REDESIGNING CITIES: The Speedwell Foundation Talks @ Georgia Tech

How did the community of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s childhood neighborhood shape his views and the larger Civil Rights Movement? What can historic preservation teach us today about social infrastructure, storytelling and activism? Developer and preservationist Gene Kansas speaks about his new book, Civil Sights, a walk through Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn Historic District that tells the stories of the Civil Rights Movement through its buildings’ occupants and achievements. Clay Kiningham - illustrator of the book, rhetoric scholar Jacqueline Royster, and architect William J. Stanley III, join Gene and Ellen Dunham-Jones discussing the lessons of Sweet Auburn for today. 

How do designed landscapes connect us not just to the natural environment and ecology of a place, but to the people and cultural memories that have inhabited it? When should the designer minimize the presence of their own hand and when is it appropriate to intervene with bold and contrasting design ideas to stimulate new forms of occupation of the land? Sara Zewde, Associate Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at Harvard and founding principal of Studio Zewde shares her approach to these questions in her design work and forthcoming book on Frederick Law Olmsted’s abolitionist work in the South, followed by a discussion with Ellen Dunham-Jones.

Does driving make you fat? Does taking transit make you thin? Are you likely to be healthier in a city with small blocks or big blocks? Are you less likely to get diabetes if you live near a park?  Do you breathe more pollutants in heavy traffic on a bike or in a car?  What urban form is healthier when you’re a teenager or a senior? Are you likely to have more friends if you live in a walkable neighborhood?  What health-related economic benefits do you receive from walkability, bikeways, and greenways? How do you measure these things? One of the most cited scholars in the world, Dr. Lawrence Frank coined the term walkability and has been answering such questions for three decades. After sharing the state of the evidence linking built and natural environment features with health and economics, he and Yilun Zha discuss the findings’ impacts on cities and public health.

Like many downtowns, suburbanization wiped much of the life out of Greenville SC’s downtown by the 1970s. Today it is a thriving, award-winning destination largely due to the 30-year leadership of Mayor Knox White. Why has it been so successful and what can other cities learn from its multi-layered strategies to attract people downtown and celebrate gathering at new iconic parks (including removing a four-lane highway bridge to do so?) Mayor White explains and Michael Messner and Ellen Dunham-Jones lead the follow-up conversation on the implementation and impacts of this remarkable redesign. 

Autonomous vehicles are here – but which mode best serves cities? Private AVs like Tesla? Privately-owned and operated robotaxis like Waymo? Or publicly supported on-demand AV shuttle buses? Are on-demand AV shuttles a more efficient way to provide transit service in lower-density areas where regular bus service is infeasible – and if so how should cities plan for them? This summer Boca Rotan, Florida began a three-year roll-out of AV shuttles. An affluent city struggling to attract service-industry workers, the city sees the shuttles as a means of connecting affordable housing to affordable transportation. Is it working? Jun Wang, Assistant Professor at FAU in Boca Rotan shares her dissertation research on planning for AV shuttles before Mark Wigder, Boca Raton Council Member tells us why he championed the AV shuttle and how it’s doing so far. Noted transit urbanist Peter Calthorpe also makes a surprise appearance.  

How did Oklahoma City go from being one of America’s most obese and least walkable cities in 2008 to an award-winning thriving downtown attracting an influx of jobs, dining, recreation, and young adults? Through the implementation of a complete redesign of the public streets and parks in the 50-block downtown core. Defying fears of gridlock, the one-way street system and a third of the driving lanes were eliminated while on-street parking was doubled, a bike network established, and over 2,500 street trees planted. Then Mayor Mick Cornett and urban designer Jeff Speck discuss how they pulled this off and lessons learned.   

Is it possible for a suburban community to invest in long-term amenities like a walkable downtown, a symphony hall and award-winning public spaces while reducing property taxes? Jim Brainard did just that - and more - during his 28 years as Mayor of Carmel, IN. His presentation shows how he freed up redevelopment opportunities by using Tax Increment Financing to build public parking and elevate design quality. In a follow-up conversation Ellen Dunham-Jones asks him to discuss the health, energy, and climate impacts of these changes - as well as his conversion of over 150 Carmel intersections into roundabouts. Listeners may want to visit the Redesigning Cities website to watch the video to see Jim’s slides.  

As listeners and viewers to Redesigning Cities 40+ episodes should have figured out – urban design is complicated business! It requires integrating a wide range of social, transportation, energy, and environmental collaborators, infrastructures, networks, and design details into a spatial framework. Luckily Nico Larco, lead author of the Sustainable Urban Design Handbook talks us through this matrix of issues, as well as his research on emerging technologies and new mobility.  

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, Natosha Reid Rice speaks to these challenges and shares lessons on how to leverage the power of proximity to curate thriving communities now. 

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 communities. From resilience planning chatbots to synthetic visualizations of flood threats, he maps the possibilities and risks presented by these emerging technologies for the urgent work of responsible participatory climate adaptation. Debra Lam leads a follow-up conversation.

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 the advantages and challenges of such an approach. 

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 questions. Host Ellen Dunham-Jones leads a follow-up discussion with Abrahm, Jairo Garcia of Georgia Tech, and Camille Cortes and Matt Lambert, both of DPZ-Co-Design and leaders of PLACE Initiative.  

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 for people vs as a commodity, "small but mighty" interventions, how to determine what "better here"looks like, and some nerdy details of financing affordable housing that we all can expand on. 

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 visuals. Listeners unfamiliar with his 3D visualizations of property tax/acre revenues showing short green spikes for low values and “purple mountains” of tall spikes for high value properties may prefer to watch the video of Joe’s talk.

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 cities in general, and Atlanta in particular.  

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 Through Place-Based Activism, makes that case and we discuss her research on how urban design and urban designers can empower the disenfranchised.

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 sprawl as found in China.  A prolific author, visionary urban designer, and impactful advocate for linking sustainable growth and policy, Peter Calthorpe delivered this year’s Georgia Tech TSW Lecture, followed by a conversation with Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones.

Episode 35_Gil Penalosa

Redesigning SuburbsHow 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 retrofits, and David Dixon FAIA, an award-winning professional who designs and documents them. Vice President and Urban Places Fellow with Stantec, David co-edited Suburban Remix: Creating the Next Generation of Urban Places (2018) and co-authored Design for an Urban Century (Wiley, 2015). Residential Architecture Magazine named David to their Hall of Fame as “the person we call to ask about cities.”

Redesigning Cities for the 2nd Global Urban RevolutionWhat 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: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier and Bourgeois Utopias: the Rise and Fall of Suburbia.

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 do these different modes shape? In Atlanta, the Beltline is a 22-mile trail loop that has proven the popularity of walkability and bike-oriented development but promised to include future transit. Should that transit continue the city’s historic but troubled investment in streetcars or bet on emerging technologies like AV shuttles? How should such decisions be made about what transit goes where and what kind of city we want? Features Tejas Santanam, Eric Kronberg, and Rebecca Serna.  

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 change is actually helping us recognize how uncertain it is that there’s no such thing as "dry land". It all gets rained on to some degree, and climate change is erasing those lines. We need to better prepare ourselves and our cities for how to design for conditions of ubiquitous wetness. 

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 around lower Manhattan into public parks and gardens – let alone design new cities in the desert, on the ocean, and on the moon?

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 community built from scratch. For those interested in images, the podcast is a companion to the video of Dan’s hour-long lecture given the same day and also available at the Redesigning Cities website.

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, architect and founder of Formations Studio will present and discuss public art projects they have each worked on and their impact on cities and different kinds of public spaces.

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, Simpler, Happier Housing, Ellen Dunham-Jones and Andrew Bruno of Georgia Tech will discuss the impact on cities and neighborhoods of both exclusive single-family house zoning and alternative forms of houses/housing. 

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 each of their work and its impacts as Season 5 of Redesigning Cities starts digging!

How are younger cities leveraging the renewed importance of urban parks in the pandemic? Adrian Benepe of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Trust for Public Land, Clyde Higgs of the Atlanta Beltline, and Tim Keane from the City of Atlanta will discuss how Atlanta’s investments in new parks and greenways are building on its Olmsted legacy while radically transforming development patterns, trip modes, and local ecology.

Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 145 out of 3,143 counties in America. Andrew Ross of NYU and author of Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing (2021) and Shelley Poticha of the NRDC and former Director of Sustainable Housing and Communities at HUD will discuss how ineffective government planning, property market speculation, and poverty wages have created this housing crisis -- and the policy and design measures needed to pull us out of it.

Dr. Richard Jackson, emeritus professor of public health at UCLA and former Director of the CDC National Center for Environmental Health and has argued that architects and planners can have more impact on the health of the next generation of kids than all the physicians in the world. His words are best proven correct through the work of renowned architect Michael Murphy of MASS Design Group, dedicated to the construction of dignity and rooted in healthcare design. Listen in on their conversation reinvigorating what it means today to design for health, safety, and welfare.

Lock-downs, work from home, and fears of crowded indoor space during the pandemic have shifted how many of us use streets. From “streateries” and street racing, to drive-by birthday parades and outdoor schools, our streets have become significantly more social. Will these shifts last if and when the pandemic eases – and what do they mean for public space, transit, and mode-splits? Professor Vikas Mehta of the architecture and urban design programs at the University of Cincinnati, Tony Garcia of Street Plans Collaborative and Tactical Urbanism fame, and Professor Kari Watkins, civil engineering at Georgia Tech will help us figure it out.

How can we undo the ways economic policies have contributed to structural racism? And how should we redesign cities to reflect and advance equitable economies? Raphael Bostic, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and Catherine Ross, Regents Professor of City Planning and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology will discuss solutions to these and other questions.

What can urbanists learn from how Sci-Fi authors have reimagined cities? GT Regents Professor in Science Fiction Lisa Yaszek discusses with host Ellen Dunham-Jones how diverse voices from around the world have challenged racial and gender norms in science and technology while proposing alternative kinds of cities, spaces, and social justice. Yaszek is the author of Galactic Suburbia and co-editor of Literary Afro-futurism in the Twenty-First Century. Shaunitra Wisdom, GT School of Architecture Academic Advisor, author, and Periplus Fellow shares her insights and moderates Q&A.

 Post-pandemic, how might we leverage tele-work-medicine-education-everything to even the playing field between rich and poor places instead of exacerbating the digital divide? University of Arizona Professor Arthur C. Nelson and Debra Lam, Executive Director of Georgia Tech’s Partnership for Inclusive Innovation will help me, Redesigning Cities host Ellen Dunham-Jones, think through this question. 

Josiah Cain, Director of Innovation at Sherwood Design Engineers presents the firm’s advanced techniques for regenerative site design before Mike Messner, Professor in Practice at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, leads their conversation on the implementation, financing, and future prospects of these high-performing sustainable strategies.

Sarah Williams Goldhagen, critic and author of the award-winning Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives, Sonit Bafna, associate professor and director of the Georgia Tech SoA Ph.D. program, and Harrison Fraker, Dean Emeritus at UC Berkeley and author of Minding The City: Field Notes on the Poetics of Sustainable Public Space present their research on how spatial design impacts meaning, emotions and behavior, before discussing the implications for redesigning cities.

As climate change and urban heat islands compound the impacts of non-climatic events such as pandemics and blackouts, critical infrastructure too often fails just when it is needed most. How do we rethink and redesign critical infrastructure at the city, neighborhood, and microclimate scales? Brian Stone presents new research findings from the Urban Climate Lab at Georgia Tech in discussion with Doug Kelbaugh, author of The Urban Fix: Resilient Cities in the War Against Climate Change.

Dolores Hayden, professor emerita of Yale, kicks off this episode with her seminal research on the history of feminist architecture and urbanism and how it contrasts to suburbia’s construction of women’s roles. Eva Kail then presents how she has implemented gender mainstreaming in the design of parks, housing, transit and neighborhoods while working for the city of Vienna, Austria for over thirty years. The rich conversation that follows, led by Julie Kim and Ellen Dunham-Jones of Georgia Tech, discusses why the US hasn’t followed Austria’s lead, hopes for future feminists, and more.

What is the Green New Deal and what might its advancing of equity, jobs, and justice in relation to climate change mean for redesigning cities? Billy Fleming of the University of Pennsylvania and Nancy Levinson of Places Journal inform, interrogate, and invite designers to figure it out in this co-hosted Places Event.

Marcel Wilson, founder of the San Francisco-based landscape architecture firm Bionic, presents his work in the REDESIGNING CITIES video, extracted from his presentation of the 2020 Doug Allen lecture. In the podcast, he and host Ellen Dunham-Jones discuss shifts in how we’re redesigning the integration of nature as amenity, performative ecology and infrastructural technology into cities and landscapes.Watch Episode 13 on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-qUhjDfqq8

Alan Organschi, partner in Gray Organschi Architecture and on the faculty at Yale University, and Scott Marble, Chair of the School of Architecture and partner in Marble Fairbanks, discuss Organischi’s research on the potential of timber construction combined with forest management to turn cities into massive carbon sinks.Watch Episode 12 on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg3X-G0qw_c&t=2016s

Carol Coletta, President and CEO of the nonprofit Memphis River Parks Partnership, and Ellen Dunham-Jones, Director of the Master of Science in Urban Design degree at Georgia Tech and Co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia, discuss the utilization of philanthropy to improve the public realm with an emphasis on parks.Watch Episode 11 on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6B6M3e0w2A&t=5s

Majora Carter, a revitalization entrepreneur, presents her decade-long work on 'self-gentrification' and incremental development as a means to stem the stigmatization and brain drain out of low-status communities.Watch Episode 10 on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEEX7S675cA

Listen to award winners, Reuben Abraham and Carlo Ratti, discuss their initiatives for smart mobility and inclusive innovation as they relate to cities.Watch Reuben Abraham accept his award on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAQFvItjM6s.Watch Carlo Ratti accept his award on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqlz14Lvy8g&t=12s.

Listen to award winners, Deputy Consul Juan Tellez, Janette Sadik-Khan, Jan Gehl, and Seleta Reynolds, discuss their initiatives for smart mobility and inclusive innovation as they relate to cities.Watch Juan Tellez accept his award on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy-ermqNX2g&t=1s.Watch Janette Sadik-Khan accept her award on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6QrxREpVB0&t=30s.Watch Jan Gehl accept his award on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1nK3dBSAD0.Watch Seleta Reynolds accept her award on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYyOKUGiMVs.

Chuch Marohn, President and Founder of Strong Towns, is a civil engineer and city planner who addresses a growing movement that questions the fiscal responsibility of sprawl development patterns.Watch Episode 8 on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyUDS3jxlEQ&t=2s

A conversation about carbon pricing and how it relates to the built environment through offset marketing strategies.

Episode 6 is a discussion between Jess Zimbabwe, Principal of Plot Strategies, and Joseph P. Riley, former Mayor of Charleston (for 40 years) and founder of the Mayors Institute on City Design. The focus is on the approaches and resources for addressing and preventing gentrification and displacement as well as associated racial and class concerns.Watch Episode 6 on youTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge1Y7G4XCd0

Episode 4: Redesigning Cities for the Collaborative Economy features Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and author of Peers Inc., and Gabe Klein, author of Start-Up City and former Commissioner of Transportation for both Washington DC and Chicago. Together they draw on their broad expertise to discuss both the role of cities in shaping entrepreneurial, collaborative economies and in being shaped by them.Watch Episode 4 on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWuKOW_IL8&t=5s

Episode 5: Redesigning Cities Against Climate Change is a conversation between Peter Calthorpe, author of Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, planner, and developer of Urban Footprint, and Rob Kunzig, Senior Environment Editor at National Geographic and author of Fixing Climate. This podcast features a candid and sobering discussion on climate change and human nature.Watch Episode 5 on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzJs6AHcAWg&t=1075s