Reimagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil

Posted by on October 6, 2008

Reimagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil
When: November 6-8, 2008
Where: University of Pennsylvania
For more info: http://www.upenn.edu/penniur/afteroil/home.html

This ground-breaking symposium has been organized to address the role of urban design in the face of one of the most profound and important challenges facing global society: the need to re-imagine and rethink how cities are designed and organized in a future without the plentiful and abundant oil upon which prosperous urban economies have been built.

The program speaks to the depth and diversity of the challenge with sessions on innovations in the way cities are conceived, adapted, designed, developed, and managed in a post-carbon world. The conference will conclude with a manifesto on educating the next generation of urban designers and how best to equip them for the road ahead. An accompanying exhibition showcases innovative ideas, projects, initiatives, and policies from around the world that seek to reduce emissions by changing the way we inhabit cities. Documenting the rise in oil dependency, changing development patterns, and demographic trends, the exhibition threads prescient theories and artifacts surrounding the 1958 conference with contemporary challenges of the urban design profession.