Sustainable urban design expert to argue for "streetcar cities" at U of M Center for Transportation Studies event

Who: Patrick Condon, sustainable urban design expert, professor and senior researcher with the Design Centre for Sustainability at the University of British Columbia
Topic: “Flat City: The Streetcar City and the Revival of the American Dream”
Where: A.I. Johnson Great Room, McNamara Alumni Center, 200 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis
When: 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 8

Sustainable urban design expert Patrick Condon will address the idea of “streetcar cities” and argue why this kind of city plan is again desirable for our future quality of life at the University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies fall luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 8, in the A.I. Johnson Great Room, McNamara Alumni Center.

Condon’s presentation, “Flat City: The Streetcar City and the Revival of the American Dream,” will challenge the idea that North American cities should be designed with high-density "pointy" centers and gradually flatter edges that slope out to the countryside. This urban design contrasts starkly with what most of these cities were at their most powerful: flat and homogeneous in form and density across large urban landscapes. In that first manifestation of the American Dream, residents of the grid-formed streetcar cities produced almost no greenhouse gas from their transportation choices—either on foot or by streetcar.

Since then, metropolitan governments have invested huge resources in supporting what might be called a “centers strategy” at the expense of everything in between, Condon says. But the vast amount of urban space in between offers the framework of a uniquely North American world where the middle class first gained access to single-family homes—the Streetcar City.

Condon is professor and senior researcher with the Design Centre for Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Condon’s book “Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities: Design Strategies for the Post-Carbon World” will be available for sale at the event, and he will sign copies after the luncheon presentation.