Global Cities: Sustainability, Penn, and Philadelphia

Posted by on April 11, 2011

GLOBAL CITIES:
FRI, APR 15, 2011, 11a & 5p

Session I: Sustainability of Cities
3417 Walnut Street, Houston Hall, Benjamin Franklin Room, University of Pennsylvania, 11 am – 1 pm
Keynote: “Sustainability for Cities: New Name, Old Topic”
Laurie Olin Practice Professor, Department Landscape Architecture, School of Design, University of
Pennsylvania

Cities, their nature and health, are topics that Laurie Olin has been thinking about over the course of
his career as a landscape architect. Olin says, “Cities embody and engender civilization. Cities sustain
us and we sustain them to the degree that we understand them. Cities, like ourselves, are part of
Nature, not somehow separate, and they ultimately behave according to ecological principles. Hence
they have no stable state and compel us to sustain them in multitudinous ways. The question of
building just and healthy cities when nearly every project threatens to remove or overwhelm aspects
of the existing environment is universal while the answers are often individual and local.”

Responding panel discussion:
Mohammad al -Asad Founding Director of Center for the Study of the Built Environment, Amman,
Jordan; Steering Committee Member, Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Lothar Haselberger Morris Russell Williams and Josephine Chidsey Williams Professor in Roman
Architecture, School of Art s and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
Witold Rybczynski Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism, School of Design; Professor of
Real Estate, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Session II: If All the World Were Philadelphia…Revisited
3417 Walnut Street, Houston Hall, Benjamin Franklin Room, 5 – 6:30 pm

Please join the University of Pennsylvania’s Office of the Provost, School of Design, and Institute for
Urban Research, for a discussion of Philadelphia’s changing urban landscape and the resulting
challenges and opportunities for urban planning and development. As all cities experience from time
to time, changes in economics and demographics open the door to re-imagine and re-build. Panelists
will discuss how such trends have catalyzed plans and initiatives such as the Central Delaware
waterfront revitalization, vacant land management reforms, long range and comprehensive citywide
plans, and innovative anchor institution lead development.

– Gary Hack Professor of City & Regional Planning, Dean Emeritus, PennDesign, University of
Pennsylvania
– Anthony Sorrentino Executive Director of Public Affairs, Office of the Executive Vice President,
University of Pennsylvania
– Thomas J. Sugrue David Boise Professor of History and Sociology, School of Arts and Sciences,
University of Pennsylvania

Supported by the University of Pennsylvania’s Provosts’s Fund for International Projects, School of
Arts and Sciences, School of Design, Institute for Urban Research, Center for Ancient Studies, Middle
East Center, Center for East Asian Research, South Asia Center, African Studies Center, History of Art
Department, History Department, the PENN Museum; and by Bryn Mawr College.
Sustainability, Penn, and Philadelphia