Next Spring, Urbanism Next will hold its inaugural national conference at Portland’s Oregon Conference Center from March 5-7, 2018.
Emerging technologies — autonomous vehicles (AVs), E-commerce, and the sharing economy — are having profound effects not only on how we live, move, and spend our time in cities, but also increasingly on urban form and development itself. SCI continues to lead in producing and organizing research nationally around these topics with a particular emphasis on the secondary impacts of these emerging technologies on things like land use, land valuation, equity, street design and sprawl.
This fall provided many opportunities for Urbanism Next to build national momentum around these topics. In late September, Co-Director Nico Larco presented at the Washington APA conference. He was invited to speak at Smart Cities Week in Washington, D.C. in early October. Later that week, he addressed the American Planning Association’s symposium on city and regional planning for AVs - also in D.C. Next up were two sessions at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning on Urbanism Next topics organized by Prof. Larco that included leading scholars from UC Davis, University of Arizona, and Virginia Tech. One of these sessions - “Autonomous Vehicles, Effects on Policy and Behavior” – featured both SCI Co-Directors Larco and Schlossberg. On October 27, Director of Research Rebecca Lewis addressed the Oregon APA and International Society of City and Regional Planners joint conference and later that week Prof. Larco, Prof. Ben Clark (PPPM), and SCI Urbanism Next Program Manager Becky Steckler led a session on Urbanism Next topics which included partners from the Oregon DOT and the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
The upcoming National Urbanism Next Conference in March will provide a forum to expand on these discussions. We invite you to join planners, architects, landscape architects, developers, academics and many others as we come together for presentations, sessions, and interactive workshops and charrettes to learn about the impact of emerging technologies on land uses, urban design, transportation, and real estate markets and the implications these changes have for social equity, the environment, and the economy.
The Urbanism Next Conference is a partnership between the University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative, the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the Urban Land Institute.
For additional details about the conference, visit the conference page. Want to receive updates as they emerge? Sign up here to join our mailing list. Registration will open in December. Please contact Becky Steckler for more information or for inquiries about sponsorship opportunities.
Blog:
Urbanism Next – How technology is shaping our cities