GSD Talks Green Growth in Cities

“My goal is to make ‘Beantown,’ green town,” said Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino, as he kicked off the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s weekend-long conference last Friday. The conference, entitled “Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future,” was the largest in the school’s history.

The conference addressed a variety of issues concerning the evolution of cities in a world where sustainability is becoming a larger concern for planners. The event hosted speakers from a variety of disciplines including architecture, ecology, literature, history, and economics.

“The conference had to include a certain balance of some of the best practices and ideas technologies, and sensibilities we thought we be important in terms of the future,” said GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi.

According to Mostafavi, the main goal of the conference was to present a new type of thinking that could influence instruction at the GSD as well as the world outside of the school. Another overhanging goal, however, was to show how ecological urbanism and sustainability can be “responsive to needs of society and also fun.”

“We want to show that sustainability and ecology is not purely technical, and it should be enjoyable, to show how can sustainability provide pleasure,” said Mostafavi.

Mostafavi and Menino gave introductory remarks Friday afternoon. The following lectures and panel discussions were organized by themes with titles such as Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ecological Urbanism; Productive Urban Environments; Mobility, Infrastructure, and Society; Curating Resources; Engineering Ecology; and What Next.

“One of the main aims was to move understanding of ecology beyond the environmental,” said Gareth G. Doherty, the conference director and a doctoral student at the GSD.

The keynote speakers of the event were Rem Koolhaas, a professor at the GSD, and Homi Bhabha, the director of the Center for the Humanities. The event began with a roundtable discussion and proceeded with five panel discussions and a variety of informal Saturday lunchtime discussions.

Sold out within weeks of its announcement, the conference attracted guests from around the world, and enthusiasm was high, according to Mostafavi.

“After five days, I could still feel that level of enthusiasm and energy, could feel the energy day after day,” he said.

An Ecological Urbanism exhibit, on display until April 17, provides an interactive way to approaching these topics. The GSD also plans to release a book in late October that discusses topics under ecological urbanism as well as others the conference was not able to cover.

—Staff writer Emma R. Carron can be reached at ecarron@fas.harvard.edu.