Visitors

5:30pm - 7:30pm EDT March 30, 2017

Density: Through Thick and Thin - Los Angeles

An interdisciplinary symposium to explore density in Los Angeles, and its urban future in face of rising challenges and identity politics

What kind of city should Los Angeles become?

The question strikes at the heart of challenging and polarizing issues Angelenos struggle with as their city faces the effects of rapid growth and rapid urban transformation. Perhaps no issue defines the challenges faced by Los Angles, and indeed cities across North America, more than housing: Should there be more or less public housing? More or less market rate development? What should be the mix of public and private housing? And should new housing, whether public or market rate, be more or less dense?

The Syracuse Architecture undergraduate program presents the third installment of  “Density: Through Thick and Thin,” a 3-part series of discussions on re-surging issues about urban density in the 21st century.

As we face pressures of global population explosion, measurable and alarming ecological stress and related urbanization, the symposia offer an arena to discuss the current and near future status of the fundamental quality of built environments. Join us as we focus on discourse occurring in LA and a larger discussion about the various modes of urban density and their relation to environmental, economic, social, cultural and political quality.


Thursday, March 30, 5:30pm-7:30pm
Slocum Auditorium
  • Greg Goldin
    Architectural critic and writer
  • Sam Lubell
    Architectural critic and writer
  • Stuart Rosenthal
    Urban economist, professor, Maxwell Advisory Board Professor of Economics
  • Lemir Teron
    Environmental justice and policy; Assistant Professor, SUNY-ESF,
  • Jamie Winder
    Urban geographer; O’Hanley Faculty Scholar, Professor, Maxwell School
  • Francisco Sanin, Moderator
    Professor, Syracuse Architecture

Sponsored by the Syracuse Architecture undergraduate program, Associate Professor Lawrence Davis, Chair; Curated by Associate Professor Elizabeth Kamell and Assistant Professor Tarek Rakha

Participant bios
Greg Goldin

Greg Goldin was the architecture critic at Los Angeles Magazine from 1999 to 2011. In 2011, he was awarded a Getty Institute Research Grant, which led to his exhibition Windshield Perspective at the A + D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles (2013), a study of vernacular Los Angeles architecture. In summer 2013, he co-curated and co-authored Never Built Los Angeles. In 2014, he was a contributing curator to the Getty Museum’s No Further West, an exhibition about the making of Los Angeles’s Union Station. His latest book, co-authored with Sam Lubell, is “Never Built New York.”  His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Architect’s Newspaper, and Zocalo, among many others.

Sam Lubell

Sam Lubell is a staff writer at Wired and a contributing editor at The Architect’s Newspaper. He has written seven books about architecture for Monacelli Press, Rizzoli, Metropolis Books, and Phaidon. He also writes for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Architect, Architectural Record, Architectural Review, Wallpaper*, Contract, and other publications. He co-curated the A+D Architecture and Design Museum exhibitions Never Built Los Angeles and Shelter: Rethinking How We Live in Los Angeles. His upcoming exhibition with Greg Goldin, Never Built New York will open at the Queens Museum this September.

Stuart Rosenthal

Stuart Rosenthal is the Maxwell Advisory Board Professor of Economics and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Policy Research. Before joining Syracuse University in 1999, Professor Rosenthal held positions in the economics department at Virginia Tech University, the faculty of commerce and business administration at the University of British Columbia, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.  His research is in the area of urban economics, real estate finance and housing, and state and local public economics. This includes work on a wide range of housing and mortgage issues, the determinants of urban renewal and decay, the influence of agglomeration on productivity, and entrepreneurship.

Lemir Teron

Lemir Teron is on the environmental studies faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry. He currently works on municipal scale renewable energy projects; His research examines sustainability policy, urban development and environmental justice. Teron received his PhD from the University of Delaware’s Center for Energy & Environmental Policy and completed a postdoc at the NOAA affiliated Environmental Cooperative Science Center where his work explored the human dimensions of challenges related to legacy pollution, climate change and coastal communities. 

Jamie Winders

Jamie Winders is O’Hanley Faculty Scholar, Professor, and Chair of the Geography Department in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Trained as an urban geographer, she studies the relationships between immigration and racial politics, especially in the context of American cities. Beyond her work on immigration, Winders has published on topics including new and social media, social reproduction, postcolonial theory, gender, and class dynamics.

Video archive of previous Density symposia discussions