Annual Conference Brings Together City Leaders

Held in February 2024, the annual student-run Wharton-Weitzman Future of Cities conference convened nearly 300 attendees for a day-long event “to bring together those who want to make cities better.” This year’s theme, Embedded Environments: Making the Invisible Visible, covered several topics including urban leadership, real estate, resilience, mobility, and decarbonization. Penn IUR co-sponsored the event.

The conference began with a fireside chat among three senior executive women: Meera Joshi,  Deputy Mayor for Operations, City of New York; Leah Johnson, Executive Vice President, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; and Thabo Lenneiye, Managing Director, Sustainable Agriculture Fund, Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, who moderated the discussion. The trio explored how leadership can shape cities.

Joshi’s scope of work encompasses the city’s public space and infrastructure, as well as housing the more than 150,000 refugees who have been sent to New York from southern borders. Joshi stressed that “building and maintaining cities is more expensive than ever” and so infrastructure has to do “double duty” and be not just beautiful but resilient and durable. Both Joshi and Johnson discussed the importance of public space. “Public space is how we unify as a city,” Joshi said. Meanwhile Johnson stressed the importance of civic engagement in the redesign of Lincoln Center’s public spaces and programming. “You can’t do anything in this city without thinking of the people you are serving, without engaging the people you are serving,” Johnson said. Johnson is trying to make that iconic arts venue better reflect the city. “Who is on the stages? Who can afford to come to Lincoln Center?” she asked. Efforts such as pay-what-you-wish programming are resulting in a more diverse audience.

The next panel discussion explored the future of post-pandemic cities through the lens of cutting-edge prop-tech and smart-city technology. “We’re at this reinvention moment,” Andrew Staniforth, CEO of Assembly OSM, said. He believes that due to high interest rates and climate change, more development will be the result of private-partnerships, rather than private-only investment. Matthew Britt, Global GM Smart Cities, Honeywell noted that recent legislation such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act have resulted in “more investment than we will see again in our lifetimes.” Still, Isabelle Granahan-Field, Investor, Camber Creek noted that the increasing difficulty of making the numbers work for development means that “driving top line revenue growth and bringing efficiency” are the priorities for many developers. John Means, Partner, McKinsey & Company, announced he is leaving his position to become a developer, and take advantage of heavily discounted office real estate. He plans to convert office buildings to residential, believing remote work has permanently changed the workplace. “Change the footprint of the city and build the city you want to live in,” said Means.

A panel discussion about the role of nature in urban resilience gathered leaders to explore strategies to improve the natural landscapes in cities. Andrew Rudd, Urban Environment Office, UN-Habitat, pointed out the urgency of addressing climate change adaptation: “We know these cities won’t get a second chance to get it right.” Erica Smith-Fichman, Community Forestry Manager, City of Philadelphia, Department of Parks and Recreation, helps to expand Philadelphia’s tree canopy. “We have to grow the urban forest equitably across the city,” Smith-Fichman said. People who ask the city for trees or tree maintenance tend to be whiter and richer. Now Tree Philly, a public-private partnership to plant and maintain trees in the city, pays stipends to be ambassadors of their neighborhoods to tell the city what the local issues are in each neighborhood, diversifying the city’s public engagement. The panel, which included Gena Wirth, Design Principal, SCAPE Landscape Architecture, and Catherine Seavitt, Chair, Weitzman School of Design, noted how climate change demonstrates the theme of the conference – or as Rudd put it, what’s “invisible until it becomes a reality.”

The final panel brought together experts to discuss the future of mobility. Laura Culp, Planning Manager, Bicycle Transit Systems (Indego), raised the importance of equity in transit access, such as discounted transit options for low-income people and engagement programs like the one Indego implemented to teach individuals how to bike. Grant Engel, Data Policy Manager, SEPTA, noted that SEPTA recently gave 22,000 cards to low-income Philadelphians as part of their Zero Fares pilot project. Contactless payment also offers another level of accessibility. Culp added that equity requires changing narratives about mobility, for example that “bike share is not for me.” Pamela Jennings, White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, DOT, noted that several federal programs address equity, such as “Reconnecting Communities,” a grant program that funds efforts to mitigate the harms of highways, and “Thriving Communities,” which aims to ensure that disadvantaged communities adversely or disproportionately affected by environmental, climate, and human health policy outcomes have the technical tools and organizational capacity to compete for federal aid. Culp summed up the sense of urgency to advance more equitable, sustainable, and innovative cities when she said that implementation of new ideas for transit cannot “can’t wait until next year, we have to do it now.”

In addition to these panel discussions, the conference included several short demonstrations of new products and services for cities. The full agenda can be viewed here.