Correspondents Lloyd Alter (TreeHugger and Planet Green), Ryan Avent (Grist), Nate Berg (Planetizen), Andrew Blum (Metropolis and Wired), Randy Crane (UCLA School of Public Affairs) and Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson (New York Times Magazine, Architect, and Metropolis) bring you updates from the Re-imagining Cities: Urban Design After Oil symposium.

Symposium presented by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design and the Penn Institute for Urban Research, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

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  Extra! Extra! Urban Design Revolution in Philadelphia! | Nov 9th at 8:25am

  Posted by Lloyd Alter | Tags: | 5

  

  Fifty years ago the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored a small conference on urban design at the University of Pennsylvania that sparked a revolution in urban planning and changed the face of our cities. Yet somehow I doubt that newsboys were screaming that headline from street-corners the next day. It took time for the lessons of the conference to be digested, disseminated and for a young woman who certainly wasn’t the star of that conference to put it all together over the next few years, with a little more oomph from the Rockefeller foundation.

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  What’s in a Manifesto? | Nov 8th at 12:38pm

  Posted by Ryan Avent | Tags: | 5

  What exactly are we trying to change about urban planning?

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  What is it you don’t understand about the title “Urban design after oil?” | Nov 8th at 12:04pm

  Posted by Lloyd Alter | Tags: | 1

  
  a city after oil

  It was the closing breakout session, trying to create manifesto for educating the next generation of urban designers. I attended the group discussing the fundamentals that urban design students need to know. There were many of them, from philosophy to to technology through ecology. But I was dismayed at how little attention was actually being paid to the issue of urban design after oil.

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  The Education of Integration | Nov 8th at 10:20am

  Posted by Nate Berg | Tags: education | 1

  Urban design, urban planning and architecture interrelate—except in the classroom.

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  The Aging City | Nov 8th at 10:04am

  Posted by Elizabeth Dickinson | Tags: | 1

  It isn’t just our urban infrastructure that’s aging, it’s our inhabitants as well.

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  Smokin’ | Nov 8th at 9:51am

  Posted by Elizabeth Dickinson | Tags: | 1

  What cigarettes can teach us about research, policy, and getting out the message.

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  Apocalypse Now! (and what that means for urban design students) | Nov 8th at 9:46am

  Posted by Randy Crane | Tags: | 0

  The 2nd Saturday morning session is “An Agenda for Urban Design Education,” with speakers who had to have one to get their jobs.  Luminary deans and chairs, with diverse backgrounds and constituencies, crowded the speakers’ table and delivered dense, compact, mixed content talks.

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  International Perspective on a Common International Problem | Nov 8th at 9:30am

  Posted by Ryan Avent | Tags: | 0

  At home and abroad, we must pay attention to the “how” as much as the “what.”

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  Necessity Makes a Frog Jump | Nov 8th at 9:02am

  Posted by Randy Crane | Tags: | 0

  
  The 1st Saturday morning session concerned “City Management,” and featured planners and architects with extensive experience working in the municipal governments of Shanghai, Ottawa, and Curitiba. 

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  Are we seriously facing up to the issue of a world without oil? | Nov 8th at 8:59am

  Posted by Lloyd Alter | Tags: | 1

  
  Shanghai planning model

  Coming down to the wire, and I am beginning to wonder if we will ever get to the subject of urban design in a world without oil.  What materials will we build with? How will we make concrete? How will we get it to the construction sites? What will our cities look like? How will people get around? What will they do and where will they work? Alas, I fear that we are running out of time both at the conference and in the world outside.

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  The Governance Crisis | Nov 8th at 8:55am

  Posted by Diana Lind | Tags: diana lind, re-imagining cities, andy altman, transit strike, clive doucet | 0

  An excellent panel about city governance seemed to end too soon.

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  Hey, Good Lookin’ | Nov 8th at 8:46am

  Posted by Nate Berg | Tags: energy, energy waste | 0

  Buildings and cities need to be energy efficient. Can they be beautiful at the same time?

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  The Need for Research | Nov 8th at 7:07am

  Posted by Elizabeth Dickinson | Tags: | 5

  Can we make design research part of the national agenda?

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  Rybczynski: “This green thing.” | Nov 7th at 10:54pm

  Posted by Andrew Blum | Tags: | 1

  Those of us who write about architecture and cities are sitting on the story of the century. Buildings and cities are relevant in new ways. Not that these are easy stories to tell.

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  The Sustainability of Green Journalism | Nov 7th at 8:13pm

  Posted by Randy Crane | Tags: | 0

  
  The closing plenary session for day 1 of this conference had a full roster of interesting, articulate people, mostly writers focused on communication about urban design and/or climate change.  It was soothing to imagine that many such newspapers, magazines, and other outlets had the budget and sensibility to have folks like these on their staffs.  Which I gather is not the case.

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  The water cooler buzz | Nov 7th at 6:08pm

  Posted by Elizabeth Dickinson | Tags: | 3

  What are people saying outside the workshops and plenaries?

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  Witold Rybcznski is the King of the Green One-liners | Nov 7th at 5:42pm

  Posted by Lloyd Alter | Tags: | 1

  Usually that prize goes to Bill McDonough, but Witold says:

  “A degree of skepticism is part of the territory. It is a questioning of many of the solutions proposed. If grass on the roof ok, why is grass on the front lawn so bad.?”

  
  

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  Getting the Message Out | Nov 7th at 4:47pm

  Posted by Diana Lind | Tags: diana lind, inga saffron, reimagining cities, witold rbyczynski, media, andrew revkin | 2

  Andrew Revkin, Witold Rybczynski and Inga Saffron are some of the participants in a panel discussion that I’ve been looking forward to all day.

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  Green Cities at Work: Sustainability plans in NYC and Philadelphia | Nov 7th at 4:46pm

  Posted by Randy Crane | Tags: | 2

  
  The average carbon footprint of a NYC resident is 29% that of the national average.  Yet the average city sustainability plan is pie in the sky.

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  How Do We Prioritize? | Nov 7th at 4:45pm

  Posted by Ryan Avent | Tags: | 0

  Counter-intuitive answers to difficult questions.

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