World Urbanists Take Manhattan - Addendum

Some of you may remember my observations in an earlier post on the wonderful event I participated in earlier this year, with New York's Forum for Urban Design. Its rare indeed to get the opportunity to discuss and debate issues of urbanism over 2 days with the chief planners for New York, Boston, London, Singapore and Toronto. Months later, I'm still thinking about some of the perspectives I debated about with my peers in these great cities. You can see my earlier comments on the discussion, titled "World Urbanists take Manhattan: Lessons learned and left" at: http://www.planetizen.com/node/24956

1 minute read

November 1, 2007, 3:59 PM PDT

By Brent Toderian


Some of you may remember my observations in an earlier post on the wonderful event I participated in earlier this year, with New York's Forum for Urban Design. Its rare indeed to get the opportunity to discuss and debate issues of urbanism over 2 days with the chief planners for New York, Boston, London, Singapore and Toronto. Months later, I'm still thinking about some of the perspectives I debated about with my peers in these great cities. You can see my earlier comments on the discussion, titled "World Urbanists take Manhattan: Lessons learned and left" at:

http://www.planetizen.com/node/24956

The reason for this post though, is that I can now share the "verbatim" transcripts as made available on the web and in book-form by the Forum. I put verbatim in quotes, as a process error led to a portion of my edits not making it into the final version. Thus a few characterizations aren't quite right, some numbers are off, and eagle-eyed readers familiar with Vancouver will see some unrecognizable street names. But in terms of the ideas and discussion, hopefully some interesting thoughts. Here's the link . maybe the debates will continue here in Planetizen.

http://www.forumforurbandesign.org/2007/10/the_2007_cities_conference_on.html#more


Brent Toderian

Brent is President of TODERIAN UrbanWORKS in Vancouver, Canada, and has over 24 years experience in advanced and innovative urbanism, city-planning and urban design. He advises cities & innovative developments all over the world, from Ottawa to Oslo, from Sydney to Medellin, from Auckland to Helsinki.

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