Ben Green, author of “The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future”, gave a lecture talk on January 21, 2020 where he addressed his book that placed emphasis on the perspective of data analysts and techies. The main topics of interest were as follows: Technology as the solution (smart cities), The limits of tech for social change (tech goggles) and Using technology well (smart enough cities). Throughout the lecture, Green vacillates between the good and the challenging of the implementation of technologies in cities. Green clarifies his opinion on the use of technology, emphasizing social problems are rarely technology problems, and that technology relies on non-technological innovations such as thoughtful problem solving. Embarking on the topic of smart cities, and his field of study, he also touches upon the topics of surveillance and privatization of information. Finally he draws his conclusion and the main point of his book which is the “Smart Enough City” and from the planners’ perspective, the ability to use technology well. Students and professors followed his presentation with questions about his personal work and examples of push back with such ideas. He gave leading examples of how community concepts can be implemented like Chicago’s initiative to share draft policies to the community to draw a consensus.

Reflection written by Elaine Hsieh (M.S. UP'21)

Zoning is at once a key technical competency of urban planning practice and a highly politicized regulatory tool. How this contradiction between the technical and political is resolved has wide-reaching implications for urban equity and sustainability, two key concerns of urban planning. Moving beyond critiques of zoning as a regulatory hindrance to local affordability or merely the rulebook that guides urban land use, this textbook takes an institutional approach to zoning, positioning its practice within the larger political, social, and economic conflicts that shape local access for diverse groups across urban space. Foregrounding the historical-institutional setting in which zoning is embedded allows planners to more deeply engage with the equity and sustainability issues related to zoning practice.

By approaching zoning from a social science and planning perspective, this text engages students of urban planning, policy, and design with several key questions relevant to the realities of zoning and land regulation they encounter in practice. Why has the practice of zoning evolved as it has? How do social and economic institutions shape zoning in contemporary practice? How does zoning relate to the other competencies of planning, such as housing and transport? Where and why has zoning, an act of physical land use regulation, replaced social planning? These questions, grounded in examples and cases, will prompt readers to think critically about the potential and limitations of zoning. By reforging the important links between zoning practice and the concerns of the urban planning profession, this text provides a new framework for considering zoning in the 21st century and beyond.

For more information regarding the textbook, please refer to here

Sebastian Andersson (M.S. UP'21) has been awarded a scholarship by the Sweden-America Foundation. The Foundation works for the development of a relationship between the United States and Canada, on the one hand, and Sweden, on the other, by promoting exchanges and presenting fellowships for young Swedes to study in the United States and Canada. The Foundation was founded in 1919, is under the patronage of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and counts six Nobel Prize winners amongst its alumni. Each year, the Foundation awards around 40 fellowships as part of its Fellowship Program for graduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral studies in the US and Canada.

SPAN (the Student Planning Action Network) is a student-led initiative trying to connect and mobilize urban planning/policy/design students across campuses in NYC. It aims to bring together urban planning, policy and design students from across campuses in the city and provides a space for students to think about and mobilize around their unique position within the urban planning community and their relationship to the future of the profession

They will be hosting SPAN NYC meet and greet to learn about the network and catch up on what everyone is up to these days as they start to plan their next steps and upcoming events for this Spring!

SPAN Happy Hour
Friday February 7th
6:30-9:30m at Greenwich Treehouse: 46 Greenwich Ave, New York, New York 10011

Where are you from?
Beijing, China

Where did you study for your undergraduate degree? What was your major?
UC Davis, Environmental Policy

Do you have any professional experiences?
No.

Why did you choose to study at Columbia University?
To gain practical skills

What is your interest within the urban planning field?
Sustainability and policy

What is your dream job?
Landscape Photographer

Been anywhere recently for the first time?
Grand Teton

If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be?
Fly

Where are you from?
Born in Taipei, Taiwan and grew up in Shanghai, China

What and where did you study for your undergraduate?
Architectural Studies, Sustainable Energy minor, Boston University

Why did you choose to study at Columbia University?
For the diversity, energy, and career opportunities New York City offers

What has been your favorite urban planning class so far and why?
Advanced Spatial Analysis with Leah helped me to think critically about the process, opportunity, and limitations of data collection, methods of analysis and themes such as accessibility, land change, mixture and segregation, clustering, and geostatistics. There’s so much to explore in spatial analysis!

What is your interest within the urban planning field?
International development and planning, equity, public health, climate change, historic preservation, and urban design

What is one advice that you have for the first-years?
Be open minded, do informational interviews :)

If you don’t have to start working right away after graduation, what would you be doing?
Maybe backpacking across Asia or volunteering in Taiwan!

Tell me something that most people don’t know about you.
I enjoy taking photos of buildings, baking, and biking in my free time

“Property, Personhood, Police: Racial Banishment in Los Angeles,” Wednesday, February 19, 2020, NYU Puck Building - 295 Lafayette Street
Join the NYU Urban Initiative in welcoming Professor Ananya Roy to begin the Spring 2020 Urban Research Seminar.

Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and the inaugural Director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles. Roy’s scholarship focuses on dispossession and displacement in the global South and global North as well as on the poor people’s movements that forge rebellion and insurgency. Her current research is concerned with processes of racial banishment in Los Angeles. She leads the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network, a National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network and the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Sanctuary Spaces: Rethinking Humanism. Her most recent book is Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World (University of California Press). More info

“It’s Personal!, ” Tuesday, Feburary 4, 2020, 114 Avery Hall
Hosted by GSAPPXx+, this panel discussion on the intersection of career, personal like and identity will be moderated by Julia Gemolina, Madame Architect in conversation with Angie Lee, FXCollaborative; Elaine Molinar, Snøhetta; and Jessica Myers, Here There Be Dragons. More Info

Spring 2020 Conflict Series—Feminist Urbanism: Designing Cities That Work for Women,“ Tuesday, February 25, NYU Puck Building - 295 Lafayette Street
Co-presented by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law School, the Center for Global Affairs at NYU’s School for Professional Studies, The Program in International Relations at NYU’s GSAS, the Robert L. Bernstein Institute for Human Rights, and the Office of International Programs at NYU Wagner, each Tuesday, the Conflict, Security, and Development Series will examine new research, discuss creative policy approaches, and highlight recent innovations in responding to the challenges of security and development in conflict and post-conflict situations.

Sylvia Maier, Clinical Associate Professor, NYUSPS Center for Global Affairs will discuss how feminist urban theorists have demonstrated clearly that “urban planning has a sexism problem” and highlight the impact of the routine exclusion of women and underserved communities from architecture, urban planning and urban design decision-making processes on individuals’ identity, sense of safety, citizenship and belonging. More info