Alexandros E. Washburn is the founding director of the Center for Coastal Resilience and Urban Xcellence (CRUX) at Stevens Institute of Technology. Until 2014, he was the Chief Urban Designer of the New York City at the Department of City Planning. He also published a book “The Nature of Urban Design: A New York Perspective on Resilience” in 2013. At reSITE 2013: Livable and Competitive Cities conference, he gave us a lecture explaining how New York City gets things done in terms of urban planning and city governance, more specifically: how New York city has been growing and becoming “more like itself” throughout the history.
He underlines that urban design works at the intersection of politics, finance and design. And, this is evidently the main ambition behind the plans for the growth of New York City that is expected to reach up around 9.2 million inhabitants, to reduce its carbon footprints by 30% and to become more adaptable as well as resilient to global changes by 2030.
Listen to his lecture that maps the three urban protagonists of New York: Frederick Law Olmsted, Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. Washburn considers them as the three great urban designers who inarguably shaped the urban history of New York City. Furthermore, discover many other recent projects, i.e. the former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s planNYC and the High Line Project, that have incrementally transformed the city.
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reSITE is an international nonprofit platform based in Prague. We work at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, politics, culture, and economics. We act as a catalyst for social action and innovative leadership.
We encourage an exchange of ideas about making cities more livable, competitive and resilient. We protect and promote public space, architecture, and sustainable development in cities.
Why? To stimulate action for sustainable urban design and therefore better cities. We stand for public space.
www.reSITE.org
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