But how?
On Thursday, Feb. 21, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution will present “The Innovative Metropolis: Fostering Economic Competitiveness through Sustainable Urban Design."
The daylong symposium, held at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will explore the intersections between sustainable urban design and economic growth, as well as the implications of both for design practice and public policy.
“The Brookings Institution has an intense focus on U.S. urban and metropolitan issues,” says Peter MacKeith, associate dean of the Sam Fox School and associate professor of architecture.“One of the real and growing strengths of the Sam Fox School is our focus on sustainable urban design – examined both nationally and internationally, across a range of metropolitan areas.”
MacKeith organized the symposium with Rob Puentes, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative, thanks to a grant from the joint WUSTL-Brookings Academic Venture Fund, and with major support from the George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Foundation and Mr. Gerry Ohrstrom.
“We’ve identified this mutual common ground with the Brookings, and hope to explore best practices in sustainable strategies and tactics that might foster economic development and, by extension, job growth,” MacKeith says.
“Good design, good public policy and a good economy should mutually reinforce each other,” he adds. “Ideally, there should be a constant toggling back-and-forth, so that one proposes design while considering policy implications, and proposes new policy while considering design.”
WUSTL Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution, will open the symposium with welcome remarks.
Bruce Lindsey, dean of architecture and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration, and John Hoal, associate professor and chair of the Master of Urban Design program, will lead a Sam Fox School team of participants, including Christof Jantzen, WUSTL’s I-CARES Professor of Practice; assistant professor of architecture Seng Kuan; and visiting professor of urban design Oliver Schulze, principal of Schulze + Grassov in Copenhagen.
In all, participants will include more than 20 domestic and international experts, representing both organizers, as well as the London School of Economics and Political Science, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and other institutions and private firms.
Although hosted by the Brookings Institution, the symposium will be available to the campus community and the public at large via web simulcast. (The simulcast is free but advance registration is requested; click here for details.) In addition, the Sam Fox School will host a remote viewing in Givens Hall.
“Sustainable urban design is a major focal point for the Sam Fox School – as our recent "Urbanisms" conference last fall demonstrated,” MacKeith says.
“The aim here is to thread together the virtues of all that we do, in architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, with the interests and expertise of the Brookings Institution—and so to produce an even stronger fabric for education, professional practice and metropolitan policy.”