Land

Kevin Bone, Director of The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design, brings to light just how recently the impact of carbon dioxide emissions has entered into our conversation on the environment as part of The Five Thousand Pound Life: Land conference.

Eric Sanderson, author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (2009), details the previously rich ecology of Manhattan or Mannahatta, “land of many hills,” and the disruption of natural systems following European settlement in the 17th century as part of The Five Thousand Pound Life: Land conference.

Ted Steinberg, author of Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York (2014), attributes the development of New York City to the 300-year-old view of the city as a “limitless proposition” driven by the “growth imperative.”

A discussion of the role of politics and economics in the transformation of the natural environment.

Through the lens of historic and current trade routes, Klatskin, General Partner of Forsgate Industrial Partners, shows how climate change has affected the distribution of goods.

Rob Holmes details the relationship between logistics and climate change.

Jesse LeCavalier, a member of Co + LeCavalier and an assistant professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, traces the spaces and invisible networks that circulate goods, people, and resources created by logistics.

In the closing panel of the Spatial Logistics session, Alex Klatsin, Rob Holmes and Jesse LeCavalier join New York Times reporter Coral Davenport to consider how design intersects with logistics.

In the first part of the Density session, Emily Talen warns that “density is not the same thing as urbanism."

Albert Pope of Rice University urges us to “be in panic mode” in response to climate change.

Waldheim is a Canadian-American architect, urban theorist, and Chair of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He brings an academic perspective to the relationship of density and carbon, building a case for a new professional identity for the design disciplines based around a framework of ecological thinking.

In conversation with Vishaan Chakrabarti, a principal at SHoP Architects and author of A Country of Cities, members of the Five Thousand Pound Life: Density panel debate the varied forms that density does or should take.

In the closing session of The Five Thousand Pound Life: Land, activist and writer Rebecca Solnit discusses American identity formation, land and settlement patterns, and climate change with Cassim Shepard.