Small Town Urbanism in the 21st Century

Date: 

Monday, April 5, 2021, 12:00pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online

This program brings together three unique perspectives on the idea of “Small Town Urbanism”: Andrew Freear, Director of Rural Studio at Auburn University; Faranak Miraftab, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Todd Okolichany, Director of Planning and Urban Design for the City of Asheville, North Carolina. 

Climate change, the pandemic, telecommuting, and accelerating land costs in large cities have fueled a slow but noticeable relocation of people and services to ex-urban locales. The retreat from large cities offers opportunities to design and plan for rural and regional locations that have routinely been overlooked by investors and design & planning professionals alike. In order to do so, we need a better understanding of the major social transformations, spatial conditions, employment challenges, governing capacities, land market logics, and ecological circumstances in those smaller cities and towns that form the territorial landscape outside the large metropolises that have garnered so much attention in the contemporary `urban age.’

Learn more about and RSVP for this virtual event.