 Welcome, welcome everyone. I'm thrilled to be introducing Professor Richard Planks tonight on the occasion of his book, City Rims, Urbanism Ecology Place, which was just published by Lars Müller and Columbia Books on Architecture in the City. While Richard needs no introduction, occasions such as tonight are nevertheless always a chance to trace how and how much scholars and architects such as Richard have contributed and continue to contribute to the thinking about architecture and about cities, and especially with a book such as City Rims, how interesting it is to be able to trace those contributions as an always evolving body of thinking and of work at a time. In my mind, I've come to understand Richard's focus and research as quite often in advance of its time, opening up new lands of inquiry for many of us to engage with and follow. Richard's groundbreaking work on housing, which came together in his seminal, The History of Housing in New York City, first published in 1990, and just republished last year, remains the unconditional reference on this topic to this day, when many of us out in the world but also here at Columbia are trying to reengage with this question. Richard's deep interest in cities and in the urban scale took hold at a time when the focus on the architectural object could not have been more uncompromising. In 1992, he becomes director of TSAP's Urban Design Program, which he leads with great success for over 20 years. In 1993, he publishes Zoning at the New Horizontal City, and in 2005, he publishes the Urban Life World Formation Perception Representation. That same year, Richard founds the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute. The lab is prolific in its research and published work, always engaging very real and complex situations, approaching them as case studies, many of which continue to be a reference until today. Richard's focus on climate change, urbanism, and ecology is first reflected through his publication Urban Climate Change Crossroads of 2010, and then his sustainable food systems for future cities, the potential of urban agriculture of 2014. And so tonight, we're celebrating what, in many ways, constitutes a very rich gathering of this long and complex series of research interests and threads woven together in this new publication, City Rifts, Urbanism, Ecology Place. Moving through City Rifts, we encounter a man who engages with cities as a scholar, as an architect, and as a citizen with great investment in the places he tries to capture and understand. The essays are rich and incredibly diverse in length, tone, subject matter, and even in terms of the care he takes in protecting the different audiences they were written for. Together, these essays coalesce into a coherent depiction of Richard's approach as an architect, but also his attitude to his own work, his eye for detail, and his commitment to field work, making tangible all of the thought and consideration that goes into the development of each project. What is most striking, reading through the volume, is the breadth of interest. The pieces traverse the globe, visit small towns and big cities. In each essay, Richard conveys his curiosity and desire to know, but also share with us just what it is that makes a place unique. Richard closes the book by recounting a visit with a friend he has encountered over the years in Turbidrice, and whose life has been shaped dramatically by the changes in the city over the past decade. The sensitivity to how urban planning and development impacts the lives of people makes this book very special. Resonating with what Leven de Corte once wrote, what Richard discovers in cities is their ethos, not necessarily what is quantifiable, but the dynamic of a place that must be described in words. In our age of smart cities and un-critical faith and data, City Rift stands as an invitation to reconsider once again what constitutes exactly what we call a city. Responding tonight, I'm also delighted to have, joining us, Bernard Chumi, Professor Ed Gissab, and Dean Emeritus, Professor Kenneth Frampton, who is the Chair Professor of Architecture at Columbia Gissab, and Professor Marta Goodman, who teaches in the Art History Department at the City College of New York, and who is an alumnus in the art program. So please join me in welcoming Professor Richard Pellman. Okay, well, thank you very much, that was very generous. I'm actually not used to this kind of attention. So I have to bear with me this exercise. Yes, Amal, of course, very generously supported, putting these essays together. Of course, tonight's discussion, and for me, actually it was a very important opportunity to kind of review what I had written during this period of the urban design program. Various ways over the years. I mean, Ken and I first met in 1968, I think. It was actually October 28th, no, it was 1969. It was in San Francisco, and... What happened? No, I've been putting this stuff in every library. Every library is great, of course. I mean, every library is actually my idea of a university. And, you know, I've been going through all this stuff. I found this thing, we did a joint lecture on housing in 1977. We did? Yes. Tell us about San Francisco. Yeah, San Francisco, no, that was one of those conferences. And he's been a constant colleague here. He shared many interests, and so I really appreciated, you know, his preface to the book, which is, I think, very insightful. And the second year housing studio still exists, you know, which is something for us. Marta, Marta was a GSAP student in the early 80s. I think, weren't you in the second year housing studio? No, you weren't, you didn't teach housing that year. Oh, okay, whatever. I studied the back spawn there, and then we went out to work. Yeah, we taught together housing studio. We did teach together housing today. We did various writing and research projects before, and then she went to Berkeley, of course, to do her Ph.D. and now she's back at the City College and Graduate Center. But I think that article we did on 68 at Columbia, I think we, I never recovered from that, it was a little hard to get an illustration, that was a little problem. And Bernard, Bernard's basically as well. Oh, by the way, it's an average interaction system. Bernard is basically, I think he's responsible for this in a way. I mean, he asked me in 1992 to reconfigure the urban design program and make it kind of a global, you know, global engagement, which I did. And so this bunch of writings really deals from that period. But I have to say also, I followed Bernard's writings on the city from I think the late 70s into the 80s, which are very, very interesting still. It's still very interesting. So, you know, I sensed then and still a kind of candid spirit on things that are urban, you know, in general. I should also think James Graham, James, that's James. Yeah. I think he and Isabelle and Jesse are equal. But, you know, this has been a great exercise for them because I don't know if it's totally true, but they actually seem to like the writings. And they made many, many suggestions. It was a nice exercise. And then Lars Müller, you know, who was unequal at what he does, was also very interesting. He made non-negotiable rules, which I sort of disagreed with, but in the end I think they were right, you know, including the cover, but whatever. So that's how they're scum together, right? And I'm trying to stay out of my script. That's why I said one, which is strange. And then there's Amy. Amy Shallis here? Yeah, she's back there. Stephen is here, Stephen. You know, I mean, Ellen, he's not here. She's back in Greece. Al is Al here. Well, anyway, there were these four, like assistants who really helped put this together because it was really a mess, you know. I mean, there's all this stuff, and this is just a kind of consolidation or whatever. But I couldn't have done it without them. The idea for putting together writings predates this book. This started with Leven Decoder, my friend, a philosopher in Brussels, and you know, we have a long history of back and forth. He's a little bit crazy, which I like, you know. We talk about things. And he tried to get President Bush impeached, you know, his whole story about Leven. But anyway, and he puts this little thing, an excerpt on the cover of the book. But I never assign much value to any of this. You know, you just write because you got to put something down before something. So this result, you know, they're working with James and the various people, you know, it's kind of unanticipated. I didn't know if anything would come of this or not. And I thought, well, if it doesn't, let's just forget about it. So there was a big effort just to call through the studies and try to find a pattern, which we did. You know, so this is probably 10% of what could have been used in the last... I think there's some kind of pattern there. I like Leven's characterization on the back of the book, because it's a kind of urban time travel with words. And I like drawings, but, you know, we use words. And this gets me back to, you know, a lot of the great literature, especially toward the end of the 19th century, that describes literary settings, W. H. Powell's, Dreiser, you know, you have these very, very recent descriptions in fiction that I think are very important and frequently overlooked in terms of urban documentation, understandings. So anyway, after assembling much of this thing, so I decided, yes, what we're actually doing has to do with what I call field urbanism. That is kind of fieldwork. You know, you go somewhere and you court things and you respond to them and you react in one way or another. And I realized that a lot of this had to do with field ecology, which is a very established field in the ecological sciences, although whatever we're doing here is far more primitive. I mean, there are big textbooks on urban ecology than field urbanism, of course. But they're kind of a base, you know. So that's how the introduction of developed field urbanism or whatever that's worth. And I should also mention that it's very important my association with Trish, Patricia Colligan, who's in the back, who we taught together in the urban ecology studio with architecture engineers for 12 years and of course our associate and collaborators in the urban design lab. So that was also an important piece of this and that kind of kicks in halfway through this timeline. So anyway, for my idea of this discussion was we could somehow focus on the notion of writing in the city where that's going to go. But I'm curious what our guests have to say. I did send seven questions. Should I read the questions or should I read them? All right, so that's... I should read them. All right, so you said I'm going to take this. So what is the role of the written word in urban analytics? Already can be like urban analytics so we could kick off with that one. We thought analysis was more honest and whatever. It's very true. Is urban fiction a valuable record of urban supply? You know, the point it just made. To what extent is the city and history still a useful concept? Because that was Mumford, for example, of civil history. What is the changing nature of urban cognition? You know, that has to do with now new social media and this kind of thing that's very, very important. It's like a game changer in many ways. What about changing global ecology? Does that change, in fact, change everything as the only implying, especially for urbanism is certainly the last two weeks raised that question really right in their faces. How do cities really share or not share the same global context? And I've always thought cities have more to say to each other than the nations, but who knows. And finally, and I think this is very important and I see it in the school here, does urbanism really represent a primary or maybe the next primary force in terms of defining architectural design pedagogy and compared to a number of years ago, certainly a few years ago, there's hardly a studio, at least in the advanced studios, that doesn't have a heavily urban component of one way or another. The other thing that's very frustrating to me is that research never gets really distilled as it would, say, in the hard sciences. So we don't have the vehicle for really putting that together, but it's certainly happening. Is that okay? That's fine. So let's see what people are doing. Can we go ahead first? Yes, thank you. Yes? This is chronological. That's cool. Well, I forgot. I was 69. I was too, but you know. You looked up your name. You looked up your reference. And anyway, it was, and it is, an honor and a pleasure to be present at this event and also to participate in the very limited play in writing in this very short preface, to this book which testifies to Richard's long involvement in this field of urban design with a normal stamina, I have to say. And also, you know. Can you turn on the microphone? I'll hear a word. Because it's really a big pill. It's not just... You'll just have to speak louder, I suppose. Yes. Embarrassing to speak louder. Anyway. Mary, of course, has always has thrown me off my scrubs completely. I mean, it's like, you know, sabotage. Anyway. Academic competition. All of us these days are always present. Yes. Fiona Feeberry said once, academic politics are the most vicious because the power is negligible. Negligible. Anyway, it is an honor to be here and also to be asked to write this preface. And rereading my preface and also rereading the book made me realize how inadequate the preface is. And, and also it's sort of making slightly somber, I think. Richard, you said not for a second question, but you questioned this slightly dark tone. And, so that was also um, sufficiently satisfying. He didn't say, I can't believe it, but in any case, he accepted my preface. And, and of course I begin these words with Mies by Gerard and that really explains my dark prejudices in that, you know, Mies says that we can't build cities anymore, that's what he says, in 1955 he said and we can't build all the cities um, it goes, and it goes on words, it goes on like a forest and we have to learn to live in the jungle and lead them to the well by that. I mean, I can't believe he said this in 1955. Um, that's what he said. And uh, he wrote about this in the end. Uh, I don't really think so. I mean, I think that's the kind of this is the world we have created and this is the world which is uh, cities and there are still traditional cities, of course, there are still historic cities, but are we able to create cities? That's a very questionable question. And uh, I could say the London Desire is about creating cities, of course. But London Desire, I think as a, as a field was actually invented by Jose Boisert in GSD in Cambridge you know, after the Second World War and uh, in a way in his sort of limited practice he was able to demonstrate his potential in a very limited way, I think, but nonetheless uh, you know, there are still children but, but um, now I think things have become very, uh, all together incredibly complex and difficult. And uh, I'm reminded of the fact that Jose Zolta once said it wasn't the same place, the person who created the London Desire what would happen to surgery if it's never practiced? Big question, right? And, and uh, it was very aggressive of him, but was he wrong? You know, was he wrong? I don't know. I'm not sure he was wrong at all. And uh, and um, and in a way one of the most interesting things for, you know, I've shared with Richard is this you know, this kind of these kind of landmarks of publications which are about, you know, this difficulty of urban design that proper, uh, across time you know, of course the 64 community and privacy uh, Shalifa, Alexander's uh, great book on low-rise identity housing uh, with the idea that low-rise identity housing would become a pattern of land settlement for the United States for the Easter Seabass family but of course that also fell on deaf ears so to speak, there was never any low-rise identity housing of consequence in the states. And um, 64, of course, we have Donald Dofsky's article, and um, and 67 um, and so the there is this kind of bibliography that we share in the way. Misha has costed economic growth and then of course the 1972 Club of Rome but what is kind of rather astonishing is that since I obviously maybe not so obviously anymore since I went to the A in the 50s in London and uh, and uh, was surrounded by this climate of new towns for example, which finally decisively end in 1972, the last British new town is now in 72 and the last western new town is now in 72 so from the point of view of creating towns you know the Anglo-American world stops to even imagine that it can create towns anymore they're just, it's okay uncanny thing, it's a long time ago I think I mean in a way you know kind of unending sub-abolization is embraced by the Anglo-American world and not only the Anglo-American world so that is some of the problems that come to mind I mean it's difficult to answer these questions one after another because I think in a way I think they're all kind of overwhelmed by the difficulty of creating any kind of urban movement that has a durability and is able to evolve and has a vision where that's probably the difficulty we face and and I think one of the issues that it raises is in what way can we really intervene in the field you know I like the fact that it's called field capitalism it reminds me of course call us field operations I know absolutely nothing about the field of ecology but one of the problems with these scientific fields is that they are in a certain sense objective to the extent that they are I think ultimately apolitical and so much to do with urbanism is fundamentally determined by politics and best is interest and so however scientific certain applied sciences would aspire to be you know they always because of the model of science end up with limited variables and this kind of aid to the physicality but politics are unavoidable this is the sobering reality and you know having read it in the first I started to reread the book all over again you know and it's a very touching book because it also goes back to you know the time of 2010 and it goes back to Rensselaer where Richard studied it goes back to you know the hope of that moment and and you know that's it's a pleasure to try to retrace that moment but it's also painful because all I have to say I mean yeah the parts that I like most are the early references I have to say you know because there was a moment of optimism or maybe it has to do with being a student they're almost a student you know well you had to believe you know you believe in something you know world even now but at that moment it was a notion that one could actually adjust things in the world and I don't think the issues were so different actually I mean certainly I don't put everything on the table and keep them out of that and then there were the practices of you know that we understood it was being very important but that passes but the interesting thing that I found is kind of going through this stuff which looking at it really you know I wrote it now I'm like an outsider to it there is a kind of consistency and Ali Karkas yes that almost closes the circle I mean that is somebody that we met this was a very early Columbia global studio it was 1974 summer and we met this family and we worked with them and we went back five or six times David Smiley was one of the one it was made when it was 1990 and that evolved into a real indictment and I guess it's not such a you know I debated well should I even put it in there or should I put it in another book but okay that's it it's a commentary that I thought was kind of useful but we're in between and then we're not as responsible so I I have to I apologize I'm suffering from a very bad cold so if I break it to proxms and coffee it's biology anyway it's a pleasure to be here I haven't been back to be here to be part of a conversation with the architecture school it's been a while and and it is a privilege to be sitting here with two people who shaped my formation as an architecture student and I'm speaking here for a certain time there are others in the audience who did the same as well Mary Cloud I was a student here at an extraordinary moment in New York at an extraordinary moment in the school's history you know the I think that some of that may have slipped from view but it's for me the sadness the interest that comes from reading the book is to read a story about a set of investigations that happened at Columbia long after I had gone and I decided on another professional course for myself I have to speak on a story and so to for me this is as much of a reportage of a history of the school as it is of a reflection on and school practice as it is about about Richard's work in itself and Richard's work across the world when I taught at school at Columbia and taught here the world we didn't see the world in the way that we treat the world in the way that it's discussed in this book you were among one of the first people to do so to start to think about our role, our place in a global society or even on the table and the Turkish project was one of them, I remember hearing about that in your office and I was very happy and very pleased to sad to read the outcome of the story of your engagement with this family who I knew and so much to you I never worked on the Turkish project and yet I also and looking at the book it also astonished me that so much of what grabbed our attention at Columbia at that point in the architecture school which was the city of New York isn't present in the book in the way that it was when I was a student and worked here and taught here and that offered a moment of reflection for me about the ways in which the local and the global are connected and the ways in which trajectories and questions changed schools over the course of the years it was, I would say deeply reassuring to learn about a new point of connection and that point of connection being the work of the sociologist and political boss who is a thinker who I came into contact with my work at Berkeley in particular of a studies I did with a geographer Alan Pred and also with a historian and a doctor who was my advisor at Berkeley and for me LeFab was a person reading LeFab and thinking of LeFab and thinking of LeFab's insights about architecture and the production of space the role of cities exploded my way of thinking it transformed me and went on to change the knowledge I approached the study my work as a historian and my work as a teacher and I now bring LeFab into all of the teaching I do in the city and it's a very productive way of engaging architecture students with questions of the social, the physical and the discursiveness we like to meditate on in both history and discussion sections and seminars so the thread of LeFab in this text LeFab hadn't been translated into English when I studied at the time I think I'm the only person on this panel in red LeFab was Bernard because Bernard was born in French of course and yet we find that his translation which happened in 1991 which really changed American thought and I think did so in Columbia as well as in Berkeley and that becomes a theme, a moment of a theme we can invoke as a kind of shared practice intellectually and I think perhaps a way of thinking about a moment of hope in counter camps I think is more removed one that I share rather directly with Bernard's political situation but I think with LeFab what we find is we find a way of thinking about cities that lets us imagine or lets us understand the vitality of everyday life the aspirations for change the ways in which we as designers and thinkers and writers might imagine rooted in American places my students at City College and my students at the Graduate Center LeFab is the right LeFab offers them a way to imagine a space for interpretation there is something about a nice tonight that we discover in this place a library and talk about the city I did decide to be an architect right away I was born in a charming city filled with trees and nature and went everywhere with a bicycle and frankly I hated it tried to escape and at age 17 found myself in Chicago for a week and was absolutely fascinated the density of the place it was not the Chicago of today it was the Chicago of the early 60s when the looms still existed there were those buildings that actually that mass of building was the center of the city with all the building the same height 12 stories now the streets were no larger than 25 feet the power of it was 10 times greater than the power of New York City and there that fascination was for me was really what made me want to be an architect it was a city and a city of a certain type of density and a very hard harsh powerful mass of buildings which didn't let much daylight come in which has zero trees and zero bicycle except then a noisy overhead sort of trend so the reason why I start with this is that we are today in a world where pedestrianization bicyclatization bicyclatization that's a french word has replaced and they wish to make everything green as replaced in what I would describe as a major city culture in other words rather than looking at the world that has made us right and here because we are a library I can't resist to quote by the way I like your word Rachel when you talked about urban fiction urban fiction is also it's not only about stories but it has about something about race about African American writers and it has to do with profanity and sex with violence things which ultimately were not that different from what Charles Dickens would write or Victor Hugo or James Joyce in other words it is about the city as a form of intelligence and some other words that I just wrote here George Orwell it's afternoon asking my students have you read Invisible Cities what I should not have no idea never about that Raymond Chandler William Gibson Sadie Smith Mac Davis but also in other words something which seems today to be disappeared for me arriving in New York well the second or third time around after she power came to New York and was quite hesitant too but there was something else but later arriving here for good in the mid sixties 42nd Street I've filled with profanity, sex and violence was a particular type of urban city and this one seems to be under threat I see it in Paris I see it in New York I see it today if you see what is happening you know the case so in other words there is something which is happening that is one at a time and whatever this the percentages are given at 75% of the world will be urbanized in 2050 wait a city is something very specific it's not a place which tries to emulate the countryside it's something which is loaded with take I could go a minute for my love for the cinema Metropolis M Shunga Public Enemy Sculpture City's NK Naked City Montice Falcon That's the point that it's a certain way to live and to develop our country and so the reason why I bring this little bit as a manifesto is that when I took Richard's book and I started to flick through it I was enormously happy to see a form of representation that has been now banned or forgotten called the how do you call that the figure ground right in other words a way to deal with city as the congestion of a number of minds that simply develop scenarios together to live in a way which would not be possible otherwise and I wish that this I was happy to hear you Marta bringing Lefebvre I invited Lefebvre in 1972 to speak at the ICA in London and I was foolish enough to think that I could translate him in English but but when you mentioned that it reminded me that Thames and Hudson then asked me to write a review of the production of space so that they would know whether they would publish it and translate it and publish it in English or not and I must have made a very bad job if they indeed waited till 91 thank you those were snippets of Lefebvre and the early books from the 60s and we all read as Faust's associate it was no Marta before 90 it might have been I think it was forgotten I think but anyway I mean this is very interesting because actually you can't so has the city just moved beyond our comprehension I mean has the city and history you know as Mumford defined it basically I mean the definitive book of course when we were students certainly is that have we simply moved beyond that or are we in some kind of pathology of course you get arguments but I think it's actually a crucial question and I think it does engage ecology at this point I mean can construct like Houston or Miami exist and to what degree is I mean now even the you know the kind of global constraints that we face or is it simply a misconception constructed somehow history so far from like conceptual city as a human concept a human construct that is beyond repair somehow my bias is of course we're over the edge but then you hear the counter argument well you don't know what we're talking about you know dispersals of where it's going to go you know this and that this and that but I think the if there was a pattern in the book so local patterns with various people involved I mean probably that's the biggest question I mean it raises the issue what is the city and how far are we now what is actually a viable concept for the city or we simply beyond history doesn't count and the history that sort of thing you know the thing about literature was also very interesting to me because putting this together forced me to think more about literary descriptions and you know I wasn't born in New York City but you know we had a long long history here more I was involved in upstate cities which were still cities I mean now they're really wastelands you know places like Troy and very interesting to me are actually the literary descriptions of those W. D. Howells wrote a little thing called the Albany depot Albany had two very large train stations now one is a shopping mall and I want the other one but it is still there Schenectady has a very urban station New York Central Railroad with a commercial kind of arcade and you know immigrated in the city and then you go to also like you know I was talking about the supervisor for example in American tragedy he describes that city the main street state street and how the major protagonists was looking for a drug store where you can find a way to have an abortion for his girlfriend you know the story probably but anyway you know he's wandering around these streets and the discussion of the city as structure spatial structure is so powerful or the Albany depot or you know the train station where Albany get went through all the time and you know he got all this crazy ideas from you know this kind of environment so it's also not just large cities so I thought a lot about what Bernard is saying about you know these were hard places and very different than now now they're basically destroyed or dispersed beyond recognition one other little thing because we're all friends or whatever you know but when I was 10 years old I didn't have a bicycle but my mother who could go from her town to Grand Central Station in three hours which was just north of Troy which you can't even do anymore if you try to go from Albany to help us you know you don't know where you're going to end up for how long it's going to take on Amtrak so she said she put us together and said now we're going to take the train because these things aren't going to exist anymore so we went from Schenectady to Albany to Troy I saw all that infrastructure all those stations and she was right and now you wonder will this be reinvented or are we beyond reinventing somehow so we all have these stories right because we span generations of urban there are generations of course so that was gratuitous but I also thought about my mother that was an important lesson I didn't know it at the time so why should we do this Mary what are you saying I was actually thinking almost to the opposite I grew up in a suburb without her man being of course I was dying to leave it but my father's dream was when the subway in Washington DC would finally get to the Maryland suburbs and of course it happened after I left the Maryland suburbs but there is this strange way where the suburbs have often become more urban than they were it's a complete ethnic mixture where I grew up and it was literally white when I was young there's a huge Korean market up the hill from which was just suburb and nothing and so there are these strange inversions some of which we can be negative about but are also more positive the suburb is certainly not as provincial as constricted as it was when I was growing up I missed that toughness I mean I think anyone who lived in New York in the 70s it was both horrific but exciting and you could afford you could also have space and so what's gained once lost I think is a constant question strangely I feel like I never knew enough about the urban design program and that's one of the things I always wondered about Columbia that as much as I knew Richard and we talked together in the housing studio I never knew there were ways in which there were silos within the school despite shared interest I wonder to what extent that continues to what extent it might be challenged some random thoughts I have to some things to add to it one is that I think both for architecture and for urban design and for related fields the question is strategies of intervention I think you should and Richard knows I do this late councilor and urbanist who came up with the idea as a way of characterizing a strategy of intervention and this large block which is built in in the Abadija Diagonal in Barcelona is a kind of exemplar as an architect the solo moralist as an urbanist so I think this question I think it also applies to architecture when you think well in what ways can architecture still intervene significantly in a society like this it's not so easy to answer this question and by a society like this I mean of course capitalism and consumerism that is just running away with itself and the way in which provincial cities for example, and that's true in England completely blown apart by suburban supermarkets the shopping streets have just been destroyed by the same principles happening in the United States that's just a fact of late 20th and early 21st century urban economy and consumer economy and it's not so easy but I think it's somehow necessary to find strategies of intervening because that's the most probably these kinds of professions can really do in terms of any kind of active creation so it makes me think about because the the provincial city which I was talking about has been and I think that provincial city has a kind of city-state idea particularly in Europe elsewhere both politically and culturally it's particularly true in Spain has been a really important client and without that decentralized client it's hard to know where is the ground on which one can develop a discourse about it but one last I think that what is happening to Manhattan and also Chicago this never-ending unstoppable obsession with one high-rise building is in fact destroying the fabric like before I realized it destroying it socially and economically and driving people out of the city in fact students you know middle class to hold up are being driven out by the enormous explosion of economic wealth in the sense of the city so it's obviously happening yeah I think I have a question I'd like to pose in relation to the writing question of support I do that I wanted to I wanted to say just to say that sort of the themes of doom and of over the historian he said this is not the first time we've raised these questions right and so we can imagine New York in the beginning of the 20th century in the ways in which we hear stories of overbuilding and congestion and unwanted people and a city that can't be grasped or understood because it's so new and so different and how this feeds a kind of sense of despondence about the future and you know what happened which is that certainly in the case of this city people figured out how to get together and imagine a role for government as a productive and so I do think we need to we need to meditate we need to think a bit about I mean listen I hate scrolls I like giving but there are people who do and somehow those different perspectives I think need to be taken into account into figuring out figuring out how we go forward and I think one thing that will happen is at some point the cost of all of this stuff is going to go through so that is that the expansion of the Argentine city the development of these high rises and whatever are all based on energy regimes that don't work I mean nobody no one really pays for what the public pays for the cost of running buildings the building buildings of the scale of replacing transportation systems that work at one point and are wantonly destroyed and for a consumer society that doesn't in any way in its pricing account for the ways in which the true costs that are involved in the making of the stuff we make and I include buildings in that I don't I don't see how we can sustain this kind of harmony in relationship to the environmental devastation that it causes and the storms of the last three months last three weeks being short indicators of what we can so that would be one set of criteria for me that there is a political and an economical a political economy that we must address them in both funniness right? we do the same yeah you did that we can in architecture can't do everything that we have to engage politics we have to think economically as well as as well as as well as in other ways those are tall orders but I think again looking for a moment of hope right in a season in which there is every reason to find despair or certainly some of the moods we can find moments of previous moments of despair and despair about the future and look at the ways in which Americans and others organize to create different futures and I do think that's incumbent upon us as teachers and as practitioners for those of you who are and also as writers I would also say that just thinking broadly about the economy is that the continued crises of capitalism are ones that in which the economy denowers the people who need to have products in a certain moment that crisis will also have to be addressed certainly in a recent election in this country but for a moment I wanted to talk about something to raise another question which is to come back or to your question about writing the city and we've heard writing the city filling the city and I also wanted to say and yes I do this is what I chose to do and what I I need to think broadly and I would argue that there's an enormous power in imagining urban futures through writing through creating manifestos through raising questions through the kinds of discussions we have right here for sure but what I also wonder and it's really prompted by the stories and the drawings in this book the settings that you encountered in all of these different places all over the world I was jealous of all these trips oh jeez you have to go see all these places to meet all these people but still it's pretty impressive and to think about Columbia investing in that kind of in that kind of quest it's really it's really astonishing but I wonder how do we draw the social I know I can write the social I do it all the time but how do we draw it how do we make the social come alive through our drawings which for me is a central central question let me try and you mentioned the climate you mentioned the economy you mentioned the class of gasoline and of course the social all that is really all fundamental it's part of our life it's a season we have to understand it and as architects called planners physical planners urban designers we have to take it into consideration it's part of the job if you don't do that but the point that I want to make and I get back to the issue of urban culture the city culture you also have to know your basics there is a whole history of cities as the book called from Babylon to Brasilia and since then there have been a few other things in other words there are ways to understand all the different mechanisms that make the city today when a state a city or a large corporation decides to build for 2600 people I'm just waiting on the project or for 30,000 people or 300,000 people they don't ask architects they don't ask urban designers they do it for themselves with few transports so it means that some way we have disappeared from the map of something which is absolutely fundamental where there is a specific knowledge which we are the only one who has it and so I'm just a little I'm all in favor of architects but I get irritated by the campuses not to Colombia but in the country want to ask landscape architects rather than architects to expand, redevelop improve, adjust their campus so there is something which is going away and when it goes away it may not come back and so you don't be surprised when I say what I said the other day you have to educate the client because at the moment I think that ignorance is something that you know one used to make the difference between the American city and the European city today there is such a homogenization and it's not because of Prada, Lucci Starbucks that they all shared it's simply that the city is considered as a place of tourism a place of a show and not anymore than I get to be a product of the social but again the social is only a manifestation it has to also take into consideration the the craft and that's why Richard you were doing the job in trying to discuss a little bit what those causes that don't exist anymore you know the history of the reason nobody has and the issue is very real because if nobody does it like us then you're not going to get to anything else but a standard reason why cities in South Korea do the same as the one in Dubai or in Yemen and this effect of conflict ignorance is really something that we, the epidemic world stop to worry about I absolutely agree I think there's a danger of suffering in our field you know I've worked with I don't know if she's still here but you know it's a very interesting experience to work with the engineers and some of the science folks in the earth institute and you know they're kind of a pain to do all these peer reviewed articles and stuff and all that stuff that goes on and there is a a culture and a mechanism for evolution right and I do have a feeling that we have some kind of break now that we have to be quite careful about and you know maybe by temporary or not there's so many external factors involved in how we build, how we make cities I think we're at the end of the moment we're not going to have the optimism about the form of the city and dispersal that existed in the 50s and that's so far but on the writing issue I think I think Bernard did combine spatial and social and verbal you know in that work that we were so interested in you know while back the question is who's doing now and what form is taking and it's happening but I don't think it's coming so much from architecture I'll sort of begin as an article not as an application I'm often asked to compete to propose or to design buildings within a master plan and they are all the same they are sort of watered down beyond Korea as if this way was the way you did the master plan there are 10 ways 20 different ways master plan everybody's forgotten that it's possible right determined by the width of the fire trucks and whatever and that's my my issue about saying that there is a culture which then is not transmitting or which has been acknowledged or which has been censored but I think there is a serious issue there due to this homogeneity and again when I say to die we used to say to die you know I mean if it talks about patterns of nesting in fact of different kinds of settlement but I was thinking during the cost of this that there are despite architecture there are some alternatives and in a way I think we don't really completely understand what alternatives exist I was thinking during this conversation of the city of New York which I recently visited which I was astonished by where it has been developed in the last 10 to 15 years where clearly the local administration has decided to develop a system which is all around life as far as I can see and it is all blocks it's an old kind of the predominantly gridded city that this is the not only used and I think it's being extremely successful but it's another one of those things that I've never seen a book on it and it wasn't about it I mean we never just know but I think there are models like that that we know of but we don't know for example I think the other one that comes to mind is Curitiba which everyone knows about but there's no decent book on Curitiba it's like something out there that existed and still exists and still developing presumably using a very intelligent way but it's like we don't have at least parents who think that the universe is a place of research but in some kind of way particularly in this field I think there are different types of pieces here and there which somehow remain almost nothing in terms of what we know about this we don't have to discipline of the hard sciences for good reason but yes I have the same frustration we can't do it the way we do it but we don't have the mechanism of learning are we supposed to have some questions what do we do then what is getting really when I taught in Lebanon in Belgium I think were you in the class I was running around were you and that reminds me how important exposure is you really have to understand urbanism you have to understand places and conditions and actually Belgium was very interesting for me and of course it's changed a lot I feel like the court is the head of human habitat in New York doing interesting work on immigration but anyway that was a big introduction to the Flemish town for me right I mean that was different than our densities but a place that felt very comfortable but it was totally changed there were still of course more still plenty of beer and that sort of thing but but you know I mean are we just talking about the frustrations of western urbanization because you're very involved you know you have a perspective I mean you're sitting in the front so no but I I think it's extremely fascinating because we're in the UN just small corner of New York in the last couple of years I think largely also to work exactly directly with the ex mayor of Barcelona he made a big push for cities suddenly to be considered by nations, by national governments within the UN discussions and have a sustainable development goal with some very lofty but there's this very specific target on public space which we never imagined would appear in a multilateral commitment of national governments and I think we underestimate the potential of that being there and from there we kind of turn around rethinking cities and for me I mean I'm probably kind of sitting behind me like how do we bring the work you have been doing and now use that window of opportunity to bring it back because I think people understand and the US is a very big example but so is the other place in Nairobi and the world and it's universal the issue of inequity and exclusion and segregation it's hitting governments big time and they start to look around what do we do and so for me going back to all the work has been all the thinking there is an opportunity but it does mean connecting back now this global discussion to work of cities that's what I did and I don't know how to do it but for me it's it's the thing to do so Michael what about Michael you're doing even your studio in California in large how are you doing this thank you for asking sorry I have a response to I know the work too well so in some sense I'm hearing your own reaction to the work and the question about the social for example I used to be called Manhattan transcripts and that kind of work as well and so now I was like I have a slightly different reaction maybe I missed the first 10 minutes I had a leave I was at Stanford for large part of the year not teaching but I was a visiting professor they ran a survey in the engineering school through five years led by the dean who began to provost what are the big questions for engineering and they don't have urban design in Stanford nor do they really have architecture at the little minor the question that rose to the top of the list with a huge faculty was how do they know if the future city is you lead and they felt kind of at a loss to mobilize all of this talent because they don't perceive that they have the synthetic ability that you would get in something like urban design as opposed to urban planning or architecture but it's not forget about Stanford for a moment I think a huge issue underneath that is the engines of urbanization, the automobile the battery, the car, the solar panel everything that sort of drove the last version of post-war sprawl so much of that is being monetized and some of it is being reinvented so I would argue I think a lot of people have sense of kind of anxiety I think I'm all sense of this there's what was lost but what is coming and how do we even understand the shape of that I get in the lottery I was talking about economics but I was pointing at things like American residential real estate is worth about $27 trillion right now you can find that in the Federal Reserve very easily it went down by something like $8 trillion in the crash it went from $25 to $18 now it's back up to $29 it's like wild fluctuations based on precarious financial situations or just the amount of debt and leverage that is underneath government right now that's underneath private households right now and that has accelerated wildly over 70 years so questions about the future and the leverage as the device that enabled the single family house that enabled the $40,000 car in a $60,000 house and I would just argue that Uber and all of that is just the tip of the iceberg of playing around with old assets that are about to really be reinvented so I think urban design is so utterly interesting that way because it's caught between being urban planning and being architecture where you see it so I'm not so worried about losing Albany or losing connectivity or Troy even though I absolutely get that concern so much just kind of thinking about how do you mobilize the school to really be ready for that and it does require amateur economics on our part and not the kind of ethical side of economics of inequity which is real of course it's not really pivotal but it's even just getting a grasp on how we play. The number that I was talking about in the lottery was we built a million units of housing a year in this country generally we built 25% of this country's housing in the last 30 years so what do we build in the next 30 in other words the change despite it seeming like it's all homogenous in fact there's a huge amount new but we're not on the scene for that so I don't mean to be positive or negative so much just to say that but not to the sense of the production it's like eight dollars a house for architectural fees in this country literally 0.0028% but the question that's there is it's like shocking to think that we built 25% of this country's housing in 30 years so if we think what we want to be part of going forward how on earth do we and then we think that we're really changing so much of the tools that built it the banks are all pulling out of private market because they don't want to be part of it anymore so hopefully the mortgage industry will move to be more of a utility in other words you don't go have a little personal conversation to get a mortgage it'll increasingly be something that's born by a central government as a form of utility but in other words like new economics causes new design so but I think urban design and the work that you've done every time I've been around it obviously Richard you ran the housing studio before you did urban design right so you're doing him yeah we you guys have moved the housing on a couple of walks which you know it is I mean there's a source of continuity in education you know it's changed in the consequence but I think it's very important but actually I'm very optimistic for Troy all these things I don't mean to be too critical but I think there's social and infrastructural investment there that can be reinvented or land or housing but yeah I think there was a logic to those settlement patterns which one can probably still resurrect and manage I mean all of New York State was really a mega poverty corridor in New York to Buffalo which was really an urban construct I mean in my mind it's waiting to be reinvented but there's a whole rest of the world and you know I really wonder about China which I know something about not so much about and the commodification of housing related to industrial markets like cars and you know you wonder in the big picture where all of this is going but you know we were talking about it before with the person yeah here in Hong Kong so but I I'm very optimistic for New York we're in a very good spot but there's the discrepancies between social class and income of course and we're more and more extreme here but New York will survive as an entity and it has to be protected I had a lot of over the years interesting discussions with Lee and Dakota it's very interesting the Brussels philosophy what teaches architects and all the other stuff maybe there's a little discussion the book was in but I argued that listen I am willing to pay more to go and buy quarter milk in Manhattan than to go to Costco somewhere in the suburbs because I value what that means right and the extent to which that kind of market will evolve and grow I think is very important for a reason we're all in the same boat and there's a cost but does he benefit socially in the mid 90's when the suburban majority took in the census took it became a majority and then we had George Bush and all those kinds of things but you know that's probably also shifting these things are so political I'm not so sure that what that majority represented back 20 years ago is going to be the same 10 years from now I think it's changing what can we stop is there still wine or anything so why don't we just you know I promised Richard that the book wasn't a closure but it was a beginning I think this kind of conversation is really inviting us to build on the many examples that we gave so please continue to join us for drinks and cheese and wine discussion thank you Richard