Coming Events
Event Details
What Does Design Have To Do With Planning?
Free Via Zoom
Date: September 10, 2026
Time: 6:30pm EST
New York City builds a lot, but does it build well?
And who, if anyone, is responsible for ensuring that it does?
This panel brings together planners and urban designers to explore the relationship between design and planning in New York City at a moment when that relationship is under strain.
The recent disbanding of the Department of City Planning's Urban Design Unit (with little explanation and no public debate) raises concerns about whether the City has abandoned its commitment to shaping the built environment beyond the blunt instruments of use and density regulation. At the same time, the Public Design Commission, which reviews city-funded projects for design quality, has largely operated at the tail end of the development process, prompting the question of whether more proactive design input might produce better outcomes for New Yorkers.
More broadly, the panel will grapple with a tension running through contemporary planning debates: does insisting on design quality serve the public interest, or does it add unnecessary cost and friction to an already costly development process?
Meet Our Panel
David Burney
Moderator
Jack Travis
Laurie Hawkinson
Matthew Lister
Co-founder & Director of the Urban Placemaking & Management program at Pratt Institute (Architecture) and Chair of the Comprehensive Planning Committee of the City Club of New York.
Achitect member of the New York City Public Design Commission and a partner at Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects.
Managing Director for Gehl US and focuses on the intersection of real estate strategy and the design and activation of great public spaces.
Architect, educator, interior designer, and cultural design consultant based in the South Bronx.
Event Details
Can New York's Streets Be Fast, Safe, and Quiet?
Free Via Zoom
Date: September 15, 2026
Time: 6:30pm EST
Can New York's Streets Be Fast, Safe, and Quiet?
New York's emergency sirens are among the loudest in the country. Ambulances and fire trucks routinely exceed the decibel levels of a jet at takeoff. These volumes take a measurable toll on the cardiovascular health, hearing, and mental well-being of both residents and responders. The justification for sirens has always been safety. Sirens move traffic out of the way so responders can arrive more quickly. But is noise a safety necessity or a workaround for streets that were never designed with emergency response in mind? And more basically, does the difference in speed lead to better clinical outcomes? This panel takes up the question of whether noise-for-safety is a tradeoff New York still needs to make.
The conversation will cover: the public health case against high-decibel sirens; the recent push for lower-decibel alternatives; lessons learned from the experience of other cities; and street-level fixes that might reduce the frictions that justifies siren noise in the first place. Join us as we grapple with the question of whether reducing the siren noise harm means accepting worse emergency outcomes, or whether we can have quiet without compromising safety?
Meet Our Panel
Jamie Banks
Founder and President of Quiet Communities. She is a health care and environmental scientist with an extensive background in health outcomes and economics, behavior change, and policy.
Jeffrey Malamy
Director of Street Improvement Projects and Chief of Staff at NYC DOT and leads the strategic planning and execution of major street infrastructure enhancements.
Gail Brewer
​Council Member of NYC District 6, a former Manhattan Borough President, and the sponsor of a bill on emergency vehicle signaling devices
Juan Rivero,
Moderator
Special Projects Director at Village Preservation and Chair of the Programs Committee of the City Club of New York
Event Details
Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus Part 4: The Zoning Alibi
Free Via Zoom
Date: Wednesday, September 23
Time: 6:00pm EST
Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus Part 4: The Zoning Alibi
This event is part four in the ongoing program series: Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus.
Watch the recordings of parts 1-3 on YouTube.
​
This series is co-sponsored by the Village Preservation and by CNU NYC.
​
The YIMBY account of America’s affordability crisis has become conventional wisdom: restrictive zoning is choking off the housing supply and preventing new construction from bringing prices down. This story has been amplified by journalists and real estate interests, gained political traction on both sides of the aisle, and become the justification for treating deregulation as an affordable housing strategy. But does the evidence support the YIMBY narrative?
​
In Part 4 of Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus, we speak with economic geographers Maximilian Buchholz (UC Berkeley) and Tom Kemeny (University of Toronto) about research done with Gregory Randolph (Georgia Tech) and Michael Storper (UCLA/LSE) that calls into question both the relation between zoning restrictions and rising housing prices, and the efficacy of deregulation in lowering them. The panelists will make the case that no realistic construction boom would provide significant relief to cost-burdened households in major U.S. cities, and they argue that income inequality offers a far better explanation than regulation for rising housing prices. The panelists will consider the policy implications of their findings and of understanding the affordability crisis not as a problem of supply but as one of demand.
Meet Our Panel
Max Buchholz
Assistant Professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. His work focuses on the drivers of disparities in economic opportunity across and within U.S. cities.
Tom Kemeny
Professor at the Munk School at the University of Toronto. His research is focused on cities and determinants of economic performance. Current projects include an investigation of the changing geography of wealth in the United States.
Juan Rivero
Moderator
Special Projects Director at Village Preservation and Chair of the Programs Committee of the City Club of New York
