David Vega-Barachowitz
Lunch Speaker
Future Proofing Design: Five Models for the Future of City Building

Location: Oregon Convention Center - Ballroom (202-203)

Transportation technologies are rapidly changing how cities operate on a day-to-day basis, transforming how we move, buy and receive goods, and interact with our peers and neighbors. As the traditional function of cities as places of information and goods exchange has shifted from the physical to the digital sphere, our conventional processes for projecting and anticipating future change have failed to keep pace. Increasingly, cities are victimized by past ideas of the future, rather than in a position to project positive, progressive change. This plenary explores the idea of future-proofing design in the context of city-building and strives to unpack what it means to be projective and visionary in a design context today. The plenary considers five models for the future of the city: the Unzoned Downtown; the City-burb; the Multifunctional Highway; the Park Street; and the Electric Hub, contemplating how projective ideals of city form and quality of life can reshape how we envision the future of cities and mobility.

CE Credits for APA, AIA, and ASLA, should be available for many sessions and workshops. More information on this will be available shortly.

Presenters

David Vega-Barachowitz, WXY Architecture + Urban Design David Vega-Barachowitz joined WXY in 2019. He is a recognized leader in transportation and land use planning and has extensive experience working with cities and public sector clients. At WXY, David leads planning and urban design efforts including the Downtown Davenport Master Plan in Iowa and the Hudson Square Streetscape Plan for the Hudson Square BID. David is the former Director of the Designing Cities Initiative at NACTO, where he spearheaded the production of NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide and Urban Bikeway Design Guide. He also served as Senior Urban Designer at the New York City Department of Planning where he launched the agency’s computational design practice and has worked with NYCHA to create guidelines for infill development and neighborhood planning. David received a Master of City Planning degree from MIT and Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban Studies with Architecture from Columbia University.