neighborhood needs and future growth.

Before founding TREE, Crabtree served as Senior Planner for the City of Jackson’s Department of Planning and Development, where he led the Long Range Planning Division. In this role, he guided planning initiatives that shaped the capital city’s future growth and urban form. His leadership helped advance comprehensive strategies for land use, mobility, and open space systems, with a focus on aligning development with walkability and sustainable urbanism. Prior to his tenure in Jackson, Crabtree worked at RVTR under Geoffrey Thün and Kathy Velikov, as an urban design research associate. There, he contributed to research exploring the intersections of design, mobility, infrastructure, and systems thinking approaches to urban design within post-industrial cities. 

Crabtree earned a Master of Urban Design from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Mississippi State University.

TREE Urban Design + Landscape Architecture

Founder | Principal | Landscape Architect and Urban Designer | 2021 - present

The Plant

Co-Founder | Managing Partner | Principal | 2016 - present

City of Jackson Department of Planning

Director of Long Range Planning | 2018 - 2020

Fertile Ground - Non Profit

Co-Founder | Project Manager | 2018 - 2020

RVTR - University of Michigan

Research Associate | 2016 - 2018

Crosby Arboretum

Exhibit Designer | 2014

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Education

University of Michigan | Masters of Urban Design | 2016

Mississippi State University | Bachelors of Landscape Architecture | 2014