This is a conversation among urban planners about how the practice of planning and the educations of planners ought to evolve to respond quickly and at scale to the challenge of climate change. It began with a talk given for planning students at Rutgers University, which was itself inspired by UPenn’s Urban Design After the Age of Oil Conference.
Adam Szlachetka worked for the New York State Assembly in Manhattan for a number of years before returning to school to focus on urban planning at Rutgers. That experience in government led to a recognition of the built environment’s impact on peoples’ livelihoods and resource usage. His current research focuses on standard land use practice principles, valuation of green buildings, and the development of green standards for local and state governments.
Al Wei is an urban designer and planner of sustainable places. He now works at Arup, the global engineering, planning, and sustainability consultancy, after previously holding varied positions in land and infrastructure development, finance and planning in Singapore, London and other cities. At present, Al is project designer/manager for a 14,000 ha site, billed as America’s first sustainable city. He holds degrees in planning, architecture and assorted other things from schools like MIT and Columbia, and his research interests include the future of American suburbia in a time of disruptive change, environmental infrastructure, and design responses to climate change. Al blogs under the name Cismontane, literally “This Side of the Mountains” - a geographic term for his native habitat along the coastal plain of the California Peninsular Ranges.
Alison Novak is a tree hugging real estate developer who appreciates the intersection of sustainability, social justice, urban form, and bricks-and-mortar that can be found in sustainable real estate development. She came to real estate by way of the public sector, where she worked on the revitalization of commercial districts. Alison took her Master in City Planning and Master of Science in Real Estate Development from MIT where she found even more sustainably-minded folks than in Northern California. Now she endeavors to bring sustainability to The Hudson Companies’ projects, by way of its first green building project, as well as to other New Yorkers via GreenHomeNYC.
Bomee Jung is a green geek. In her day job as Green Communities Program Director at Enterprise New York, she manages the design, delivery, and assessment of Enterprise’s initiatives to improve the energy and environmental performance of affordable housing in New York. Before joining Enterprise, she founded GreenHomeNYC, a nonprofit environmental education organization that promotes green building through volunteerism. Because she spent her first career developing Internet-based applications, she believes that data should roam free. Bomee received a Master in City Planning from MIT.
Timothy Terway is an environmental planner and urban designer (and internet addict) at EDAW in New York, where he is constantly pushing for a better understanding of the differences between reducing unsustainability and sustainability. Prior to joining EDAW, he had worked on large scale urban design plans and sustainability reports in China, Brazil, Italy, the Bahamas, and various cities in the U.S. He is interested in urban information systems that facilitate the collection of citizen-generated urban environmental data to better inform decision-making and ultimately inspire behavioral change. Tim received a Master in City Planning from MIT.
Frank Hebbert is a data enthusiast and recent graduate in planning from DUSP at MIT. He works on maps and GIS analysis for Regional Plan Association. @fkh. (And he believes in very very short bios. -Bomee)
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