This is a public event. Tickets are required and are available through Eventbrite. Please click here to RSVP for a free ticket.

Due
to the popularity of our Fora series, we ask that all ticket holders
arrive by 6:20 PM to claim their seats. There will be a rush line for
non-ticket holders. After 6:20, unclaimed seats will be made available
to those in the rush line.

Part of the Daniels Fora series, this discussion and debate will focus on the ways in which our mode of moving in and through cities influences our attitudes toward them, and on the relationships between physical mobility, social life, and economic opportunity.

Metropolis and Mobile Life will feature two prominent speakers on the topic of urban transportation: Federico Parolotto of the innovative firm Mobility in Chain, and Tom Vanderbilt, author of the New York Times bestseller Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).

Moderated by Dean Richard Sommer, the debate will investigate how reforming transit infrastructure through design, and the changes in travel behaviour that result, can initiate new forms of public life and new kinds of urban space. It is time to expand and elevate the level of debate in Toronto surrounding light rail vs. subways, or whether or not to tear down or restore aging expressways. We must better measure the choices we face in light of the broader effect that different modes of transit infrastructure can have on society. 

Metropolis and Mobile Life
Thursday, January 31, 2013
6:30 - 8:00 PM
Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West
Presented in partnership with Places journal.

Stage furnishings provided by Herman Miller.

Featured speakers:

Federico Parolotto, Senior Partner, Mobility in Chain
Tom Vanderbilt, Author, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

Moderator:

Richard Sommer, Dean and Professor of Urbanism, Daniels Faculty

ABOUT OUR FEATURED SPEAKERS

FEDERICO PAROLOTTO
Federico Parolotto is Senior Partner at Mobility in Chain (MIC)  which he co-founded with Davide Boazzi and Federico Cassani in 2009. MIC is founded on the belief that mobility influences the way we live. It was created with the ambition of improving the quality of our lives through a profound understanding of how we move. MIC is strongly focused on international work, providing transport consultancy to developers, master planners, and public bodies all around the world.

Parolotto began his career with SOM in the UK (1994–98) and worked with Systematica in Milan from 1998 to 2008, where he was made partner in 2006. He has been involved as a transportation planner in numerous major urban planning projects worldwide, collaborating with firms such as Foster + Partners, OMA, and other renown international design offices on several ground breaking projects.

Parlotto has been a speaker at numerous international events including the Greenbuild conference (Boston), Ecological Urbanism (Harvard University, Cambridge) in 2009, Helsinki Design Lab in 2010, Superurbano Conference in Padova in 2011, Moscow Biennale in Moscow, SPIEF in Saint Petersburg, World City Forum in Naples, and Connect Ideas Maximize Impact in Stuttgart in 2012. In 2011 he co-founded Flow(n), a MIC research team.      

Parolotto has lectured at several international universities and has written for numerous publications including Ecological Urbanism (2011) by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty and Ecological Urban Architecture: Qualitative Approaches to Sustainability (2012) by Thomas Schroepfer. He has been a member of the scientific committee for the new Milan Sustainable Transport Master Plan since 2012.

TOM VANDERBILT
Tom Vanderbilt writes on design, technology, science, and culture, among other subjects, for many publications, including Wired, Slate, Gourmet, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Vogue, Travel and Leisure, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and Popular Science. He is contributing editor to the design magazines I.D. and Print, and contributing writer to the popular blog Design Observer.

His most recent book is the New York Times best seller Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us.

Vanderbilt has given lectures at colleges and business conferences and has appeared on a wide variety of radio and television programs around the world, including NBC’s Today show, ABC’s Nightline, NPR’s Morning Edition, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the BBC’s World Service and The One Show, Fox Business, and CNN’s World Business Today, among many others.

Copies of Tom Vanderbilt's the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) will be available for sale at the event.

RICHARD SOMMER
Richard Sommer is an architect and urbanist with over twenty years of experience as a practitioner, educator, and theorist, and is currently the Dean of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. His design practice, research, and writing take the complex physical geography, culture, technology, politics, and historiography of the contemporary city as a starting point for creating a synthetic, cosmopolitan architecture. In addition to his focus on design in the context of broad trends in urbanization, Sommer has been engaged in a long-term, multi-faceted research project examining the transformation of monument making in societys aspiring towards democracy, with a particular focus on “America.” His professional and academic activity in urban design is diverse, and includes serving from 2005 to 2010, as the O’Hare Chair of Design and Development, and a Visiting American Scholar at the University of Ulster, Belfast. In this capacity he worked with government agencies, academics, and other groups to develop proposals for the design of Northern Ireland’s cities and towns as they emerge from “The Troubles.”

Before being appointed Dean at the University of Toronto in 2009, Sommer was the Director of Urban Design Programs and a member of the Design Faculty at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for a decade. He has also held many other distinguished appointments, including serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the California College of the Arts from 1995-98 and as a Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis from1993-95. He completed his undergraduate degrees in Architecture and Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, and completed his graduate studies in Architecture at Harvard University. His writings and projects have been published in Perspecta, ANY Magazine, Metropolis, JAE, Arcade, Critical/Productive, The Harvard Design Magazine, and the books Shaping the City: Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design, Supernatural Urbanism, Urban Design, Fast-Forward Urbanism and The Democratic Monument in America: A Twentieth Century Topography, among others.