New Ideas CityHello Museum

Make No Little Plans: A CONVERSATION IN TWO PARTS: Part 2. Policy and The Invisible City

Part of the Conference Pass

Watch the event on the New Museum’s Youtube channel. Tickets can be purchased on site.

As more and more people flock toward urban areas, the size and complexity of cities is growing exponentially. As a consequence, the designers shaping the cities of the future must engage with an increasingly challenging set of hypothetical conditions—critical scenarios that remain invisible in the day-to-day lives of today’s inhabitants. In light of the entreaty made by Daniel Burnham (author of Chicago’s seminal modern master plan) to “make no little plans,” how will urbanists, architects, and activists think about creating a habitat that anticipates drastic future change, overcrowding, and climate change? What are the guiding principles in an architecture that is preventative? This discussion will analyze both the extraordinary challenges of designing for unpredictable conditions, accelerated change, and the new opportunities that arise when one takes radical change into account.

Rohit Aggarwala
Professor of Professional Practice, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University (SIPA)
Rohit Aggarwala leads the sustainability practice at Bloomberg Associates and is Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He also co-chairs the Regional Plan Association’s Fourth Regional Plan for the New York metropolitan area. Aggarwala has served as Special Advisor to the Chair of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, developed the environmental program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, and led New York City’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, which created and implemented “PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York.” Aggarwala holds a BA, MBA, and PhD from Columbia University, and a MA from Queen’s University in Ontario.

Connie Hedegaard
Chair, KR Foundation, and Chair, OECD Round Table for Sustainability
In 1984, at the age of twenty-three, Connie Hedegaard became Denmark’s youngest ever Member of Parliament when she was elected as a member of the Conservative People’s Party. In 1989, Hedegaard became First Spokesperson for the Conservative People’s Party, but chose to leave politics for journalism in 1990. In 2004, she was appointed as Danish Minister for the Environment and, in 2007, was placed in charge of setting up the Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy, for which one of the main tasks was to prepare the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. She was appointed as the European Union’s first Commissioner for Climate Action in February 2010.