2021 ASLA-NY, AIA-NY, APA-NY Annual Conference

The COVID-19 Pandemic has fundamentally affected global society. In New York City, we’ve seen existing inequities exacerbated, further impacting the health and economic wellbeing of marginalized individuals and communities, making it necessary to examine and evaluate how we design and plan our City. While the past year primarily focused on finding ways to maintain the health and safety of our communities, the future needs to be about how we redefine and redistribute access to a healthy, nurturing, built environment. Paramount to this is recognizing that the way our city is designed and planned no longer effectively serves the needs of its people.

This conference seeks to bring Architects, Landscape Architects, and Planners together to explore a new paradigm of designing a city that has learned from its experience navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and is guided by new and necessary priorities to achieve a more healthy, just, and shared New York region. The conference will convene a series of panels that examine the ways in which we adapt our built environment to shifting commercial and residential needs, discuss how comprehensive planning efforts may change the framework in which our professions operate, identify avenues that equitably expand access to social and physical infrastructure, and investigate the increasing need for “third spaces” across the City.

This conference, happening over two-half-days, seeks to reflect upon new and necessary expectations placed upon our built and natural environment, redefine how our professions can best respond to these new expectations, and work to redefine the city as one that works for all. We will engage with practitioners, academics, and government officials for a dynamic series of discussions that chart a path forward for this City. Please join us as we reflect, redefine, and reinvent our City into one where all have a voice in its planning and design and can claim our right to a healthy, resilient, sustainable, and just city.