Urban Studies expert offers solutions for the future
There are estimates that the U.S. population could reach 438 million by 2050. Where will these people be housed? What kind of metropolitan regions will they live in? Will these regions be sustainable or equitable or even livable?
Is it only a dream that we can create sustainable, healthy, resilient, green, and equitable cities? Christina Rosan considers these questions in her talk titled “Reimagining Cities to be Sustainable, Healthy, Resilient, Green, and Equitable” on Wednesday, October 27, 2021 at 5:30 p.m. via Zoom as the OHC’s 2021–22 Kritikos Professor.
Rosan contends that the challenges facing our cities in the global climate emergency are enormous. We need to question our current political, economic, social, and ecological arrangements and the way that they are expressed in our planning decisions and the metropolitan landscape. But rather than despair, we should reimagine a different path forward. We must go big on our solutions. Many of the solutions we need are already being implemented in some form in cities across the globe.
According to Rosan, “We…need collaborative urban governance where urban agriculture, urban
greening, affordable housing, and other community infrastructure like schools, public transit, parks, hospitals, and grocery stores are planned for together. Together, these are the building blocks of sustainable, equitable, and resilient communities, which will be critical as we face the climate challenges ahead.”
Christina Rosan is an associate professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. She is an affiliated faculty member in Global Studies, the Master of Public Policy Program, Latin American Studies, and the Center for Sustainable Communities. Her monograph Governing the Fragmented Metropolis Planning for Regional Sustainability, published in 2016, examines metropolitan governance and land use planning in Boston, Denver, and Portland, OR.
Rosan is active in the Philadelphia sustainability community, where she is helping to develop inclusive, community-led, intersectional, and reparative planning processes and policies to create a racially-just and climate-ready city.
Her forthcoming book (co-authored with Stephen Wheeler) Reimagining Sustainable Cities will be published by the University of California Press in December 2021. Rosan and Wheeler ask big-picture questions: How do we get to carbon neutrality? How do we adapt to a climate-changed world? How can we create affordable, inclusive, and equitable cities? Rather than dwelling on the analysis of problems, the authors prioritize solutions-oriented thinking—surveying historical trends, providing examples of constructive action worldwide, and outlining alternative problem-solving strategies.
Rosan’s lecture, the first in the OHC’s 2021–22 “Imagining Futures” series, is free and open to the public. Register.