Island Press Events

Van Alen Institute

30 W. 22nd St

Ground Floor

New York, NY 10010

Suburbs deserve a better, more resilient future—and June Williamson shows that they can be reinvigorated through inventive design. Drawing on award-winning design ideas for revitalizing Long Island, she offers valuable models not only for U.S. suburbs, but also those emerging elsewhere with global urbanization. Williamson argues that suburbia has historically been a site of great experimentation, and is not destined to remain filled with strip malls and excess parking lots. Providing a broad vision of suburban reform based on the best schemes submitted in Long Island’s highly successful “Build a Better Burb” competition, she presents designs that operate at a regional scale, tackling systems such as transit, aquifer protection, and power generation. Join June Williamson;  Rob Lane, Senior Fellow at RPA; Kazys Varnelis, Director of the Network Architecture Lab at GSAPP; and Jocelyn Wenk of the Long Island Index as they discuss pragmatic yet visionary strategies to take the sprawl out of suburbia, creating a vibrant, new suburban form.

Great City

1301 1st Avenue

Door on your right, 1/4 of the way down Harbor Steps

Seattle, WA 98101

Urbanism Without Effort is a new book authored by Great City Board Member Charles R. Wolfe which explores “what happens naturally when people congregate in cities—innate, unprompted interactions of urban dwellers with each other and their surrounding urban and physical environment.” The author, whose work regularly appears in The Atlantic and Huffington Post, explores underlying rationales for urban policy, planning and regulation from a historical perspective, with an eye for the everyday uses of urban space. He draws on his professional experiences as a land use and environmental lawyer, providing compelling vignettes from everyday urban life. Great City's brown bag lunch events are free and open to the public.

The King's English

1511 South 1500 East

Salt Lake City, UT 84105

Bob Keiter will read from and discuss To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea which argues the goal of the national parks system “to conserve unimpaired” is not as straightforward as it seems. Keiter traces the history of the national park idea from its inception to its uncertain future. Ultimately, Keiter demonstrates that parks cannot be treated as special islands and must be managed as critical cores of a larger ecosystem. Today’s mandate must remain to conserve unimpaired – but Keiter shows how the national park idea can and must go much farther.