UMB President’s Panel on Politics and Policy guest Greg Lindsay discusses issues that are critical to the long-term vibrancy of cities such as Baltimore.
Photo: Greg Lindsay speaks during the President’s Panel on Politics and Policy on Feb. 22 at the SMC Campus Center.
As an urbanist, futurist, and globalist, Greg Lindsay has been studying cities and urban policy for more than two decades, and he thinks the world has reached a critical moment.
“As of about 15 years ago, more than half of humanity now lives in cities, so we are an urban species,” Lindsay said as the guest for the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) President’s Panel on Politics and Policy on Feb. 22 at the SMC Campus Center. “We’re also living in the moment where based on global population projections, human population may come close to doubling in this century before we enter permanent demographic decline, but urban land cover will triple in size.”
Being in this important moment in time, he said, is the reason he chooses to focus his work and research on the future of cities.
“The decisions that we make — and how we choose to build in and around cities — this is our once-in-a-civilization opportunity to define how big and how dense and how compact and livable our urban fabric becomes,” Lindsay said. “So, understanding that story and its implications was irresistible to me, and everything I touch sort of borders on reporting about cities and the effects of urban policy.
UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, led the conversation with Lindsay, who is a senior fellow of MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab and an urban tech fellow at Cornell Tech in New York, among numerous roles. The discussion, titled “Don’t Believe the Hype: Cities Are Alive and Well,” covered issues such as transportation, parking, housing, zoning, equity, and climate change, followed by a question-and-answer session with members of the audience of 200.