Urbanism Next Conference Session Highlighted in Citylab
Quick post-conference update! We are working on a full conference report and will soon have videos of the plenary speakers to share, but in the meantime we wanted to highlight an article that Citylab’s Laura Bliss wrote about “The Ama-zoning of America” session. (We are delighted that she was not only in attendance but that she also moderated one of the plenary discussions! Link coming soon…)
In “The Ama-zoning of America,” panelists Rick Stein (Urban Decision Group), Kelly Rula (Seattle Dept. of Transportation), Justin Robbins (HDR), and Jason Sudy (OHM Advisors) discussed the future of car-oriented suburban retail…or perhaps the lack thereof? Check out the article for a full write-up!
Re: moving targets of Bliss’s piece, internet retailers, seem to be leading the dystopian charge. Our affinity for “cocooning” (a la Faith Popcorn) suggests we no longer crave the roar and smell of the crowd as another class of urban destroyer, the shopping center, is abandoned in turn. Maybe preoccupation with hygiene and sanitation have set us on a sterile path, the perfume industry the most subversive influence. Or maybe hypercommercialism has simply become the easy moral background, the siren song of our culture. Could it be that the future is already here, as our appetite for techno-fixes continues along with confusion about what we should expect of a city?