Why a Human-powered Mega City Could Have the Fastest Commutes
October 30, 2015 – 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m.
We have become so accustomed to understanding our cities as they are presented to us by the transport engineering professions that as architects we no longer see our profession as the mainspring of urban planning. This presentation will challenge such assumptions and will help architects imagine a hypothetical city of millions of people, with virtually no machines of transport at all, where average commute times are reduced by one third; in other words, a city with no transport engineering, but better transport, wholly within architects’ skills sets to design. Moving from hypotheticals to specifics, the presentation will show how space for such an alternative development paradigm exists in the hidden space of most cities; that is, in space left over after planning (SLOAP) and space left vacant as cities enter their postindustrial phase.
Register today to attend this session.
About the Presenter
Dr. Steven Fleming is the world’s leading thinker at the nexus of architecture and urban cycling. Having announced the importance of each field to the other with his internationally acclaimed book Cycle Space he has gone on to give keynotes and plenaries at such prestigious forums as the Centre for Architecture in New York, the Netherlands Architecture Institute and the European Cycling Federation’s annual event, VeloCity. He consults to governments, developers and fellow designers ready to treat cycling as a mainstream mode of transportation. He is a highly accomplished researcher and educator with appointments at Harvard (ongoing) and Columbia Universities in the U.S. and the Universities of Newcastle, Tasmania and Canberra in Australia. In the nineties he served as a government architect in Singapore where he designed and project managed 4 developments including a total of 1810 dwelling units. While in Singapore he also designed a 2.4 Hectare park, an early example of his life mission to design active environments.
This session is sponsored by HCMA Architecture + Design.