Urban Planning Newsletter
February 14, 2020
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Contributions or ideas for the newsletter can be submitted to Lorraine Liao. For jobs, internships, and fellowships, please refer to the career portal.
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Career Month
February is the Urban Planning Career Month. Upcoming events include an AICP Certificate Information Workshop, Career Fair, Alumni Speed Networking Panel, and more. You can find the calendar of events linked below.
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Lecture in Planning Series
On February 4th, Michael Batty, Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London where he is also Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, gave a talk entitled “Digital Twins, Triplets, and The Rest: Families of Simulation Models for Urban Analytics.” He explored the notion of a digital twin in computational social science and illustrates how digital systems embedded into the infrastructure of the city is suggesting that our models of the city are more closely aligned to the digital twin than we might believe. Throughout the lecture, Batty argues that “a digital twin cannot be a mirror image, it may be a replica, but it cannot be the same as the original. Instead, a digital twin might be a coupling - a relation between the original and digital- transfer of information and it is not necessarily so for a model.” He believes that the concept of a digital twin can be useful because “it forces us to think about how cities are changing and how to deal with many models of the same problem.”
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Urban Data Summer Workshop Updates
The summer workshop study on Urban Data Collection: Parking in the Ala Moana Neighborhood and its Impact on Mobility co-led by Adjunct Professor Kaz Sakamoto and Two Twelve Principal and Adjunct Professor Ann Harakawa has been gaining recognition and press attention since the publication of its report. Honolulu Civil Beat recently released two articles that highlighted some of the study’s findings. You can find the articles here and here. Additionally, the APA Hawaii Fall 2019 Newsletter also mentioned the study here.
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Student News
Tihana Bulut (M.S. UP'21) is working as an Urban Planning & GIS Intern this semester at Philip Habib & Associates.
Mariya Chekmarova (M.S. UP'20) and H.K. Dunston’s (M.S. UP'21) work was selected to be part of NYC’s Open Data Week. Their project “Cities as Spirographs” will be featured in Data Through Design, a week long exhibition showing works pertaining to the theme of “Digital Twin”. The event is produced by the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics Open Data team and Beta NYC.
This coming summer, Stefan Norgaard (Ph.D UP) will work as a visiting scholar with the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. At Wits, Stefan will be working with Professors Loren Landau and Jo Vearey to understand how new migrants to South Africa perceive and experience ‘urban governance’ in varying contexts. ACMS’ work on Socio-Spatial Transformations examines how movements of people create new social spaces while potentially transforming the institutional, economic, and physical infrastructure around them. Their work draws on quantitative, qualitative and visual methodologies, and is informed by comparative politics, human geography, and sociology. The project adds to existing work at ACMS that explores the constitution of social subjectivities and citizenship across diverse African sites which are origins, stations or destinations for people on the move.
Haoran Zhang (M.S. UP'21) worked on the LEED exam over winter break and is now a certified LEED Green Associate. She hopes to further her studies in sustainability of neighborhood development and design.
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ULI Hines Competition 2020
The ULI Hines Student Competition gives the students an opportunity to create better communities by considering economic development and urban design. This year, participants reimagined a study area in the Wynwood and Edgewater neighborhoods of Miami, Florida with visions of transforming the site into a thriving, mixed-use, transit oriented neighborhood with a positive economic impact while also enhancing the sustainability and resilience of the study area, surrounding neighborhoods, and the city at large. Kate Galbo (M.S. UP'20), Christine Ghossoub (M.S. UP'20), Eunji Kang (M.S. RED/M.S. UP'21), Joshua Shum (M.S. RED'20) proposed WEcreate, a transit-oriented, mixed-use, cultural district that highlights affordable residential units, market-rate residential units, affordable office spaces, and three large cultural centers.
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First-Year Student Spotlight
Qingyuan Li
Where are you from?
Dalian, China
Where did you study for your undergraduate degree? What was your major?
Tongji University, Landscape Architecture
Do you have any professional experiences?
No.
Why did you choose to study at Columbia University?
For New York city and Columbia’s academic reputation
What is your interest within the urban planning field?
economics and data visualization
What is your dream job?
Professor
Where’s your favorite study spot in the city?
My dorm
Do you have any hidden talents?
Writing
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Second Year Student Spotlight
Caroline Thompson
Where are you from?
Stoneham, Massachusetts
What and where did you study for your undergraduate?
Geography (Urban Studies), McGill University
Why did you choose to study at Columbia University?
I haven’t lived in New York before, and I wanted to attend an American planning school with an accomplished faculty
What has been your favorite urban planning class so far and why?
Planning Law – loved learning how words can be interpreted, and how those interpretations continue to affect planning practices
What is your interest within the urban planning field?
Sustainable, inclusive and equitable planning
What is one advice that you have for the first-years?
Dress in layers!
What is your favorite spot in New York City?
Recently went to Governors Island for the first time and loved it!
If you don’t have to start working right away after graduation, what would you be doing?
Traveling, catching up with faraway friends and family
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Upcoming Events
“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
“The Green New Deal: Shaping A Public Imagination, ” Tuesday, February 18, 2020, The Brown Institute for Media Innovation
Join Kim Stanley Robinson who will speak on the Green New Deal, followed by conversation with Dr. Maureen Raymo, Kate Wagner and Andy Revkin. In a rare stop at Columbia, Robinson will shift his focus to the present and speak on shaping public imaginations toward an embrace the Green New Deal, released one year ago. He’ll then have a climate conversation with the audience; Kate Wagner, architecture critic at the New Republic and contributor to Curbed, The Atlantic, and other publications; and Dr. Maureen Raymo, a paleoceanographer at Columbia’s Earth Institute who studies the history of climate change and sea level rise. The moderator will be Andrew Revkin, who’s been writing on global warming since the 1980s and is now directing a new Earth Institute initiative on communication and sustainability. 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
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