So, we're very excited to introduce today's lecture, which is this part of this urban design in practice lecture series that's really highlighting, frankly, the diversity of forms of practice of urban design that we see globally. We've heard from practitioners in Holland, India, we will have here from practitioners in Chile and Spain, so we're really getting a global view on conditions on the ground and frankly new forms of practice, ways that people are beginning to pull from just different disciplines to create this kind of transformative urban impact. Today, we have a focus on the American context and I couldn't think of a firm that could, describe some of the challenges and opportunities in the American context than SOM. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, that was a firm that was founded in 1936 in Chicago. And we have two key partners from SOM with us today, Adam Semmel and Douglas Voight. Adam is a managing partner and Doug is a partner in urban design and planning. And having a full disclosure, having worked with them in private practice, I can just say that they're just incredible professionals, that they have a deep knowledge of cities and what makes cities and public spaces work and they have a very rounded approach to bringing different forces together, all the forces that we see in play in the American context from the private sector to the public sector to the table to try to advance better cities. And so they've titled their talk, City Building as a Collective Act and I'm very excited to hear their presentation today. So just as a note in terms of just housekeeping, this lecture is going to be recorded and will only be used for academic purposes. And all students are welcome to put your questions in the chat. Professor David Smiley will be moderating a Q&A session after Adam and Doug complete their lecture today. So I would like to suggest that everybody except Adam and Doug go off camera for now and we can rejoin and share our cameras during the Q&A session. So Adam and Doug, thank you again so much for joining and for speaking to this diverse group of urban design and architecture students. Welcome. Thank you, Kate. It's so great to be here with you all. It's great to be back at Columbia. An alma mater I was there in the mid to late 90s in the New York Paris program and I love coming back and engaging with students but the beauty of the format we have today, the virtual, allows us to have a truly global event and it's a wonderful privilege to be here speaking with you guys today. Yeah, it's kind of amazing we can connect with 200 individuals all interested in different aspects of cities and really that's I think our hope today is to share how, as a practice, Kate mentioned, since its founding has always been focused on cities but also in tackling the larger challenges facing society and doing so through the power of design but also interdisciplinary practice. So we'll see where this goes. We're actually sitting in a lecture hall ourselves. It's empty but we're glad to know there's 200 of you out there in the virtual audience. Today's talk we titled City Building as a Collective Act and we're going to, I think what will come through our discussion today is the different disciplines, political forces, economic forces, and expertise that are required and increasingly so as we look to the future to make our cities great and a quick introduction about SOM and where we're coming from this idea of the collective and a multidisciplinary approach is inherent to what we do as a practice. We were founded in 1936 by two architects and an engineer and quickly grew to include other disciplines like urban design, sustainability and conservation, interior design, MEP engineering, and more. And today our mission is has stayed true to that 1936 vision of an interdisciplinary firm and we reaffirmed it three years ago with the mission statement you see here. A collective of architects, engineers, designers, and urbanists committed to shaping a better future and so the DNA of this collective approach is one that we both grew up with and I think you'll see comes through in the way we work and the way we practice. The firm has always been interested in not only leveraging that interdisciplinary expertise in meaningful ways to shape cities but to create a format for working that is based both in civic leadership but also technical and design excellence. And having practiced for 85 years you see projects like this, Canary Wharf close to 40 years ago and its evolution along with the city of London and lessons learned in terms of the importance of civic infrastructure, of connectivity, how the concepts of movement inform and enhance how we design and further shape the public realm within our cities and how those play an increasingly important role as we urbanize throughout the world. And as you can see this also begins to align with broader city strategies and London's goals as a global city. But sort of within that is also the human dimension of public space, of open space, of working with artists and working with civic and government leaders to deliver meaningful space back into our cities such as the master plan that we were a part of with Mayor Daley and continued to work with community leaders on shaping this important asset not just for downtown residents for the region but really for the entire country is one of these great civic spaces right at the front door of our office in Chicago. And maybe as a point of departure is we were approached two years ago by National Geographic to help think through a summary of what may be in the future for cities. And I think given this experience and research that we've all been focused on in our own projects is the ability to step back and understand that it's a more holistic attitude that's needed. And these 10 principles that you begin to see on the right are meaningful not only in sort of outcomes related to everything from ecology and infrastructure to culture, livability and energy but also the areas of expertise that are needed as we think through as Kate mentioned in the opening the future practice of urban design. And these ideas are as much about larger planning ideas around land use density and urban form as they are about the architecture and the civic spaces that people inhabit and interact with on a daily basis. And so why is this important? You know clearly we're at probably one of the most interesting and rapidly changing moments in our history. The firm as I've mentioned we've all been focused on trying to answer these questions or at least contribute in a meaningful way to the conversation. So how can a firm, a design firm, play a role in shaping global urban development in a way that is more livable, more humane but also addressing the challenges of rapid urbanization? How can we do so in a way that is also aware and responding to the challenges facing our environment so that we don't further break those chains but we actually look at regenerative ways to rebuild our broader ecosystems. And that I think one of the things that's been most meaningful in my own career is understanding how connected everything is and that mindset opens new possibilities of how to not only approach design but how to apply research in a meaningful way. And perhaps as kind of a more philosophical question is how can we as designers continue to contribute in ways that we adapt our human footprint beyond just the projects we work on day in and day out. We know the challenges with urbanization. We also know the pressures it places on our environment and the resources available to sustain life. And I just love this quote from a colleague that we've worked with for many years that over the next seven to 10 years this idea of ecology and urbanism is going to come together and shape the practice more than anything else. It's how we build our cities, we create our energy, handle our waste, move our people. They all contribute to the resiliency of these ecological systems or as he implies here, if done incorrectly, they further undermine and create breaks in the chain of these systems. And so kind of before we get into a summary of some of the recent projects we've been working on, what are the priorities moving forward? And perhaps you've heard about many of these and presentations throughout the semester around ecosystems as well as the economy of cities. How does that integrate with social equity inform ideas around new approaches to urban infrastructure and that everything comes back to health and well-being? And so we put together a series of slides. The way we've organized this is sort of a highlight of some of the themes we've been focusing on through the lens of just project highlights. And then a case study at the end of a project both Adam and I've been involved with for the last four to five years here in the city of Chicago. One of the things that I think is really interesting as urban designers is it's not solely how we look at the land, it's how we look at the infrastructure and the integration with the natural ecological function of sites to support future urban development. This project on Chicago's south side over 600 acres was really challenged to think without any infrastructure what is it that we should build? Could there be new ideas around district energy that actually heat and cool all the buildings from the lake and return any unused energy to the community around the site? Is there a way that every drop of water falls on the site as we turn back into Lake Michigan and not diverted to the Mississippi River? And are there other ways using technology to get to zero waste but also to enhance more fundamental requirements like access to health care, job training and education in a part of Chicago that has very little civic and public amenities? And through working again this is around the theme of working as a collective teamed with engineers in Copenhagen we were able to actually understand the components to get to a more carbon neutral development and this is specific to the U.S. given the profile of energy demand that if we could reduce the content the carbon that's in the production of energy by 50 percent if we improve efficiency on the user end by 50 percent and then really look at the systems and ways to find efficiency we could see a reduction in over 80 percent of carbon within this development alone. And doing so in a way that creates great public space rediscovers waterways and introduces a new generation of mixed use buildings. Sort of on the other end of research we were invited to this hackathon in London that was really focused on the future health of the city and sort of through the modeling and ability to look at a number of things simultaneously we not only understood things like urban heat island within the public spaces but also things around air quality and sort of comparing and looking at the relationships between these two aspects of a city with the urban form and zoning behind it it did start to ask questions about how to move forward in a way that puts another level of expectation around health well-being and performance in how we design and shape our cities. Similarly a couple years ago we were asked by the city of New York and Cranes to put forward ideas for the future New York City I believe is at the time was around eight and a half million people the question was how do we get to nine million and we had a number of ideas one that was very intriguing was looking at the way to connect neighborhoods together and really the Brooklyn Queens expressway we all know the benefits by rethinking what happens within this right-of-way to introduce additional housing that can capitalize on existing infrastructure but also reduce emissions and create more meaningful public space and it's these sort of provocative ideas that then lead to future projects like the current work the arc is doing in Brooklyn on that segment of the expressway itself and that leads to our next theme of transit-centered urbanism and mobility and there's so much research and development going forward and in new investment we're seeing on equitable transit-oriented development and a deep understanding of the importance that access and mobility brings to the economic development of cities the introduction of introduction of access to different populations and fosters economic development so here's an example of the kind of project that can take over 20 years to get built from the time we started working on it in the late 90s back when I was in Columbia to to the first of the year in 2021 when Moynihan Station finally opened it's a transformation of a old historic asset the old post office in New York called the Farley Post Office which really because of the changing nature of the Postal Delivery Service and the particular way the building was designed specifically for an outmoded way of delivering mail and the scale of the building was a block towards further development and connectivity to the west side but by transforming the building into a new extension of Penn Station unlocked access not only to serve the 650,000 riders the year that use the station but create a new gateway in front door for New York City and connect access to the far west side and here's another example of a project similarly large-scale here the private sector came forward and unlocked the potential for high-speed rail in Florida a political context which otherwise would have been impossible to do high-speed rail and the project's called Brightline and it brings together not only the stations but mixed-use development to help bring together the resources and make these things possible so what you see here is the integration of residential living high-speed rail access retail and shopping all this is the Miami station which is the anchor and back in Chicago where Doug and I both work and live we're developing a new station for for the L some of you guys may have heard it if you've ever visited Chicago you can't help it it's one of the oldest major metropolitan stations in the world it's noisy it's in some cases it's not accessible many of the stations are not accessible and it's in need of upgrades so station by station the city is investing in major retrofits and the station at state and lake is one of the most prominent in the city hovering over the intersection of south south state street and lake at the corner of the loop and the work we're doing is going to improve accessibility safety security and create a great new gateway for the L connecting the eight lines of the loop that run in the circle around the loop with the red line below state street as much as the old station was outdated and dysfunctional in need of repair and modernization it also has a lot of historic elements which are loved by the city of Chicago and you can start to see how some of those are being incorporated here in the design salvaged and repurposed to create a human scale and bring bring in the kind of old elements that give character and history of the loop history of the loop even as we introduce a new architecture that's very forward looking it's a delicate insertion into a very tight urban context and so a tremendous amount of engagement with the neighbors has been a big part of our process and so we when we talk about city building as a collective it's not just a collective of designers it's a collective of stakeholders too so where you see the word restaurant and the four corners around the station there's a hotel there's actually a television studio there's an office building there are two office buildings and those four corners have had tremendous amount of input on the way the station comes to ground the degree to which we coordinate to their needs to make sure that even as we put this bold new station into the city of Chicago it's a sensitive intervention one of the key aspects to contemporary urban design is the importance of the process we put forward which is as much part of the design thinking required when working in communities to be very thoughtful to be equally creative and inventive in reaching out and engaging the many voices that participate in the shaping of cities and so we've done a lot of work in places like Detroit that have challenged us to look at that promise of how can design improve the lives of many and in doing so in a way where it's not only equitable but it's for the community in which it serves and so this sort of graphic campaign paralleled our planning process which was really about we were brought in to help the future of your riverfront shape the future of your riverfront and at the end our hope was that we could drop the why and that they can all say it's ours and this sort of thinking has continued to a lot of recent initiatives we have been involved with with Mayor Lightfoot in the city of Chicago and the invest southwest program focus on both the south and west sides of the city to look at very strategic but coordinated public and private development opportunities such as here in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago's south side one piece of city-owned land on the left in pink and recent I believe MacArthur funded opportunity for a new urban incubator project on the right side and working together with community leaders with the alderman but also church and other community groups to help look at ways to not only optimize potential of the city-owned land here on the left so that it contributed to the vibrancy of the public realm but how it would be coordinated with streetscape improvements and the continued renovation of the building across the street so Doug mentioned the city's invest southwest program and that's a great case study from a policy point of view that I think all of you would be interested in learning more about in terms of the way in which a city creates hang on I'll go back the city creates an incentive and a framework for investment in neighborhoods by the private sector in neighborhoods which otherwise wouldn't necessarily see that kind of investment and in Chicago for us that's the south and west side so they've identified a dozen sites where and the work you just showed Doug was part of the process of setting up the research and design thinking that went into identifying those sites and exploring what's possible which led to an RFP process which is unfolding across this year and the results of which we'll see over the next couple few years with a huge emphasis not only on the development in places that might not otherwise see it but design excellence along the way and so we were fortunate enough to be selected for the renovation of this firehouse you see in in the middle of the image you know this is a neighborhood called Englewood on the south side of Chicago near the University of Chicago but not immediately adjacent to it and building on the back of what's called Englewood Square just above and to the left of the firehouse in the image there's a Whole Foods there's some other F&B and retail that serves the neighborhood and we're going to develop that we're going to take the area adjacent to it and start to develop community uses around it that celebrate local culture local food and local entrepreneurs by creating architecture that allows them to practice grow their businesses and create community around collectivity and so these are some of the images that will be unfolding over a series of phases starting with the renovation of the firehouse next year and ultimately this is what the final master plan looks like I had previously mentioned our work with the city of Detroit I wanted to go back to that for a moment because when working on the two miles of riverfront from renaissance center here to the bioisle bridge behind us we found a number of opportunities to further explore one was the importance of public space and more importantly providing access for youth and families to nature within the heart of the city and also seeing the benefit from the ecological function that could be restored the creation of habitat not just park space and so this idea of bringing nature back into our cities was of great interest to us and here in Detroit we were very fortunate to partner with Michelle DeVine from France one of the premiere landscape architects and thinkers of our time we've continued to sort of build on that research on waterfronts and a couple years ago invited by the city of Chicago with a number of other design practices to think about the future of our river and you all know the great work along the waterfront in Lake Michigan but the city has been rediscovering its internal waterways and it's been transformative just in the recent improvements but the idea to extend and link that further north and south along the river was of great interest to not only the mayor but to many of the businesses and residents that could further connect to a waterfront right outside their back door and so we worked with not only engineers but environmentalists researchers from the shed and field museum to understand the ways to improve not only the quality of the water to find ways as you see here with these water steps to further air rate introduce oxygen back into the river but also to create habitat and there was a there was a saying in one of our meetings if we could bring the otters back to the Chicago river that would be a sign of progress but it's also about connectivity and knowing that as this continuous pathway moves along the east side of the river it enters into many environments that perhaps at one time were there historically before industry came into the south branch of the river and sort of taking advantage of those unique moments and the hydrology that really helped shape many of these designs which leads to another project this is on the north branch right in the middle is goose island industrial part of the city that has been undergoing dramatic transformation including a project right at the north end of the island here just to the left of the building with the dome called ui labs which in itself is is an interesting catalyst for further community investment and public benefit but the project I wanted to share was what we called the wild mile and it's the what's on the left or the eastern banks of goose island which was the man made channel and it was required to be navigable but it was also incredibly polluted and many of the remnants of industry still remain and here's a great example of the conditions today many different landowners and also working with the army core of engineers this required a more holistic view to drive investment in a strategic way and to see the connections uh ways that we could not only extend public access expand the amount of space for wildlife and habitat but also create access to recreation as well as education so then itself is is a very interesting exercise in looking at design within our existing cities but what was very exciting for us was how our own studio became very engaged in working with the community and building these rafts these floating wetlands that are then stitched together they create habitat above they introduce nutrients below some of them even grow food and we did this over the last couple of summers and at the same time we've been working very closely with the schools in the area to not only understand and rediscover their own river but to contribute to the greening enhancement of it for their own generation and then working with a non-for-profit in further sharing that information broadly and the response has been incredible in terms of finding ways to apply this research to other cities that are looking to improve the health and livability of their waterways this idea of connectivity can be at the scale of a of a mile in Chicago or a opening up a block of private development in the city of Detroit or it can be even broader ideas bigger ideas of how to stitch public access around the entire island of Hong Kong and reconnecting the city with its with its asset and so many times we have the ability as designers to stitch all these pieces together to show how the research for any one segment of this can connect with the next prioritize where the gaps are so that the connections can be made to benefit a greater segment of the population and actually the livability of the island as a whole coming back to Chicago there is an opportunity here too that we did this over the last year through the pandemic of how to work with the city and the community on repurposing the many miles of roadways that go through our city and primarily a focus on the west side finding ways for meaningful new open space as you'll see here underutilized space below our L to be not only new park space new ground transportation for bikes but also other programming opportunities that could then be paired with private investment in some of the older industrial buildings as you see on the left very sorry on the right here or taking one of our major thorough affairs and seeing how we could repurpose that right of way to create greater connection as well as greater investment for the neighborhoods of Laundale and many others on Chicago's west side which I think this is our last point before we get into our case study is as practicing urban design today it's really an opportunity to think at multiple scales and to see the connections between those so a lot of what we've talked about is at the scale of a block or a city but we also have been getting involved in projects like here up on screen working with the government in China the provincial mayor's 11 district mayors on this 183 kilometer stretch of the Yellow River the mother river and in some ways showing how an integrated approach to not only where development should occur but where we should allow the natural connections to be restored perhaps ways to rethink land use policies so that it's more holistic and understanding the functional relationships of water and the ecological health of the river itself and these things are massive in scale they're complex but they can be applied to other shared resources such as the Great Lakes and a study we did about eight years ago that looked at the principles and opportunities for further collaboration on both sides of the US Canadian border collaboration between cities but also in how we looked at the shared resource within the boundaries of the watershed this is some just some of the pages from a recent document we produced for the Chinese government but also the first phase of this new wetland park that just opened last year and you can see the importance of broader ecological thinking in sort of shaping the future of our cities in a meaningful and respectful way and this applies not just to water but also how we look at air quality and ventilation and there was a recent project in Chengdu farther west in China that found ways to actually improve air quality through not only the orientation of the grid itself but through the urban form and working with engineers understanding ways we could create ways for the city to flush itself of pollutants and actually encourage flow that would remove pollutants as I mentioned but also help to cool the city in the warmer months of the year oh this is the last project and then in the Pearl River Delta working with not only government leaders but sort of local farmers and landowners on strategies to plan for the future of these ecological resources and ways to do so that we have a new approach to engineering design and the landscape that allow the city to be more not only aware but to put forward ideas that can be then replicated throughout the region and what is one of the fastest growing parts of the world today so maybe just one thing to highlight as all of you are maybe asking where does this stop is I personally feel that the role of urban design has evolved quite significantly it is an opportunity to not only connect the dots but address the sort of complexities managing and directing growth within cities so everything from sustainable thinking to equitable investment as well as the larger functional social and land use issues many times the planner though is also in a position to not only bring the expertise of consultants experts in their own fields but to help be a bridge between the community and the client which could either be the city or the developer so this idea of working as a collective city building as a collaborative act is actually part of the expectation to act this way and to have a more holistic view and approach to cities and to understand that what we do is just one part of the process but it's a meaningful part in that it sets the stage for future conversations around the principles and the ways to reflect the values of a community in design so with our the final part of our presentation here we'll try to use our Lincoln Yards project which we've been working on for the last five years or so as a comprehensive picture of how all those things come together from the idea that you can't look at anything at urban design through too narrow a lens we want to create a kind of rich soup of everything that urbanism can offer in new development as well as a respect for what's there and the history the integration of the players and the process so here we are just the aerial Doug talked about earlier at Goose Island is about three about two miles into this picture and we've just assumed our drone has pulled back a little bit and we're a little further away from the city sitting between two neighborhoods on the left you have Lincoln Park and on the right you have Bucktown and what we're looking at here is an industrial corridor which has an industrial history that goes back to the beginning of the city the river was of course used as an industrial artery and in the last several decades became zoned specifically for that use which meant that no development other than industrial uses could go on in this actually 760 acre swath which is essentially about a five mile long stretch of the city bounded as you can see on the right on the west side by a highway and rail line and on the left by an arterial road called Clyburn and those together with the river created a number of infrastructural barriers to east west movement within the city and so what worked really well for industry for a very long time started to work less well as these neighborhoods became more mature and the city was deepening its development to the north so we're facing south it's the city's growing decade by decade to the north the neighborhoods are maturing they're becoming more and more residential in mixed use and this artifact of industrial product production happening in the heart of the city while important for economic development started to become in conflict with the idea of healthy living and so the city over the last 10 years started to look at rezoning this 760 acre swath which you see highlighted in here in green here called the north branch corridor and you can see how many residential neighborhoods it touches on the north side from river north to the gold coast and old town Lincoln park bucktown wicker park and noble square if you know Chicago or you've visited you may have experienced these neighborhoods they're incredible residential neighborhoods each have been walkable with with schools and playgrounds and different kinds of living in a pretty diverse set of constituents but the neighborhoods are separated by these industrial uses and the barriers of infrastructure that supported the industry over time and you can start to get a sense for that in this aerial view as we come in closer to the site you can see on the west on the on the right side we had a steel mill on the left on the east side we had another steel yard we have fabrication we have leather tanneries we have dumps and on the north side at the top of the picture here we had a big filling station so there's a tremendous amount of environmental degradation and pollution on these sites urban heat island effect and a need to really reinvest first in the infrastructure to reclaim the site clean it up improve the quality of the earth and the river for the land and the river here as well as start to stitch back together the east west connections that are so badly divided by the infrastructure here on the site and at the same time an opportunity to pay attention to that heritage and start to think about ways through design interventions to hang on to the heritage and history of the site and make that evident in what's new to preserve certain existing features that have been there for a long time that either signs or objects industrial furnace elements that we've even through the demolition of some of these buildings we've been able to retain and we'll use again on the site going forward as well as the character of the bridges and the river's edges oh so this wasn't a new idea in fact the sort of transition from industrial to more mixed use activities along this section of the river was something undertaken by the city in anticipation of this of these series of investments but also to help the city continue to grow and position itself in a way that takes advantage of these assets but also helps to benefit the communities around them and so there was the economic dimension of creating a new generation of jobs that would sort of replace the the industrial steel working jobs that were once on site to provide a significant amount of new public open space not just connectivity along an expanded river walk but also to really take on this idea of mixed use and working with the city the developer and the community what are the right uses but also what are the uses you don't want to see on site as they'll create further traffic or impact around this surrounding community and so really the the best way to start is to look at the public realm and you know as adam had mentioned the industrial uses on site lyn and ly s is for linking yards north and south just the way we've referred to it but these were cities unto themselves they had very few public streets extend through them and in fact at this section one of the most dynamic parts of the city there's only three places to cross the river and at those places you're not even allowed to access the riverfront because of the industrial use and just lack of physical access and so by starting with the public realm something that you can control even though the architecture will continue to evolve and take shape over time as a response to the market you want to get the connections in place you want to get the sort of cohesiveness of the public realm restore the connections not just east and west but here as you can see with dominic street to find another way to move north and south to take some of the pressure off of both elston cliborn and those surrounding corridors and in doing so create a new attitude around complete streets shared streets things we've all learned from the pandemic are more and more essential in terms of the quality of the public realm and designing these places for people as i mentioned there was a significant focus on new public space two major parks both north and south as well as an extended river walk and other portals in green waves that would connect from the street grid down to the river walk itself and as adam mentioned bucktown and wicker park perhaps many of you also know the 606 trail this this incredible our version of the high line that extends two miles west brings you here to the waterfront we thought wouldn't it be great if we could bring it all the way to the waterfront so then you could bike from to downtown so biking from bucktown to downtown is a way to commute through the city of chicago and when you're looking at open space of the scale how you position it to take advantage of the views to have solar access in the summer as well as the winter but to also use it as a way to create value and address to future buildings that frame these spaces finding opportunities to increase recreation that is so needed within this part of the city many families and their children have to travel miles outside the city just to play a game of soccer but here now with these new fields you can do that right in your backyard or to create smaller playground space again for families and to provide a welcoming environment for everyone and at the same time take those ideas around ecology habitat and access as we rebuild this entire riverfront through linking yards and once you get that in place you can then really start to see the scale and the fabric what we were focused on is a very walkable forest smaller scale block similar to portland or other great cities that have this intensity of a pedestrian environment in doing so we were actually able to further explore with the architects and with the development team guidelines and approaches for how these buildings would front and interact with these public spaces and so as opposed to things being closed off or blank walls much more permeable transparent interactive that extended not just the design but places for programming year round activation public markets other community uses within the ground floors buildings but also places that would be active at night so it did become a place that had something for everyone throughout the entire day but also to take advantage of what's best here in Chicago which is this careful consideration of both the architecture and its relationship with the public realm so this this transformation of the old industrial site into what will become a catalyst for an entirely new neighborhood in Chicago does need to be supported by transit and multimodal transit in order to keep cars out of the site so we took advantage of the fact that our adjacency to the metro line but took on the challenge of the fact that a station of the capacity needed to support this kind of population didn't exist we thought about how to bring together multimodes like the 606 bike trail and pedestrian trail the river walk and of course the city's bus lines and other ways of commuting and moving around the city to create a new hub a multimode multimodal kind of nexus where the 606 crosses the rail line and think about orienting the site so that this could become a new gateway to serve Lincoln Yards and the neighborhoods adjacent and beyond both to and from other residential neighborhoods where people live and work and also the downtown and so you start to see the vision for that here how you have bikes and buses potentially the light rail that may be introduced and of course the heavy commuter rail on the right all coming together and the extension of the 606 which is coming in from the west it ends at the curly queue here on the left side of the image today but the proposal is to bring it again stitching together and weaving across these infrastructural barriers today over the highway under the tracks connecting with the new station all the way to the river walk which will eventually connect to the downtown and starting to look at how these undercroft spaces could be activated and programmed as new bike and commuter elements are coming through can we find opportunities to take this section of space which is really disused today and then liven it with activity with food with programming with safe spaces for people to enjoy these places within the city and ultimately the vision for Lincoln Yards is the summation of all these things it's 40 open space it's another 20 percent of roads and other public infrastructure it's residential commercial retail environment that creates a kind of mixed use energy around these open spaces around the river and all the ways to get around that will one day become a new neighborhood unto itself that is both at the intersection of these existing incredible historic neighborhoods of Chicago and an entirely new thing unto itself and the last piece we wanted to talk about here was the way in which we communicate some of these things to stakeholders constituents and groups community groups that did play a large role in the development of the project and ultimately it's embraced it being embraced by the city and its approval so some of the things we communicate along the way as we're designing are quantifying the economic impact the kinds of jobs that would be created both permanent temporary and permanent the diverse participation and commitments by the city and by the developer which can be actually written into the zoning approval and then track forward even if the developer decides to sell different plots of land those commitments carry forward through different contracts into the future and then other benefits in and around the site so how these investments improve the city not just for the neighborhood itself but have a larger impact so the extension of the 606 new roads and connections through vehicular bridges across the river the extension of the river walk and the multimodal hub ultimately supporting a vision like this that brings together all the things we've talked about mixed-use neighborhood recreation ecology and bit by bit the transformation of the Chicago River into a continuous amenity for the city to serve the next hundred years and that concludes our lecture we thank you for listening and and really excited to hear your questions and comments and spend a little time in dialogue with the group here hi everyone okay tier right no just thank you so much i'm gonna turn it over to david smiley to moderate the q&a we have some great questions in the chat david taking away okay thank you am i am i coming across i mean my uh video that is yeah thank you um wow this is quite uh in one sense from the the first half a kind of global tour which um actually uh raised a few questions and then zeroing into um the i'll try not to call it hudson yards i will call it lincoln yards but i have yards you know it's a new rhetoric of development so i think um this is a good place to start because as a global practice one of our students tall asks um how do you i'm going to interpret this a little bit when you when you have such when the globe is essentially your your your your your site map um how do you uh differentiate between local knowledge and your own experience your own research versus the specificities of place i wonder if you have any thoughts or ways in which you actually go about mediating that kind of question or maybe maybe i'll start tallin and david it's actually a very important question um because as a global practice one of the reasons you're asked to come in is to share new thinking but if it's not done in a way that is not only sensitive and respectful but integrated with local vernacular a local understanding of climate as well as community and cultural dynamics it's highly likely the project will not be successful and so i think part of what uh a way to answer that question is the process you design to solicit that input when working outside of your home and we are very very interested and keen to understand like on many of those projects we talked about uh in asia and other communities to work with local experts so for example on the project in jennon we've got a team of hydrologists water experts and other environmentalists who are actually in jennon both through universities as well as other local design institutes that are really the experts on how that functions and what are the things through our sort of collaborative dialogue can kind of move the needle in how we plan that important river corridor so you know part of it i think is process but i i think there's also an an openness to hearing new and seeking out new approaches locally that can be further applied to these projects and you know we could go into many of those but i think a lot of it does come down to a process and an openness to ideas yes i would imagine that some places are easier for you to plug into than others obviously working in chicago you have a deep history there and so working in and china or wherever would present different challenges for local knowledge it's probably extremely i guess you have lots of people around who can can help provide that but it's uh when we discuss globalization in the studio and we discuss how how it's an opportunity but also a problem i think the kind of ways in which you gain some local insight or we all gain local insight is very difficult although it's probably more the norm for practice today that that things are global i think you have to immerse there has to be a commitment to immerse yourself in understanding and to gain an understanding of the place what is the dna like when we first started work we didn't share this project in sydney australia on our first trip they asked us to stay in city for two weeks to live and breathe the life of a sydney sider so we really understood what was unique we went on many tours we walked through many parts of the city and kind of replayed back to all of them what really resonated with us but also what it's kind of as a foreigner coming into sydney was seemingly authentic to that place and that's a great discussion to have with this team to find the common principles and values that need to be reflected in the design another great example of that is on our central place sydney project which we also didn't show was a large urban and architectural development sydney's subverging tech sector by central station we just said you know we're going to team with a local design firm and ultimately together with the client found an indigenous artist who helped shape the building and we don't take the approach that oh it's going to be an artwork on the building actually we brought to the design competition the idea that the artist would help shape the building and the concept of the artwork would inform the architecture and truly that's what's happening so that kind of approach to engaging a local team is really essential to working abroad even in different places in the country we discover that need to be working with a local who understands the place can bring an authenticity to being from it and of it and then to be truly collaborative is essential i think along those lines there are several questions in the chat that have to do with questions that expand from the the concept of the local which have to do towards community stakeholders who's actually living there and i think also the question of gentrification there are questions about what does how do you do community outreach or community kind of overlap with your professional teams and as you say you kind of live in a place for a couple of weeks but what kind of how do you get responses from the people who live in these places and i think you know the history of in the past few decades of urban development has become a kind of you know there's a slash afterward urban development which is gentrification and the kind of stratification of development for that excludes certain groups and i would imagine that you have clients for whom that's a that's both a problem to overcome as well as perhaps many see it as the inevitable anyway and i was wondering how you handle that as a kind of professional who professionals who are trying to create some kind of social equity in the way you go about your work so there's actually a there's a lot in that question first on sort of the building over just talk about with the approach you know the the public realm is public it's a sign of the civicness of the city and of the values you just mentioned david of equitable inclusive and welcoming should go into how those spaces are designed but it should also inform how the uses and the buildings that frame those spaces contribute to that sense of welcoming and so you know in a lot of these mixed use projects you deal with housing as well as other commercial and mixed use restaurants retail that all needs to be considered if we're really going to address this topic of inclusive and equitable investment within cities and i i think there's a lot of discussion within the development community as well as city leaders in how to find the common ground to move forward and one of the things we've seen this was up in the city of milwaukee not far from us was as we're doing a transit oriented development plan for the extension of a streetcar both south and north of the city the city was also working on anti displacement policy that would go into as adam mentioned before with what can be written into zoning what can be put forward as part of the expectation prior to private investment in any of these corridors that are also receiving public financing and so i think everyone's woken up to the fact that there needs to be greater leadership but also holistic approaches to addressing these in a meaningful way the public sector has a huge role to play political leadership is essential to responsible urban design and development if it's left to the private sector alone then an understanding of all the things that really happen as outcomes of development isn't possible and we do exist on the private side of that line we're an architecture and design firm and we sometimes work for cities and we sometimes work for institutions and we sometimes work for private developers but in every one of these contexts we would support and applaud and collaborate with the political municipal institutional leadership to take on these issues and have real dialogue around what's really happening as a consequence of development to broaden the understanding use the tools we have at him today and ultimately create a development response a policy response a dialogue and community engagement response that addresses an issue like gentrification in a way that's appropriate to what's really happening in that place as a consequence of development and likely has a history that long proceeds what we're here to do today and a set of dynamics and community and culture around it too we can't do it alone but we do always invite that that kind of broad look at what's happening and what can be done to preserve as we move forward and support people who might otherwise be affected but not really be a party or a party with agency to what's happening around them you know David if I can just add one last piece to that and this goes to the project in Detroit to illustrate this point as many times sorry I'll sit a little closer you we also want to find ways to extend that benefit deeper into the communities not just those that are directly adjacent and so you know I sort of kiddingly mentioned connections can sometimes be a single block but in the city of Detroit we work with a private landowner in the city to free up one block that allowed a bikeway connection to extend two miles inland to an existing greenway that would allow those residents and actually a very distressed part of the city access to the riverfront without that there was this barrier and so you know finding ways to to create that civic access to these public investments is a big part of the work and it requires I think a real interest to think beyond the boundaries or the scope that you're given and to understand the broader connections within our initiatives I like the way you you add that point which is to look beyond the scope because that's kind of rule number one for us is look beyond the scope there is you define the scope and chances are we're going to tell you it's still too narrow so I think the that's a great an important lesson which it's easy for us to do in the studio I imagine it's a little bit harder to do in the in the profession but it's really a central way of challenging some of the the constraints which is to take your scope beyond the given scope especially socially because you know that the ripple effects not just of gentrification but also you know waste streams and electricity usage these things aren't based on sites and streets and political boundaries so I think that that's probably a key thing that we would absolutely agree with and we stress greatly another just looking through the questions here I had one more I think it's interesting that that one of the students asked how do you how do you work not just with communities but you know the huge teams where you say you have environmentalists and researchers and engineers and and you know botanists and geneticists or whatever I don't know maybe not geneticists but how do you organize that kind of work it is a big organizational challenge and you know we spend a lot of time in what's called scoping and defining what we're going to do how we're going to approach the work coordinating the different team members and trying to anticipate when they'll be needed just to create a roadmap just to create a roadmap for the process and in in architecture it's hard enough in urban design every project has its own life and so we do need to stay flexible but having that roadmap is really key and some of the tricks of the trade are creating that roadmap in a way that's really visual and user friendly so not only can we understand it we can share it with the client and we can even share it with different stakeholders we can communicate with that as a tool to say here's our process and here's the look and feel here's where this this group is plugging in here's where this group is plugging in and then of course we have to stay flexible as we go forward and update the process where we need to projects take twists and turns but I think that that that kind of roadmap is and always having a roadmap in mind is is really key and that's probably the most important organizational tool that helps us coordinate the different groups that are coming together part of part of what's what's happening those you know as as urban designers I think you have to see yourself as a problem solver to really understand what it is you're trying to address within the project and to set up a process to facilitate experts that no more in these fields that are going to be critical to solving those issues and then thirdly and we've probably said it too many times but the importance of holistic thinking but really as a roles and urban designer finding the ways to finding the ways to connect the dots that the relationship and findings from a botanist a wetland specialist and a hydrology expert tied to then someone who's focused on you know I don't know energy um there is a relationship there and I think being in the position as sort of the urban designer master planner you have to test ways in which to connect those and to show the value of these areas of expertise and I guess the last thing I'll say on that is many times we're in the position where we can synthesize all of that input into a series of principles and I know many times we put those to the side that the principles are great in terms of building consensus with community groups and other constituents they're also a great way to manage a complex team because you're all contributing research and ideas to advance those principles so in some ways it gives you a common ground in which to discuss these areas of deep scientific uh or environmental research in a way that's easy for others to understand excuse me we spend a good amount of time on that question of uh accessibility to our work to professional work I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of go off topic a little bit and ask a question that occurs to me that may be not specific to the any particular project but to the scope of what you showed us today I'm wondering if if you have been approached or you've thought about um what they're called no growth strategies or slow growth strategies and has a city or I assume a client hasn't but at least the city or some political entity has thought that that might be something that would be worth examining because even no growth requires planning and design again there there's a lot in there I suppose just saying yes we've been part of that um because it's it's interesting how you define growth so look at the city of Chicago population has been declining over the last 30 40 years yet there is incredible capacity within the footprint of the city to maybe double the density but you're not expanding the footprint in fact you may be finding more efficient ways to use the existing infrastructure and through the increased tax base find ways to then fund public investments in schools parks and transportation infrastructure so it's it's growth but it's not expanding the footprint of the city and in certain midwestern cities um where there's been a population decline that's an interesting way to think about it we've also been involved in projects in fact we're doing a study right now in in Guangzhou China that is looking at the carrying capacity of the city so before they determine how much growth can be projected really understanding what is that carrying capacity and it's more than just infrastructure there's research that's being done around the ecological carrying capacity how you can sustain habitat while at the same time intelligently investing in places for people to live and in a way that's livable and kind of in balance but there are projects too where we've been involved where it has been about no growth and it's focused more on enhancing the quality of the spaces within the cities so our reinvestment in the infrastructure I just want to add to the conversation the example of the Cook County Hospital project in Chicago which is a project that we I mean the building's 110 years old it's a Beaux Arts 300,000 square foot building that was designed as a hospital but was decommissioned in the late 90s and fell into extreme disrepair to the point where it was going to be taken down and really credited to the landmarks and preservation movement in Chicago that it was saved all the way to about 2015 when we competed for the opportunity together with the developer to have access to that of 10 acres around a really key infill urban site that would again stitch together neighborhoods that were otherwise divided and the building itself was part of the problem this thing that needed to be taken down in order to allow for that neighborhood to be safe and functional or saved and and and how could it possibly be saved it's not just designers who we again we can't do this alone our our our team members on the development side after we'd envisioned the project and said this is the most economical efficient and highest invest use we're going to find a way to save this building and use all the tax credits and different kinds of things we can do creatively they took it to 60 banks before they found funding it took two years to find a development strategy that would pencil that some it well it penciled but that someone would actually take a risk and fund and and once that funding was put into place through a bank that was willing to take a risk on a on a really neat project that was important to the city we were able to do the work and then turn this building which was falling apart entirely into a new use which was a hotel that then unlocked for the development but that's a zero growth example and that's a huge a huge contribution to saving the carbon footprint of replacing that building which you know exists in the physical terracotta brick masonry steel of that building it's a big one and now exists as two really fantastic hotels that you know take advantage of all the character giving elements of a project like that and allow for further development to happen in an area that really needs it there's a there's an inherent aspect of this I think we should highlight which is whether it's adaptive reuse that is in cook county or conservation of resources and establishing the ecological carrying capacity which cities like Toronto have done for years with their green belt in terms of growth boundaries to cities is you know I personally and I saw some research that I think NYU had done that looked at the growth of cities over the last 30 years and it wasn't as much about the increase in height and density within the core of the cities as much as it was the expansion of the footprint of cities further and further out that if you looked at the balance of where growth was happening it was through expansion and I think for us as urban designers that's a real philosophical challenge because resources are finite and the footprint we leave through these projects it can be tough to replace or kind of redirect that impact so it's a really important point now that's not to say reimagining the suburbs redefining centers outside of the city center or polycentric cities I mean those are all really interesting conversations but I think the general expansion of the urban footprint without reimagining conservation in this day and age is a real missed opportunity or would be a missed opportunity I think that's especially the case just because of the the massive costs and social costs of highways at least I know in the North America that's going to be a major hurdle still we're not we're not over that yet I think the the related question to no growth or slow growth slow growth is is more about how you've come into contact or interpreted different policy constraints in any particular cases you've kind of hinted at some of them along the way and I guess it's a kind of question of like how many planners do you have on staff the people who actually like reading these codes no no I'm I say that in the best possible sense that the the policies and the decision-making frameworks and all the kind of even half-written conventions that that shape the the urban planning and design culture of many cities how do you how do you get how do you navigate those other I mean with staff but also how are you how's your organization set up to to take on policy constraints not just physical constraints well it's a great question we have about a hundred people in our who are dedicated to our planning and urban design group and that's globally plus or minus 100 and it has a little bit of fuzzy edges because it's we're constantly collaborating even internally between architecture landscape our landscape practice and even our interior design and engineering groups but with about 100 planners and urban designers within that group we have people with really different strengths and skill sets and interests and some are very policy oriented and plannerly and they're really more urban planners than they are urban designers and we've other who are really coming from typically an architecture background and are really space makers form givers and approach urban design through the physical planning lens and then we have a lot of people who are you know really broad and integrators you know what we do as a firm we talked a lot about in some of our diagrams and some of our stories today we talked about how we serve as a platform to bring together all these experts and that's a big part of the role we play is synthesis and leadership of a project that is big and complex and we also in many cases have a role in setting the vision the physical vision the images that capture everybody's imagination show what's possible the form giving and often doing that in collaboration with other design leaders but you know we have within our group of about 100 we have people who tap into every different part of this process another dimension of this is there's a interest because as urban designers you your final deliverable isn't necessarily a working set of construction drawings so how you deliver that vision in a format that allows the city to apply and further direct the vision ends up in some form of policy and so we're very aware of that and start that conversation early on with whoever it is if it's the community if it's the private sector if it's the city what are the levers that we can pull and a lot of times they will tell you this is the hurdle we have to get across this is legacy policy that we've not been able to address or for example we really need a way to show how to link kind of urban form and density with quality public space through more than just a form-based code you know and I I think having those conversations early will do two things one is they will identify where you can through policy create greater value and impact but also you're having that conversation early enough that's it becomes embedded within the design and just think about sustainability it used to be you had cities requested a chapter on the sustainable strategies and recommendations you would apply and it was the last chapter it felt like an add-on we've come so far in that now the designs put forward because you know you need to think holistically in addressing climate change and carbon the design should respond so that it's less about enforcing policy and more about showing the vision and how you achieve that through integrated design practice I do think oh sorry they have one other thing I just put out there and I I think we would be very interested in sort of the work the school may be doing on this is around urban metrics what are the new set of metrics that can be used for more performative driven policy that has real and meaningful impact I think that's not urban metrics question I want to use but I just want to make a note to everyone someone has one or two of you have raised your hands and I would appreciate it if you would type your question into the chat box thank you getting back to urban metrics and performativity you know perhaps this is a kind of I hope this is not seen as confrontational but metrics have a tendency to leave out things like racial conflict or gender imbalance or ethnic problems I mean metrics I mean if you talk to a sociologist you may get certain metrics with respect to race relations I'll just use that but I haven't seen much of that much of that in kind of urban design field some there's there is a whole thread in urban planning where they don't use the word urban racial metrics but they do take on the questions of racial justice and obviously the history of racial injustices in cities and how cities themselves are deeply entangled city management and city regulation are deeply entangled in that history and so I would love to know I think we would all love to know how some kind of collective data gathering could inform us of such things that would be useful to you in a project or even if you're in Chicago to understand Chicago better outside I mean this you have to pay your own people to do this research. So a couple interesting aspects to that first is we have been working and have had many conversations with the Mansway to Institute at the University of Chicago and Luis Bentacor and his work there which as they look forward and looking at the same neighborhoods of which we're showing projects what are the questions and indicators around human development that we need to be aware of and that's access to education safety you know other factors that through their own research are trying to define the indicators within the design of the community that would help positively influence that. So a great example was on one of those commercial corridors starting to do a photographic analysis but then overlaying it with other GIS data and sort of survey results when talking with the community of what the challenge is and looking for the patterns that emerge. So that could be a way to actually define a new set of metrics to see how you could benefit and we also did another that Lakeside project at the beginning we shared the School of Social Service Administration was was interested in working with us to establish a baseline for the surrounding community and what they found was aging population no access to public transit and increased housing but also increased housing costs but also not having access to aging infrastructure because of aging infrastructure they didn't have reliable heat things like this and they did this through sort of mapping of the South Shore community adjacent to the site that alone raised a number of provocations of I mentioned working with technology companies but if we're developing smart city concepts and infrastructure shouldn't those be extended well into the community so that we could find new ways to provide healthcare to residents who don't have access to public transit to actually see or talk to their physician it's kind of a fundamental requirement for health and well-being could we find ways to connect residents more directly with job training through this infrastructure but then also for building all new infrastructure out on site don't design that or engineer that to be just for the million square feet out on site but for the residents adjacent to the site that could benefit from more reliable clean and affordable energy so I don't know if that answered the question about metrics but I do think there's other stones to turn over to kind of find these new opportunities through urban design yes it's I mean I think the question of measurement is in my mind a way of also trying to get towards qualitative aspects of social life and I respect the idea that we live in a world where things need to be measured and that actually is not always a terrible thing sometimes measurement is part of the problem or classification is part of the problem historically but I think you know professionally it's a it's a step towards a fuller understanding basically to expand what we consider to be necessary research in our field um let's see there was one more that came in someone asked a really interesting question um about using the term introspection how does a firm such as yours engage in introspection with respect to the history of your firm but also even to just the practices of the past decade or five years and I think specifically not only for the racial questions I previously raised but also about about COVID and and post the COVID assuming there is such a thing life that's a great question one of the things we do to kind of hold hold together as a design firm as a community in a way as a way of unpacking what that what is it that that one-line mission statement means that we're a collective and we're trying to shape a better world what does that really mean is we get together and talk about it so and we do that in different ways we do that as an entire firm we do that as a leadership group setting the agenda for the firm charting a course where we're going to go next and we do it throughout the year regularly we share the work the work that we're doing our teams are doing with other colleagues and we talk about it we critique it we celebrate certain things and of course um it's done through I think the different lenses we talked about today talk about what we're doing in ecology what we're learning try to share that environmental innovations so that we can start to build on the work in one project even if it's another team in another studio working in a different context hey I heard they did that over there I want to hear about that and then by by talking and by having dialogue about the work we're doing and not just the work but the culture we're creating internally and externally we're able to do more and more of that it's connect the dots and that's how you build you know the innovation it doesn't happen in huge breakthroughs that change everything it happens project by project bit by bit with an eye towards always building on what we've done before and so I think just the firm-wide dialogue that we have is really important in constantly pushing the boundary of who we are what we do and why what we're proud of and where we want to go next and that is a firm-wide conversation and and into these dialogues we often bring outsiders people who are experts and we want to hear from whether they're scientists or McKinsey people studying city and business I'm sure you want McKinsey any right now no or you know ecologists people we work with and those those people also push us and challenge us to think think broadly about our work and we do do research we do do our own research it's a big part of our practice actually and often it's in partnership across sectors so we'll do it we'll do work with academics we'll find partners with like interest and say hey let's do something together and just find a way to dedicate some resources to making that happen so that we can learn or advance an idea and these times have come in together to talk about design are also time to share that work and that's what we do we do it regularly introspection is a you know sometimes a professional luxury so I appreciate that I've also read I think it's SOM journal is that still running because there's been some great articles there and I encourage people to take a look at your journal the journal was an amazing initiative and we haven't had one in a few years I think we got up to nine or so in about a dozen years and the the beauty of the journal was you know a lot of firms of our size do monographs and SOM has a history of doing monographs too which are really self-published portfolios there's nothing wrong with that but it's self-edited it's self-chosen it's a it's a kind of not unbiased presentation of your own work and that's okay but it's not as self-critical as it should be and therefore it's not a tool to really advance the kind of dialogue I was just describing which is a time self-critical or it's not useful so we need to push each other and what the what the monograph what the journal did and the beauty of the initiative was that we actually handed the reins of this a kind of monograph adjacent concept to an independent jury of people we knew would come from different disciplines including the art world the design world engineering science it would be diverse intentionally and it would be out of our hands so we would we would we would almost have an internal a bit of an internal competition a call for really designs to be submitted and then this group would critique them and they would be as critical as they would be sell find themselves celebrating certain things and saying hey this is really a miss and here's why and then they would have dialogue and then we would do our best to publish that dialogue and invite articles that would be written kind of we would kind of have written around the body of work at that time and yeah that was a great initiative David you know as a academic myself I appreciated it but is in fact a gray zone between academia and the profession and credibility etc that stem from working for a firm but I think the journal did pretty well I have one last question because the students need a break before they go themselves off and discuss discuss you and this is a little bit more focused again on certain certain particular issues but I'll try to frame it more broadly essentially with climate change and with covid-like events this person is asking about the basic concept of decentralization or poly nucleated places or some kind of non-centralizing systems and do you come to the table with any particular position on that or on how you might think of local needs versus what you might call global needs yeah I think it goes back to your opening question was about understanding an approach that locally resonates respects I personally I think the land and the ecological integrity of the place in which you're building that will inform kind of at a very early stage how to answer that question now to the scale of exploration what does a decentralized or polycentric approach mean in Malaysia will be very different than what it means in Detroit because of the cues you get from looking at the land and researching all of those other factors that create the frame for development and then there are cities that have strong existing cores that perhaps should be either reinvested or further invested in you know Chicago is a great example coming out of the pandemic 20 occupancy during the pandemic and working very closely with city leaders on a reopening plan and what needed to be addressed from reactivation of ground floor potential adaptive reuse of buildings to sort of this hearing from the city their plans for public transportation schools and public space and then showing how those connect with tourism and culture which is what draws so many people to live and work in downtown Chicago so I I don't think it's a singular answer I think it's going to be defined by the characteristics and challenges of that community in that place I think one thing we can probably agree on is that the technology and culture and population growth are driving change faster and we can really keep up with and the future of cities will bring some challenges decentralization the top of the list that we're going to take on with the next generation of urban design I mean it's been we haven't been alone in championing cities in being you know the biggest boosters of cities and we've dedicated our professional lives to like so many on this call and and so many others to making them better but and I think that's you know gone in over the last few decades that's really harmonized with some of the patterns we've seen in many parts of the world around reinvestment and repopulation of cities even with the challenges we still face notwithstanding but as we look at technology and where that's pushing us in the near term and the medium term over the next couple of decades we're going to be working with forces and maybe against other structural forces that are going to challenge us tremendously the good news is we have so much more knowledge and science and general population understanding not just in experts but among the world and population world about the limited resources that we all have to share and what you know what the cities look like that we're designing in 10 and 20 years could be very very different from what we're talking about today and with that in mind I think David your point about the importance of research and projecting forward and expanding the boundaries of what it is we think is in our purview or what we should be applying our design processes and skills to take on should continue to expand because if we're only solving today's challenges we're just going to miss we're going to it's going to be such a big mess about where we need to be looking further ahead and that's the great challenge for the next generation it certainly is especially you know this question just about centralization or decentralization or dispersal it's partially going to be you know choices that we have to make not that we want to make because of climate and because of the social costs and consequences of climate change which will make some cities just impossible and that's something you know our program is mostly international students and so I think from the their point of view there's both a kind of urban design project that we look at as familiar but then there's going to be something like regional design that requires that cities be I don't know shut down reimagined I mean they don't have the luxury of doing that but in fact the threats are so huge that we'll have to kind of I don't know that's why I have the bucky map behind me you know we have to think at that scale so I want to oh sorry go ahead please no think big yeah and small at the same time so the students are going to break up into their discussion sections in a few minutes and so I just want to thank you for sharing your research with us and your projects I mean all the questions as you can you'll see if you read the chat are kind of taken with the array of projects and one person in particular wants to know about your streetcar extension project in Milwaukee so you could send that information to me and I'll pass it along if you would be so kind and what I think the students really are I mean we as a program really want to encourage thinking about projects all over even though this year has been no travel so it's even harder to think globally but it's a challenge that in fact is a augurs the future where so much more of our work will be conducted in this zoom like or mirror like atmosphere but I think you've covered a lot of ground today and we really appreciate it understanding what a global practice with historically profoundly important work how you're dealing with the kind of changes that are you know growing each day you know tomorrow something else is going to emerge but it's exciting to know that you're still plowing ahead and grasping onto what we can so students those urban design students please ask the hard questions in your groups and have a good discussion and any the general public here who would like to submit further questions feel please feel free to email me David Smiley that's ds210 at columbia.edu and we'll pass it along so once again thank you Doug and Adam and we'll zoom you later thanks everyone thanks everyone thanks David and Kate


My respected brothers and sisters, we wanted to talk a little bit today about the prophet Musa, alayhi salatu wa salam, because of all of the people, the prophet Musa, alayhi salatu wa salam, resembled the prophet Muhammad in messengership, the office of messengership, more than any other prophet. So we know that Isa alayhi salatu wa salam, he resembled the prophet Muhammad, alayhi salatu wa salam, Sala Allah alayhi wa salam, in character, more than any other prophet. There was no other prophet that was closer to Muhammad alayhi salatu wa salam, in character and behavior than Jesus Christ. And by the same token, there's no other prophet closer to the prophet in his office of messengership. How he led his people, the rules and the regulations of Judaism are the closest to the sharia of the prophet, alayhi salatu wa salam. You know, you're gonna see people, they're gonna be looking at the ingredients at the supermarket, they're either gonna be practicing Muslims or practicing Jews or vegetarians. Usually the vegetarians don't get caught up cause they just like, I'm just eating vegetables. The Muslims gonna be reading the bag. Sometimes I see a brother, I see him reading the bag or something, I'll be like, Salaam alaykum, my, Salaam alaykum. Because why are you reading the bag of them cheez-its? You Muslim, huh? And because of that, we can learn a lot of lessons from the life of the prophet Musa alayhi salatu wa salam. Because the prophet Musa alayhi salatu wa salam is mentioned in the Quran more than any other prophet or any other anybody other than Allah by name, the name Musa appears like 130 something times. The prophet Musa alayhi salatu wa salam, he lived amongst his people in Egypt before he became a messenger for like 40 years. And the prophet Muhammad alayhi salatu wa salam, he lived amongst the Quraysh for like 40 years. And the prophet Musa, he says, Allah in the Holy Quran it says, the prophet Musa alayhi salatu wa salam, he said, The prophet Musa, he said to his people, oh my people, why is it that you troubled me? When you already know that I'm a messenger of God, sent unto you, but when they swerved away from the truth, Allah calls their hearts to swerve. And Allah does not guide a rebellious people. And so as Muslims, we know that if we don't have reverence and love and respect for the messenger of Allah, then Allah will cause our hearts to swerve away from the truth. And the main affair of this religion is love for the messenger of Allah. This is what was the difference between the companions of Moses, alayhi salatu wa salam, and the companions of the prophet, alayhi salatu wa salam. The prophet's companions, they loved and revered the messenger of Allah. Where Moses' companions, they used to be troublesome to him, worrisome to him. They would slander him. They said he had leprosy. They said, man, you know why he covers up? You know, the messengers, they were all very shy. So sometimes you'll see somebody, you'll see them dressed in a certain way and you think he must be dressed like that because he or she, they don't wanna reveal, they must have something that they're hiding because they don't look right. So Moses' people said, oh, he got leprosy. That's why he got always covered like that. And one time he was bathing and Allah made his clothes get up and run. And he had to get out of the lake where he was bathing and chased his clothes down his throat.  This dude is actually fit. He's like a fit shake. Now sometimes the shake come through and you'd be like, this shake is buff. The messenger of Allah, Moses and all of the messengers, they had a goodly appearance. They didn't look like, you know, like they had leprosy, something like that. That wasn't their state. And so to prove this Allah made a miracle. He made Moses' clothes walk on their own so that the people could see what we've been saying about Moses is obvious lies. And the one thing is American Muslims, we should identify with Moses because Egypt was the America of the day of Moses. What Egypt meant in the world is what America means in the world now. And this is why Allah talks about it so much so that we can know it doesn't matter what kind of government you live under, Allah is still God. And the Pharaoh, he knew a change was coming. He said, man, I gotta stop this change. I gotta kill all of these boy children. And the one that he was gonna bring that change about grew up in his own house. And if you look around the world, sometimes the United States, not all America, but sometimes they could destabilize a lot of our countries. But it ain't gonna be a country from another latitude, latitudinal or time zone that's gonna change America. America's gonna change from the people here. So either we're gonna change it for the better as Muslims or we're gonna let other people change it for the worse. So it's our job as Muslims to make sure we bring about a positive change, a Kulu Koli Hada, what's dark for a Lali, what lakum. Alhamdulillahir rabbil alamin, what salat, what salam, ala Ashraf al-anbiya'i wal-mursalim, nabin al-Muhammad wa-ala alihi wa-ashabihi ajma'im, yakulu lahu ta'alaf al-karan al-karim, in al-Laha wa-malaikatu yusaluna al-Nabi, yaya ayyuhal ad-dina amanu sallu alayhi wa-salimun teslimah, Allahumma salli ala al-Muhammad wa-ala al-Muhammad. So one of the reasons why I chose Moses, Musa alayhi salatu wa-salimun, to talk about in this brief goodbye, is because Musa is the African prophet and it's Black History Month. And so I said, well, what can we talk about? Everybody has to love Moses. We have to love Moses, and we know from the Messenger of Allah that Moses alayhi salatu wa-salim was a Black man. This is an authentic hadith that the Messenger of Allah said, Moses, Luqman, and Bilal were the chiefs. He says that they were from Sudan. And Sudan in the time of the Prophet Muhammad alayhi salatu wa-salim was what meant Africa. Whenever we see, whenever we see Souda, Aswad, in the descriptions, this is not a distinction of color. This is an ethnic distinction in the time of the Messenger of Allah. When they would describe somebody as Black, they would call them Adam, Shedid al-Udmah. That man of person's skin was Black. If they was from a certain part of the world, they were called Sudanee, and we see that even today. There's a country in East Africa, and it's known as Sudan. But before all of Africa was called Bilal to Sudan. And so it's important for us to remember that the reason why Islam is the truth is because Allah has a book that doesn't describe colors of people. Even though we know how important that is in a human being's life, his race, the fact that it's not in the Holy Quran is a proof that the Quran is from God. Because if it would have been from a human being, he would have had, I mean, we see this in other religions. They make all of the people look like them.  I mean, now everybody look white, but I'm saying at one point people would make, if they had a picture of Jesus, he would look like they uncle. And so the proof that Islam is the truth is because we don't have these pictures. We don't need these physical descriptions. It's more about who the person was and what the person stood for. That's what's important to us. But the only reason why I bring up Moses' color is because America has a problem with black folks. So it's important for us as Muslims to remember one of the mightiest message of Allah was no doubt a black man from Africa. Allahumma ihdina fee man hadid. Wa afina fee man afaid. Wa to walena fee men to alayt. Inna katakti walayyukta alayk. Allahumma inshallah al-Islami wa izzul musli meen. Wa sabbid aqdam al-mujahideen fi kula makan. Wa salat wa salam ala Sayyidun al-Mursaleen. Nabi'in al-Muhammad wa ala alayhi wa sallam.


You looking to get out of here? See that statue of the hot sexy lady? It's a secret trap door. Touch her. No, I'm afraid that's not gonna do it. That's not where she likes it. And you didn't even buy your dinner first! Seriously though? No, that's not the spot either. She's looking for something a little bit south of the border. Catch my drift. Wait, before you do that. Okay, go ahead. You


Namaskaram Sadhguru, our scriptures and even our temple sculptures depict many kinds of beings like Ganas and Yakshas. Are these the same beings that are visiting Manasur over? The only two cultures which have documented this to some extent are the Indian culture has documented it hugely and the Greek culture has done it to some extent. About the nature when we say beings from another realm is only two cultures which are describing definite forms. So here we have Yakshas, Gandharvas, Dharanas, Kinnaras, Hapsaras, Kritikas and there's so many like this. I think we have well recognized beings from other realms, at least over eleven, twelve varieties of them. The Greeks also have similar numbers of probably, if not similar maybe little less but they also have recognized. I think the only place… I've never entered this place where people tell me that the best library of this kind is in Adyar in Chennai. The Theosophical Library is supposed to have immense collection of occult books which deal with all these aspects. More than the spiritual process it's the occult which explores these aspects because they are always looking how to use some kind of entity which has the necessary power, intelligence and access to do things for them. They're always looking how to enslave something to use it for their own benefit. So the occult explores these things much more than the spiritual process. But in the spiritual process I think Gautama himself talks a lot about these things. Gautama the Buddha, Buddha himself talks about a lot of different types of beings that he faced in his sadhana which invariably one is bound to face when they move into certain aspects. Particularly when we were in another place lots of things have happened but particularly when we were moving towards the consecration of Dhyanalinga these kind of beings like what are everyday happening, all kinds. I'm not good at categorizing and naming them and saying this is this, this is that. But they're distinctly different, that's for sure, no question. Very distinctly different in their energy, in their appearance, in their everything. It was all there but didn't pay attention. But elsewhere I have paid attention to some of these things but it is wasteful in many ways because none of them, at least whatever I have come across none of them will be of any spiritual significance to me. So if I paid little attention to them in the moment I realized that's not it, I took my attention on those things because they were never of any spiritual consequence. They were only existential consequence if you want to explore the existence. Yes.  Maybe there's different kind of capabilities which would look incredible to you but I'm sure your capabilities look incredible to them otherwise they wouldn't be visiting, isn't it? As they look incredible to you, you must be looking incredible to them. That's why they're visiting. These days I don't have this luxury. At that time there was no wall around the house and the morning always by like 545-6 when the sun is rising I always came and sat in the outside corridor and temple was still not there. I'm just building the temple in my mind. Every day I sit there and guessing in the direction where it should come up I'm just because I don't have the money, I don't have the material, I just don't. Only what's in my mind. At that time you know like these creatures just hung around for quite some time.  Sometimes I could not ignore them because they were so noisy. It so happened sometimes that you know like other people in the house heard the voices and noises that I was talking to somebody and they would come out and see that I was not talking to anybody. They cannot hear what but they hear something. I never spoke but they were making so many noises. You need to understand noise means the kind of noise that we make only we can make. When I say the kind of noise, well the birds can make a different kind of noise but both of us are making the same noise in terms of frequency reasonably there and that's why we can hear each other. There are other creatures here who are making other kinds of noises which you cannot hear. So usually these beings are making other kinds of noises. You cannot hear but these were making noises that like our kind of noises that is somewhere in the frequency range that we communicate in. Either they were especially making these noises for me or they also belong to the same category of noise making as we. I didn't explore all this because my thing was my time was running out, my sense was slipping so I was putting up the bricks.  So if their sound making is of the same frequency as ours it is also possible that their thought making could be reasonably about the same frequency as ours. Their body could be reasonably of the same kind of material, maybe not exactly but same kind otherwise your eyes would so easily capture it. Well you could see it if you're in a certain way other things also but not that simply like anything else that we see on a day to day basis. So are these Yaksas, Gandharvas, Ganas? I don't think so because they don't fit into any of the descriptions that the traditions talk about. They describe Gandharvas as the most beautiful human forms. Yaksas are slightly of a different kind but still reasonably human form. Ganas totally distorted, distorted means unlike human forms. So most of the temples that you see are Ganas. Why they're putting up Ganas is because Ganas have played an important role in the shaping of human consciousness because Shiva himself is a Gana because he's a Gana. Ganas hung around him, he's his people. But he put on a form, he put on a form, a human form to be effective with human beings but his friends remained in the same old arms. His form was powerful enough, impactful enough, they could manage their work without changing all of them. So Gana forms are all over the place. Being human beings, we try to make it little like ourselves, slightly distorted because we cannot imagine something which is totally unlike human. See right now we're in front of the Bhairavi temple, two Ganas are sitting like this. Maybe they didn't look like that.  We need two hands to make him look like a being in our mindset. If somebody has to look like a being, he must have hands, legs, everything, you know. Maybe they didn't have any of those things. Maybe what I saw was the real Ganas that they didn't have any form like what we think of. But over a period of time, artists, how can an artist write this and say it's a being? If I show you an irregular shape of a paper and say this is a being, you won't buy it, isn't it? At least I must cut it. Reasonably human say this is a being, little like that, you are clearly cut like this, we'll make you like this and say this is a being. Okay. At least a head and a body and some limbs, something needed, isn't it? For human mind to perceive. So over a period of time, artists might have went on transforming the forms. The point where we made a Ganapati, Jogajapati, we made a Gana into an elephant, which is a serious big change, isn't it? Not a small change, very big change. Gana-Pati means the chief of the Ganas, that's what it means. So it is not just he went and slaughtered somebody's head and put it. He told the Gana, okay, I'll take your head and put it on the human body. At least you're halfway effective. Now I have made myself into complete human form. If I put a human body for you, only the head we're not able to create, you will be quite effective and he's effective, isn't it? We accepted him because he has a human body and a Gana's head. If he sat whole Gana, we kept him outside, we didn't make him, we didn't worship him. We kept the Ganas outside the temple, but we took Gana-Pati into the temple. Why? Because he looks like us. So, he might have thought through all these things and done it. Maybe at least he needed one assistant who looked reasonably human. Is it that strong? Maybe they just came just like how we saw them in the Manasura world, just like that in bunches, in a simply a certain time. They knew in that form they cannot operate. So maybe they used the local earth to create themselves and they could shape themselves properly. It went like this like that. Among human beings everybody didn't come in the same shape, isn't it? So like that they went in many shapes and they thought it's okay. As long as one man is looking acceptable, they thought it's okay. Maybe to go to a conference he needed one more guy.