Transect Seminar, April 26-29, 2001 (New Haven, Connecticut)

The second Knight Program Seminar was co-sponsored with Yale University’s School of Architecture and took place in New Haven. The Knight Fellows focused on New Haven as a local case study that, as journalist and guest speaker Rob Gurwitt described, had attempted virtually every imaginable approach to urban renewal and revitalization since World War II. Gurwitt, who grew up in New Haven, wrote a feature article for Governing magazine chronicling the city’s redevelopment struggles over several decades.

In addition to tours of inner city neighborhoods and revitalization projects in New Haven, the Fellows visited a traditional New England village and three eras of public housing projects including: Seaside Village, a 1917 emergency war housing project in Bridgeport, Connecticut; a 1940s era “barracks style” project in New Haven; and a new HOPE VI redevelopment project directly adjacent to the 1940s complex. Guided tours were provided by city planners, journalists, and the directors of nonprofit agencies involved in downtown redevelopment initiatives, local housing authorities, historians, and preservationists at each site.

The featured program focused on the “Rural-Urban Transect Symposium,” a multidisciplinary exchange of theories and concepts from the fields of planning, ecology, landscape architecture, environmental disciplines, and architecture. The symposium explored the potential for a unified theory of land use and settlement patterns ranging from the most pristine rural preserve through to the densest urban core. Presenters included Andres Duany, Charles Bohl, Robert A. M. Stern, transportation engineer (and Knight Fellow) Rick Hall, architect Patrick Pinnell, planner and social scientist Sidney Brower, James P. Collins (professor of Biology, Arizona State University), Emily Talen (professor of Urban Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), ecologist Stephen Kellert, Diana Balmori (professor of Landscape Architecture, Yale University), housing market analyst Todd Zimmerman, and architect Leon Krier. Papers presented during the symposium were collected and are being published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Design.

The final day included sessions on the Knight Fellows’ research projects, discussion of charrette alternatives, and a session on planning and urban design in which Knight Fellows Dhiru Thadani and Peter Musty led the group in a drawing workshop. Fellows were sent maps, pens, materials, and instructions a few weeks prior to this meeting and their drawings were reviewed and discussed as part of this workshop. The session provided some architectural literacy to Fellows who had no previous experience in drawing and urban design. Drawing techniques and the role that drawings play in the community design process were presented and discussed through this hands-on workshop.