Rai Yukio Okamoto was an American architect and planner. He served as San Francisco's Director of Planning from 1975 to 1980.
Okamoto was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He got his B.Arch. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1950; an M.Arch. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA in 1951; and an M.City Planning from Yale University in New Haven, CT in 1954. He served as a Fulbright Scholar in France in 1954 and 1955.

He established the firm of Rai Y. Okamoto, Architect, in San Francisco, from 1960 to 1963. In 1963 he worked with the San Francisco Redevelopment
Agency to develop a master plan for the second phase of the Japantown redevelopment. He served as Principal, President and Treasurer of the partnership Okamoto-Liskamm, Incorporated, Planners and Architects from 1964 to 1993. Okamoto-Liskamm was based in San Francisco, with branch offices in Seattle and New York. In 1966, Okamoto-Liskamm's master plan for the redevelopment of Oakland City Center

Oakland City Center

Oakland City Center is an office and shopping and hotel complex in Downtown Oakland, California. The complex is the product of a redevelopment project begun in the late 1950s. It covers twelve city blocks between Broadway on the east, Martin Luther King Jr. Way...

 received an award from Progressive Architecture. In 1969 he co-authored Urban Design Manhattan with Frank E. Williams

Frank Williams (architect)

Frank Williams was an American architect who worked as a lead architect on nearly 20 buildings in Manhattan, including Trump Palace Condominiums, 515 Park Avenue, and the W hotel in Times Square. Williams graduated from UC Berkeley in 1961, and received a masters from Harvard in 1965...

 for the Regional Plan Association

Regional Plan Association

The Regional Plan Association is an independent, not-for-profit regional planning organization, founded in 1922, that focuses on recommendations to improve the quality of life and economic competitiveness of the 31-county New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region...

. In the 1970s, he was hired by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency to design Buchanan Mall in Japantown, and was responsible for inviting sculptor Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa is a Japanese American sculptor. In San Francisco, she has been called the "fountain lady" for her works that include the mermaid fountain at Ghirardelli Square...

 to provide public art for the design. He served as Director of Planning for the City and County of San Francisco from 1975 to 1980, following Allan Jacobs

Allan Jacobs

Allan B. Jacobs is an urban designer, renowned for his publications and research on urban design. His well-known paper "Towards an Urban Design Manifesto", written with Donald Appleyard, describes how cities should be laid out....

 and succeeded by Dean Macris.