Abstract: Meeting of the Minds H. Fernando Burga By the time you, the reader, finish this Places dispatch, about two thou- sand people will have migrated from the countryside to the city. Weekly, about 1.4 million people around the globe make this arduous transi- tion. The emergence of metropoli- tan areas as home to a majority of the world’s population framed the agenda for the Meeting of the Minds conference in Oakland, California, September 11–13. The event, sponsored by the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, in partnership with Berkeley’s Global Metropolitan Studies Initiative and the statewide UC Transportation Center, brought together experts from academia, the nonprofit sector, and business to discuss challenges to metropolitan areas and explore sus- tainable strategies for transportation, land use, and urban design. Toyota USA, Inc., provided major funding, while the Urban Age Institute provided assistance in conference management. The conference’s point of depar- ture was that the growth of metro- politan areas worldwide is affecting nature, the built environment, and society in profound ways. Providing a high quality of life in the world’s metropolises will be one of the most important challenges of the twenty- first century, and is especially urgent in light of global warming. The event sought to set in motion an exchange among experts in architecture, urban design, city and regional planning, public policy, vehicle design, traffic engineering, and related fields. And it sought to show that academics and practitio- ners from different disciplines share many common problems, and could benefit from each other’s ideas and proposals. (E)MergingThoughts The support from Toyota was par- ticularly noteworthy for a conference like this. Mobility and access are a big part of the metropolitan challenge, and the company is intent on staying abreast of evolving notions about the shape an character of cities to come. The company was represented at the event by Irving Miller and Bill Reinert. Miller explained how high the stakes are: “We…will go from the current 250 million vehicles on the globe to three-quarters of a billion in the next twenty years.” For companies like Toyota, this transformation to a motorized world calls for a new vision of the relationships among manu- facturers, cities, and other sectors of the economy to produce “sustain- able mobility”—a new approach that embraces technological innovation, reduces CO2 emissions, and effec- tively manages the other social, eco- nomic and environmental challenges brought about by urbanization around the world. Echoing these thoughts, Dean Harrison Fraker of Berkeley’s CED spoke of the need for new types of vehicles that better fit urban condi- tions, especially in China, India, and other emerging economies where high densities and limited road space are the rule. “The central questions which dominate this conversation are: What will cities look like in the future? How will vehicles fit into the vision of the future?” According to Fraker, the innova- tive frame of mind must expand to include new designs for buildings, districts and regions as well as techno- logical innovations in vehicles, fuels, and their use. He also called for new “public-private partnerships which reward efficiency, technological inno- vation and social innovation.” Places like CED are the incubators for new ideas, places where new paradigms are invented and the links between theory and practice are forged. Steven Chu of Lawrence Berke- ley Laboratory also discussed the prospects for new fuels, an important direction for research and develop- ment in view of the finite supply of oil as well as the need to reduce green- house gas emissions in the next two decades. According to Chu, new fuels could reduce emissions by a substan- tial amount, but are unlikely to suffice to meet Kyoto or California standards in the time available. Ways of Thinking: Alternative Approaches, Scales, and Designs Elizabeth Deakin, director of the UC Transportation Center and co- director of Berkeley’s interdisciplinary Global Metropolitan Studies Initia- tive, noted that currently there are several alternative visions of the road ahead. ”Business as usual” will likely result in increased congestion, pollu- tion, and global warming. An alterna- tive vision emphasizes new vehicles powered by new fuels, with high tech highway operations and management to keep the traffic flowing. A contrast- ing vision focuses on coordinated land use-transportation planning to facilitate transit, walking, and biking, with the private automobile playing a smaller role. In Deakin’s assessment, the major challenge for the next decade will be to find the best path forward: “What is at stake is the character of cities; how we redesign and rethink the con- nections between engineering, land use, urban design and policy will help determine the livability of our metro- politan regions and the future of the world’s environment, economy, and social relationships.” Robert Cervero, Chair of the Dept. of City and Regional Planning Burga / Meeting of the Minds
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-10-15
Language: en
Type: article
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