REDESIGNING CITIES: The Speedwell Foundation Talks @ Georgia Tech

What roles do homeownership, the affordable housing crisis, and the law play in achieving the goals of Dr. Martin Luther King’s beloved community? Can housing design, land use policy, and activism overcome political and social barriers to enrich connectedness, neighboring, and belonging – especially today? Drawing on her extensive experience managing transformational change in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, Na...

Can Urban AI activate human agency in the performance and design of cities, particularly in relation to climate change? Can the unfair systems that produce climate vulnerability in the first place, expand the role of marginalized stakeholders in climate adaptation? Leading urban tech researcher, Dr. Anthony Townsend examines the role that artificial intelligence innovations could and are playing in empowering such communit...

Why are more and more cities buying their dead shopping malls and taking on the role of master (re)developer - rather than leaving that job to experienced real estate developers? Downtown Westminster is an excellent example of this kind of suburban retrofit. Its lead designer, Neal Payton, Senior Principal with Torti-Gallas + Partners and Sarah Nurmela, Mayor Pro Tem of Westminster, CO present the project and discuss both ...

Wildfires, urban heat, sea level rise, and the many other impacts of climate change are starting to turn desirable communities into high-risk locations and threatening food and water supplies. How, when, and where will displaced people move? How are cities preparing for the loss or gain of climate migrants? Award-winning author and investigative reporter Abrahm Lustgarten shares research from his new book on these question...

Amanda Loper, principal of David Baker Architects and director of the Birmingham, AL office is an expert on designing beautiful, affordable and market rate housing that's both contemporary and local. Ellen Dunham-Jones interviews her in this follow up to her lecture at GA Tech on her and David's new book, Nine Ways to Make Housing for People.(see the video on the Redesigning Cities website.) They discuss designing housing ...

Cities only have a finite amount of land – does it make sense that they tax lower density areas at a lower rate? How should cities balance the cost of maintaining infrastructure on a per acre basis with how land use policies impact the amount of property taxes those same acres produce?  Joe Minicozzi explains the simple math that anyone interested in redesigning cities should know. This fascinating talk relies heavily on v...

This episode continues the discussion begun during Episode 32: What Transit Modes Where? and is co-hosted by Better Atlanta Transit. Atlanta-based experts give Pecha Kucha/Lightning Talks on innovations in micromobility, micro-transit & communication technologies, inclusive transportation, transit policy and legislation. Opening and closing remarks discuss the implications of these innovations on our experience of citi...

How have youth organizations in disinvested neighborhoods reinvigorated models of democratic citizenship and collective life? Can the exercise of collective agency in the physical space of “the commons” provide young people with the practical skills to engage with today’s economic, racial, and ecological crises? Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton’s newest and sixth book, Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons: Pursuing Democracy's Promise T...

As urban population growth across the globe continues to sprawl outwards, how do we promote healthier development patterns in diverse economies and cultures? With a particular focus on corridors, Peter Calthorpe presents the strategies he developed in association with the World Bank to address the three dominant types of sprawl: high-income sprawl as found in the US, low-income sprawl as found in Mexico, and high-density s...

Redesigning Suburbs

How and where are North American suburbs being redesigned to address dramatically changing demographics, technology, market preferences, and climates? The pandemic and Work-From-Home accelerated earlier trends of the urbanization of dead malls and office parks. But they also renewed leapfrog exurban development. Join this conversation between academic host Ellen Dunham-Jones who researches suburban retro...

Redesigning Cities for the 2nd Global Urban Revolution

What does it mean for humanity that we are transitioning from a rural to an urban species? This is the fundamental question that Professor Robert Fishman is exploring. Professor Emeritus from the University of Michigan, he was trained as an urban historian at Stanford and Harvard, and is the author of the highly influential books Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: ...

What Transit Modes Where?

New modes of getting around are exploding. Now, in addition to fixed rail, bus, and streetcar, smartphones and algorithms have expanded on-demand mobility such as microtransit vans, scooters, and e-bike rentals. Some of our streets already have robotaxis and AV shuttles. Will the skies soon include podcars and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)? What kind of city, social equity, and neighborhood form ...

How do we think about the boundaries between land and water? Dilip da Cunha argues that those boundaries have always been much more fluid—literally. And he argues that the history of how we’ve organized cities is one of ever-increasing efforts to control, subjugate, and manage water while colonizing the land into administered parcels of private property. Dilip and his late partner, Anuradha Mathur, argue that climate chang...

Kai-Uwe Bergmann, partner at BIG, the Bjarke Ingels Group, and host, Ellen Dunham-Jones, discuss the how, what, and why of designing joyful social functions into practical infrastructure at all scales. How did their ideas of hedonistic sustainability embolden them to convince clients to build a ski slope on top of a power plant in Copenhagen, build a concert hall on a highway intersection, turn storm surge fortifications a...

Dan Parolek and his team at Opticos Design coined the term and wrote the book on Missing Middle Housing to describe house-sized buildings with multiple units. These duplexes, quadplexes, cottage courts, etc. are essential tools in creating equitable walkable urbanism. In this episode, Ellen Dunham-Jones talks with Dan about their implementation at Culdesac, Tempe, the country’s first and largest carfree and mobility rich c...

Whether heroic commemorative bronze statues, contemplative experiences of transformed materials, or vibrant activist murals, public artworks give cities cultural and economic value and provide meaningful identity to communities. But how do different kinds of public spaces and community identities influence public artwork? Stephanie Dockery, manager of Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge and Tristan Al-Haddad, arc...

Change the house, change the city? The American Dream of ownership of a detached single-family house is increasingly under attack. It has a racist history and ongoing legacy of segregation, a high environmental footprint, fosters sprawl and loneliness in ever-smaller households, and is increasingly unaffordable. Diana Lind, of the Penn Institute for Urban Research and author of Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simple...

What if developers thought of themselves as farmers, reviving their neighborhood’s abandoned buildings, planting locally symbiotic uses, and growing small business entrepreneurs? And what if they wanted to teach you how to do the same in your neighborhood? Monte Anderson of the Incremental Development Alliance and Options Real Estate in South Dallas, TX and Bernice Radle of Buffalove Development in Buffalo, NY will discuss...