IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

The societal disruption precipitated by the pandemic in combination with increasingly challenging climatic conditions is generating stresses and forces for transformation of cities and urban neighbourhoods. As mono-functional commercial centres devolve, residential urban neighbourhoods are being analysed for their potential as geographically concentrated multi-modal centres for a 24/7 pattern of daily life, where shared architectural and urban spaces are transformed to maximise efficiency and intensity of use, while buildings are pushed to increasing levels of environmental performance. Through this process, new public and private spatial typologies will emerge to support this lifestyle pattern and respond to the critical need for resilience and sustainability. The resilience of these neighbourhoods will depend upon increasing facilitation of a meaningful camaraderie of the neighbourhood population by increasing social cohesion between strangers in the public realm. The nature and quality of the public spaces in particular are critical to this facilitation. The research presented here follows three stages to deepen our understanding through analysis of public space in the American context: a general examination of the tradition of place and space making in the American City, an in-depth examination of the evolution of the place and space making in a case-study neighbourhood of Manhattan, and the exploration of speculative design interventions to test the potential for new types of space and provoke new visions.