3 ways we can redesign cities for equity and inclusion | Vishaan Chakrabarti

Introduction and Context Setting

  • Discussion on cities' recovery from dual health and equity crises
  • Reference to post-9/11 predictions about cities that didn't materialize
  • Focus on what cities should become rather than forecasting
  • Dual challenges: pandemic + long-standing structural racism highlighted by Black Lives Matter
  • Interrelated nature of challenges: pandemic impacts disproportionately affected communities of color

New Urban Narrative Framework

  • Need for "new narrative of generosity not austerity"
  • Rejection of natural tendency toward austerity model during crisis
  • Cities worked well for prosperous, poorly for essential workers and communities of color pre-crisis
  • Three-component urban equity agenda:
    • Equitable health and housing (interrelated)
    • Sustainable urban mobility
    • Attainable social and cultural resources

Climate Change and Urban Impact

  • 70% of carbon emissions come from buildings and cars in cities
  • Opportunity for extraordinary impact at scale for environment and climate justice
  • Cities as engines of culture and commerce need reimagining

Housing Crisis and Solutions

  • Pre-pandemic: essential workers living further from jobs due to unaffordable housing
  • False choice between impoverished 1970s cities vs. "bourgeois banality" of recent prosperity
  • Cities became monocultures, losing diversity and inclusivity
  • Remote work may reduce office space demand
  • Solution: Convert older office buildings to affordable housing through tax incentives
    • Example: Lower Manhattan conversions
  • Utilize brownfield sites, railyards for mixed-income affordable housing
  • Address rent burden: people spending >1/3 income on housing costs
  • Housing is health: cannot have healthy society with housing stress/homelessness

Budget and Financing Strategies

  • Need to discuss social equity and social debt, not just financial metrics
  • Austerity leads to more cycles of hardship and economic ruination
  • May need strategic borrowing for infrastructure of opportunity
  • Cities are wealthy: NYC budget grew from $43B to almost double
  • Global phenomenon of increased municipal budgets
  • Examples: London Breed (San Francisco), Anne Hidalgo (Paris)
  • Need investment in people, not massive retraction during social need
  • Funding through deficit spending + higher taxes on thriving industries
  • Personal willingness to pay higher taxes for equitable world

Transportation and Urban Mobility

  • Concern about increased private car use post-pandemic
  • Mass transit wasn't the problem; density and transit unfairly blamed
  • Dense cities like Singapore handled pandemic better than Western cities
  • Current reality: ~30% (1/3) of urban land committed to roads
  • Majority of road space used by private vehicles
  • Need to rethink equation with equity and ecology focus
  • Solutions:
    • Express buses with social distancing capability
    • Walking and biking effective in COVID environment
    • Problem is spatial, not technological
    • Cars take too much space per person regardless of technology (autonomous, electric)
  • Cities have space for efficient, ecological, timely movement
  • Give more streets to people vs. cars for better quality of life

Community-Centered Design and Family Structures

  • Question about black families facing unemployment, gig economy, lack of property ownership, women-headed households
  • Need to go directly to communities to ask about their needs
  • Criticism of historical design focus on "man" (Vitruvian Man, Modulor Man)
  • Need bottom-up public housing that works, not top-down approaches
  • Build for actual family structures and community needs

Education and Social Infrastructure

  • Concern about COVID accelerating education inequality divide
  • Retail transformation opportunity: fewer chain stores
  • Convert empty storefronts to educational/social purposes:
    • Pop-up libraries
    • Universal pre-K classrooms
    • Vocational training
    • Senior education
  • Create "cradle to grave educational system" as street infrastructure
  • Distribute educational infrastructure diffusely across cities rather than zoning concentration

Localized Community Model

  • Paris model: essential needs accessible without cross-town travel
  • Based on agrarian village model (Japan, India examples)
  • Farmers live at intimate scale, tend fields, return to community with shared infrastructure
  • Paradigm replicable and tailorable to different cultures, places, climates
  • Human instinct for collective living beyond economic necessity
  • People naturally like being together (evidenced by missing in-person contact during remote work)
  • Village living possible at different scales for different societies
  • Ecological, fun, joyous, part of cultural life

Future of Office Work

  • Avoiding "fortune-telling" but acknowledging change
  • Post-9/11 office space predictions were wrong
  • Opportunity cost to remote work; creative industries need face-to-face contact
  • Serendipitous contact sparks innovation and creativity
  • Mixed situation likely: some reduced commutation
  • Employer-employee alignment: reduced cubicle costs + reduced commute desire
  • Cities will recover due to human connectedness need

Historical Context of Urban Change

  • Writing next book on cities changing during pandemics
  • Historical precedents: sewer/water infrastructure, light/air standards
  • Changes from tuberculosis, cholera, bubonic plague, Spanish flu
  • Current pandemic will change city form, hopefully for better
  • Building on human connectedness desire

Implementation and Political Change

  • Question about class and policy creation barriers
  • Need different sense of representation in government
  • Government reform needed including criminal justice reform
  • Diversity in representation essential
  • Rethink narratives beyond last 50 years
  • Broader representation needed for self-governance
  • Urban equity agenda requires representative democracy

Pedagogical Changes in Architecture Education

  • New role as Dean at Berkeley
  • UC Berkeley: 41% first-generation students in undergraduate body
  • Increasing diversity and inclusion goals
  • Students ask tough questions about diversifying faculty and pedagogy
  • Student instrumentality: becoming urban planners, landscape architects, architects who change narrative
  • Berkeley-Oakland community engagement (Walter Foote example)
  • Public university provides hope through passionate students and faculty
  • Pedagogy must examine everything through frame of: equitable, sustainable, attainable