2009 Fall Conference | November 11, 2009

“We are convinced that this undertaking will add more employment opportunities, will create improved and upgraded jobs in the area, and will result in higher wages and better living conditions.”

- The Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, led by David Rockefeller in describing their eleven “Major Improvements” for Lower Manhattan in 1963

In today’s climate of escalating job loss and tightening public budgets, what strategies and tactics can cities use to renew, reinvest, regenerate, and redefine the identity of their central business districts? What innovative approaches to urban design and planning can be leveraged now to set the stage for the next dynamic cycle of urban growth and renewal?

The Forum for Urban Design will explore these questions through the focused lens of the recently unveiled Greenwich South visioning study, commissioned by the Alliance for Downtown New York. The Alliance is neither a government agency nor a private developer, and its study of Greenwich South, the 41 acre trapezoid just south of the World Trade Center site, is not a master-plan. Rather it is a matrix of strategic principles, authored by Architecture Research Office and Beyer Blinder Belle, into which various tactical design moves have been imagined by a team of talented architects including Thom Mayne of Morphosis and Paul Lewis of Lewis. Tsurumaki. Lewis. Is this planning approach better able to distill consensus within the complex maze of bureaucracy and competing interests? Does it have, as a result, more power to shape change in the city’s core?

The Forum for Urban Design will convene a panel of individuals directly responsible for animating the Greenwich South vision and civic leaders who have wrestled with the same goals elsewhere. Design and planning concepts derived through the year long study will serve to illustrate principles which may be applied in cities throughout the world. Panel respondents will provide an analysis of the Alliance’s approach in light of the political and economic realities at play in New York and cities that parallel the density, mobility, sustainability, diversity and activity of Lower Manhattan.

The question is: Will the Alliance for Downtown’s strategy to re-shape an entire district of downtown Manhattan, or similar approaches elsewhere, achieve the results hoped for by David Rockefeller almost half a century ago in his plan of 1963?

November 11

200 West Street

6:30 PM    
MODERATED PANEL DISCUSSION

Invitation Only, RSVP Required

Elizabeth H. Berger

President, The Alliance for Downtown New York

Paul Lewis

Partner, Lewis. Tsurumaki. Lewis. Architects

Thom Mayne
Founder and Design Director, Morphosis Architects

Respondent: Bradley Abelow
Former Chief of Staff to Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Treasurer of the State of New Jersey 

Moderated by: Leslie Koch
President, Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation

Stephen Cassell, Principal of Architecture Research Office will initiate an audience question and answer session following the panel

8:00 PM    
DINNER AND DISCUSSION

Forum members only  $150

Dinner and discussion, The Palm, 206 West Street (between Chambers and Warren).
Hosted by: Forum Board Member Timur Galen

Spring/Summer Urban Design Review 2009

Reviewed in this issue:

On 'Learning from Las Vegas' by Aron Vinegar

Portable Architecture for Today by Jennifer Siegal

A History of the Future by Donna Goodman

Resilient Cities by Peter Newman, et al

The City's End by Max Page

and more ...

Forum Member Jonathan Rose in Crain's

Click here to see the entire piece.

New York's Creative Economy Event at the New Museum

The Forum for Urban Design hosted an event at the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery, and invited experts to discuss the importance and future of New York's creative economy. Elizabeth Currid, asst. professor at USC and author of The Warhol Economy, argues that the social life and density of New York City are critical to the vibrancy of New York and its creative economy, but as it gets too expensive to live here, the next generation of artists are struggling more than ever to make New York their home. What affect might this have on the city? As Jane Jacobs once said, when a place gets boring, even the rich people leave. James Surowiecki, Financial Page writer for The New Yorker, favorably reviewed Currid's book but took issue with some of her conclusions. And Paul Owens, co-founder of BOP, a London-based creative economy consulting firm, brought an outsider's perspective. Interviews with the panelists conducted at the New Museum flesh out this debate.