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Keynote Speaker Architect and Urban Designer Ken Greenberg has played a leading role on a broad range of assignments in highly diverse urban settings in North America and Europe. Much of his work focuses on the rejuvenation of downtowns, waterfronts, neighborhoods, and campus master planning. His projects include the award-winning Saint Paul on the Mississippi Development Framework, the Brooklyn Bridge Park on the East River in New York, the East River waterfront in Lower Manhattan, the Fan Pier in Boston, the Southwest and Southeast Waterfronts in Washington, D.C., Kendall Square and NorthPoint Master Plans in Cambridge, the Downtown Hartford Economic and Urban Design Action Strategy, the implementation of the Harbourfront Master Plan and Plans for the new FilmPort (Toronto Film Studios complex) on the Toronto Waterfront and an interim role as Chief Planner at the BRA (Boston Redevelopment Authority) for the City of Boston including oversight of the Crossroads Initiative which builds on the 'Big Dig' and the Rose Kennedy Greenway. In each city, with each project, his strategic, consensus-building approach has led to coordinated planning and a renewed focus on urban design. |
CITY BUILDING// A New Convergence
While not without major challenges, these past decades have seen a revalidation of the city and a reversal of the post-war exodus as important demographic cohorts – immigration and in-migration; young people and empty nesters (and increasingly now young families) voting with their feet are repopulating city centers and older neighborhoods, seeking what cities have to offer, convenience, urbanity, cultural life, and sociability. The renewed interest in cities is also driven by the increasing globalization of economic activity. Since choice of business location is not only among cities in the same region cities but international, site location decisions, especially for the knowledge-based industries that are increasingly driving the North American economy, are to a significant degree based on the value that a particular location offers.
This in turn relates directly to the concept of place and the quality of the public realm. New more dynamic place-based models are emerging that that stress mix, overlap, shared space and flexibility and integrating ‘concepts’ at the intersection of economy, community, and environment identified by Jane Jacobs and others. This more ‘ecological’ understanding of connectedness favors solutions that bring together many kinds of skills and knowledge, challenging disciplinary silos and generating new practices and tools.