Urban planning and design experts from across the globe will converge on the University of Pennsylvania this weekend for a symposium aimed at making urban areas sustainable in a future without abundant supplies of oil.
UPenn’s School of Design and the Rockefeller Foundation are co-hosting Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil, which will engage more than 300 international leaders, academics and urban experts in the task of articulating sustainable design principals for the 21st century.
Eugenie L. Birch, co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research, said there are two overarching goals for the symposium. The first is to establish a set of design principals in the face of realities such as climate change, rising fuel costs and dependence on foreign oil.
“These realities require us to think about how we’re going to live,” says Birch.
The second goal is that the many designers, educators and journalists attending the conference will translate and incorporate those ideas and principals into their daily work.
By the close of the conference, participants will have drafted a manifesto for urban design education they hope will serve as a guide for future planners and designers.
“We want to have something tangible to bring people together, and it’s important to come to a consensus about how we think about our cities and have a statement of belief, of principal, about how we’re going to go about doing this,” says Birch. “The principals can be general but they certainly should point the way.”
Source: UPenn, Eugenie L. Birch, co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research
Writer: John Davidson
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