He and his wife, Elizabeth Plater Zyberk, founded their practice in 1980, at the time of their design of Seaside, which began an ongoing debate on the alternatives to suburban sprawl. Since then, DPZ, their planning practice, has completed well over two hundred downtown and new town plans. They have particular expertise in writing codes. This work has generally been received with awards and publication. Their firm employs about 40 persons dedicated to both practice and research. Both partners teach Traditional Town Planning at the the University of Miami, where Elizabeth is Dean of the School of Architecture. They were founding members of the Congress for the New Urbanism. They have co-authored three widely distributed books, their most recent is The Smart Growth Manual which describes the problems of American cities and proposes techniques that are socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.