Urban planning panel discusses future of American city architecture

Four University graduates now employed in occupations related to city planning and architecture discussed the future and challenges facing the American city at a panel discussion Friday.

Panelists were Ray Gastil GS ’91, director of the Department of City Planning in Pittsburgh; Peter Waldman GS ’67, professor of architecture at the University of Virginia; Ellen Dunham-Jones GS ’83, professor of architecture and urban design at the Georgia Institute of Technology; and Waqas Jawaid ’10, a partner at Isometric Studio.

The panel was moderated by Alison Isenberg, professor of history and co-director in the Program in Urban Studies at the University.

Gastil said he and the other members of the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning wanted to look at development of the city in terms of “people, planet, place and performance.” They wanted to make sure that the people of the city — both those already there and those to come later — came first.

In terms of "planet and performance," Gastil added they wanted to figure out good environmental metrics. He noted that the problem of managing city storm water is one that is very prevalent in his life now and was not something he discussed during his time at the University.

He explained that the final 'P,' place, concerns the fact that some city developments occur independently of the intentions of planners and designers and of market forces, and these interesting developments need to be accounted for in city planning.

“There has to be some room in the design of cities that it’s not some formula that we adopted but that we are actually able to listen to people,” Gastil said.

Dunham-Jones said that our ingrained idea that the future of the city consists of high-rises and imaginary downtowns is limited and outdated, and that the future of the city in fact lies with suburbs. She explained that there are currently three basic urban design strategies for retrofitting suburban properties, such as abandoned malls and office parking lots.

Planners can "re-inhabit" the space with community-serving spaces such as a courthouse or a school, they can "re-green" the space or redesign it for environmental use, or redevelopment, which she said is the most effective, she said.

Redevelopment, she said, consists of “demolishing most of the existing suburban crap and building instead compact, walkable, mixed-use urbanism mostly on top of the parking lots.”

Dunham-Jones also noted that although we tend to think of suburbs as family-oriented, that is not true. Millennials, she said, are showing more preference for cities, as cities are more enjoyable and less dangerous than they used to be. She added that this phenomenon is causing problems of affordability and equity in suburbs, with suburban poverty on the rise.

Jawaid gave an account of his own experiences with architecture in cities. He said that while the goal of 20th century architecture was to promote existing social values, 21st century architecture is more subversive and is intended to represent people who couldn’t be represented otherwise.

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“We have one overarching goal: that everyone can see themselves reflected in the culture and design of their own city,” he said.

Isenberg then asked the participants how their proposed changes in reframing the design or conception of the city could be brought about. Dunham-Jones said that there is a fundamental need for infrastructure, and added that there is now a need for communication between formerly unrelated infrastructure components, such as traffic engineers and storm water engineers.

“We can’t afford to do single-purpose infrastructure any more,” she said.

The event, called “Future of the City,” took place at 9 a.m. in Betts Auditorium in the Architecture Building. It was part of the Alumni-Faculty Forums and was organized by the Alumni Association of Princeton University.