Date:
Location:
Vishaan Chakrabarti - A Country of Cities
April 18 @ 7:00 PM (Reception starts @ 5:30)
G-100 Genomic Sciences Building (campus
location - free parking next door)
One
of America's foremost urbanists, Vishaan Chakrabarti is a planner,
architect, real estate developer and educator who-though still in his
40s-has already left
an indelible mark on New York City's built environment. Currently
Holliday Professor and Director of the Center for Urban Real Estate
(CURE) at Columbia University, Chakrabarti is also a principal of SHoP
Architects, whose project portfolio includes the Barclay's
Center in Brooklyn, The Seaport at Pier 17, and master plans for
Governor's Island and the Domino Sugar redevelopment in Williamsburg. He
also advises The Related Companies on design and planning operations
for the vast Moynihan Station and Hudson Rail Yards
projects.
Chakrabarti
was previously Director of the Manhattan Office of the New York City
Department of City Planning, where he played a key role in the
reconstruction of
Lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11, the expansion of Columbia
University, the makeover of Lincoln Center, the extension of the #7
subway line to Manhattan's far West Side, and the transformation of the
High Line into the city's most innovative new park. Earlier
in his career he was director of urban design for the New York office of
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and a transportation planner with the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
A
licensed architect, Chakrabarti studied engineering and art history at
Cornell University, and holds an MCP from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and
an M.Arch. from the University of California at Berkeley. He serves on
the Board of Directors of the Architectural League of New York, and is a
trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission and emeritus board member of
Friends of the High Line. He is also a member
of the Young Leaders Forum of the National Council on US-China
Relations. Metropolis magazine named Chakrabarti one of the top 12 Game
Changers for 2012. He is a David Rockefeller Fellow and was a Crain's
"40 under 40" in 2000.
In
this year's Robert and Helen Siler Lecture, Chakrabarti will speak on
the subject of his forthcoming book, A Country of Cities (Metropolis
Books, May 2013),
in which he argues that dense, well-designed cities are the key to
solving America's great national challenges: environmental degradation,
unsustainable consumption, economic stagnation, rising public health
costs and decreasing social mobility. A County of
Cities presents a wealth of compelling information about cities, suburbs
and exurbs, looking at how they developed across the 50 states and
their roles in enabling prosperity and globalization, sustainability and
resilience, and heath and joy. In the book Chakrabarti
shows how American cities today are growing faster than their suburban
counterparts for the first time since the 1920s, and that strategically
increasing the density of our cities-and building the transit systems,
schools, parks and other infrastructure to
support them-will both improve job opportunities and put environmental
sustainability within reach. The book closes with a manifesto rallying
us to imagine a new urban America-to build "a country of cities" and
turn a nation of highways, houses and hedges one
of towers, trains and trees.
A selection of Chakrabarti's writings for Urban Omnibus are available here:
http://urbanomnibus.net/author/vishaan/
