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