Ted Bradshaw, a UC Davis professor of community development who helped California communities grapple with military base closures, energy issues and creating healthy social systems, died Saturday, Aug. 5, while running near his home in Oakland. He was 63.

Born in Ely, Nev., on Oct. 28, 1942, Professor Bradshaw was raised in Walnut Creek and pursued his education through the range of public institutions in California: Diablo Valley Community College; California State University, Sacramento, where he earned a bachelor's degree in sociology; and ultimately UC Berkeley, where he completed a doctorate in sociology in 1974.

Professor Bradshaw came to the Department of Human and Community Development as an assistant professor in 1995 after a nearly 20-year career at UC Berkeley as an associate research sociologist with the Institute of Governmental Studies and Institute of Urban and Regional Development and as a lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning. At UC Davis, he made full professor this June.

His colleagues say Professor Bradshaw embodied the best spirit of the University of California's land-grant mission, providing vision and leadership in rural economic development, community development and energy policy. Most recently, he spearheaded a new plan to establish the Center for the Study of Regional Change, with the aim of harnessing UC Davis expertise across the disciplines for community and economic development in the San Joaquin Valley.

Noting Bradshaw's "passion and integrity as a colleague," Michael Smith, chair of the community development program, says community development scholars outside of UC Davis point to Bradshaw as having "moved the UC Davis program to the leadership position in the field nationally."

Bradshaw wrote four books and numerous journal articles in his career, but his 2004 book on energy is perhaps his most influential. "Agile Energy Systems: Global Lessons From the California Energy Crisis," was co-written with Woodrow W. Clark II, a former California Gov. Gray Davis administration official and now managing director of Clark Strategic Partners in Los Angeles.

The book establishes a new way of looking at energy and other infrastructures related to energy, such as transportation, water and waste, focused on the state's energy policies.

The values Bradshaw learned on his path to Eagle Scout were the same as those that his family and friends saw demonstrated throughout his life. He became friend, mentor and collaborator to students and colleagues on and off the campus, helping them understand the world in a more complex manner and at the same time strongly encouraging them to aspire toward higher goals.

He was also a generous teacher, taking scores of undergraduate and graduate students under his wing.

Bradshaw gained his reputation as an innovative scholar by employing his expertise as a sociologist to bring public policy development into a larger framework.

One longtime colleague, Ed Blakely, former chair of the city and regional planning department at UC Berkeley who is now with the University of Sydney, says Bradshaw's insights influenced two generations of planning and community development practitioners. He provided useful ideas that could be applied by local and state policymakers as well as by scores of nonprofit organizations dedicated to community development.

"Ted was truly a 'Man for All Communities,'" said Blakely, who formed a partnership with him in the 1970s to traverse the state "preaching a new gospel of human resource-led community economic development."

"The core thesis of our work was that communities did not need to look outside their boundaries to find and import new firms and jobs," Blakely said. He and Bradshaw helped communities look at the people and other local sources to craft new economic activities.

When Castle Air Force Base closed in 1994, Bradshaw studied the impacts of the closure on the nearby community of Atwater in the central San Joaquin Valley. His report quelled the anxieties of Atwater residents when he found that the community had re-employed many of the skilled base employees to create a new economic vitality. Bradshaw's analysis was used to reset expectations for communities facing base closures across the nation.

In the mid-1990s, Bradshaw also worked with the American Farmland Trust to analyze the conversion of farmland in the San Joaquin Central Valley. It was geared toward helping communities think about policies that preserve agricultural land. According to UC Davis faculty member Al Sokolow, a leading researcher of the effects of population growth and urbanization on California agriculture, Bradshaw's predictions from that report are now coming into fruition.

"Ted was always interested in the 'other California' -- the rural, less affluent communities and people who were left behind during the big boom in the 1990s," Sokolow said. "He wrote influential studies that identified the circumstances and ways of narrowing the gap between rural California and the rest of the state."

When Bradshaw gained a tenure-track position 11 years ago at UC Davis, he worked one day a week as a private consultant with Applied Development Economics in Walnut Creek. There he provided economic planning and development services to government agencies, economic development organizations, foundations, businesses and private investors.

UC Davis provided Bradshaw the platform to connect the outside world of community development to the campus's teaching and research, helping students secure internships and jobs. Using his extensive network of policy professionals, Bradshaw created in the late '90s a campus advisory board and policy seminar series for practitioners as well as UC Davis students. These relationships, as well as a more vigorous curriculum, brought a new life to the community development graduate program.

Bradshaw is survived by his father, Ken, of San Francisco; his wife, Betty Lou, of Oakland; two sons, Niels, of San Francisco, and Liam, of Oakland; brothers, David, of Sacramento, and Larry, of Vancouver, Canada; and a sister, Carolyn Jerde, of Scotts Valley.

A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. Friday, Aug. 18, at Newman Holy Spirit Parish, 2700 Dwight Way (at College Avenue) in Berkeley. In lieu of flowers, inquiries regarding the Ted K. Bradshaw memorial can be made through K. Studwell, Applied Development Economics, (925) 934-8712, Kstudwell@adeusa.com.

A UC Davis memorial service is pending this fall after the academic year begins.