Crossing City Limits

A conversation with soundscape researcher Edda Bild about urban sounds, why they matter in an urban context and city strategies to manage it for better urban living.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

19 Edda Bild PhD, Urban auditory experience / Québec

Biography:

Dr. Edda Bild is currently a research associate at the Institute for Work & Health, working on a project looking at the workplace safety of newcomers to Canada in the context of increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in the workplace.

Bild is a qualitative researcher with experience working on public health, with a focus on the everyday experiences of diverse urban populations and a broader interest in knowledge transfer and public outreach and education. Before joining the Institute in July 2023, she worked for four years as a postdoctoral fellow and lead soundscape researcher and educator in the Sounds in the City team at McGill University – where she is still active as a collaborator

Bild completed her PhD at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Amsterdam in 2019. Prior to her PhD, she trained in sociology and political sciences and holds a joint master’s degree in international migration and social cohesion.

Source: https://iwh.on.ca/people/edda-bild

Education:

University of Amsterdam, PhD
PhD title "The urban auditory experience: linking uses, users and environments".

University of Amsterdam & Deusto, MSc
MISOCO (Interdisciplinary Research Master in Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science)

University of Bucharest, BA
Political Sciences

Romanian-American University, BA
International Business

Workplace: Institute for Work and Health, Toronto (Ontario)

Current living city: Montreal (Quebec).

Web:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edda-bild/

Websites of interest: 

Sounds in the City partnership official website

https://www.sounds-in-the-city.org/[EB1]

The Rest Is Just Noise

https://www.justnoisepod.com/

Publications:

Books (chapters):

· Bild, E., Huijsman, M. & Zentschnig, R. (2020). Sound as city maker: developing a participatory-collaborative process to work with sound as an urban resource. The case of Mr. Visserplein (Amsterdam, NL). In Bull, M. & Cobussen, M. (Eds.) Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies. Bloomsbury Press.

· Bild, E., Steele, D., Pfeffer, K., Guastavino, C. & Bertolini, L. (2018). Activity as a Mediator between Users and their Auditory Environment in an Urban Pocket Park: A Case Study of Parc du Portugal (Montreal, CA). In Aletta, F. & Xiao, J. (Eds.) Perception-driven approaches to urban assessment and design. IGI Global.

Papers (selected):

o   Bild, E., Steele, D. & Guastavino, C. (2024). Supporting the Living Laboratory: A Literature Review of Montreal Sound-Related Research, Journal of Planning Literature (1): 16.

o   Bild, E., Steele, D. & Guastavino C. (2022). Festivals and events as everyday life in Montreal’s entertainment district. Sustainability 14(8), 4559. Special issue on Designing Sustainable Urban Soundscapes. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084559

Media engagement:

1.         Guest speaker podcasts:

•          Jul 2024: “The Show” with Mark Brodie: “How the way a city sounds can shape the way we live”

•          Aug 2022: “CANADALAND: #806 Sh*tty Cities: What might better, more sustainable cities look (and sound) like?”

•          Apr 2020: “The Rest is Just Noise”, “Musikiosk, Misters, and More! with Dan Steele and Edda Bild”

2.         Expert interviews:

•          Chapter 5: “The Hearing City”, in Bruntlett, C., & Bruntlett, M. (2021). Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives. Island Press.

•          “L’environnement sonore de Montréal : création d’un partenariat multidisciplinaire” – public communication video sponsored by the City of Montreal (French): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIZXHU7sKb4&t=11s&ab_channel=MultimodalInteractionLab

•          “Écoutez Montréal : les ambiances sonores au centre-ville | Listen up Montreal: downtown soundscapes” – public communication video sponsored by the City of Montreal (French)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-U8tPuLCQE&t=3s&ab_channel=MultimodalInteractionLab

3.         Op-eds & other contributions:

•          Bild, Edda, Cynthia Tarlao, Catherine Guastavino, and Caroline Stamm. “Why should you care about sound? An introduction for urban practitioners to making cities sound better”. Trilingual op-ed (“Pourquoi se préoccuper du sonore? / ¿ Por qué deberías preocuparte por lo sonoro?"). Issue #55: Health, City and Architecture, of the Notas CPAU magazine (published by El Consejo Profesional de Arquitectura y Urbanismo / Architecture and Urbanism Professional Council of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Key words:

Soundscape, soundscape design, urban design, public space, urban planning, Montreal

Episode production:

Soundscapes by Edda Bild.

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

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CrossingCityLimits_LinkTree

April ‘25

A conversation with June Williamson about retrofitting suburbia, designing suburban futures, and urban design strategies.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

18 June Williamson, Retrofitting suburbia / Tucson

Tucson soundscapes by June Williamson and Eduardo Guerrero.

Biography:

June Williamson is professor of architecture at The City College of New York's Spitzer School of Architecture. She has consulted, taught and practiced architecture and urban design in Boston, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Los Angeles and, currently, New York City. In addition to the book’s co-authored with Ellen Dunham Jones, she wrote "Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb," documenting an urban design ideas competition for Long Island.

Source: https://retrofittingsuburbia.com/

Education:

M.U.P., Urban Design, The City College of New York, CUNY, 2005.

M.Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994.

B.A., Yale University, 1989.

Workplace: The City College of New York.

Current city: New York.

Web:

https://retrofittingsuburbia.com/

https://ssa.ccny.cuny.edu/people/june-williamson/

Websites of interest: 

National Press Foundation. June Williamson on the Suburbs After COVID

https://youtu.be/51AS8T-qs_c?si=LzAuBuJIABAcNKXu

The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York

https://ssa.ccny.cuny.edu/people/june-williamson/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/williamson_june/

Publications:

Books:

_Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges. With Ellen Dunham-Jones (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2021).

_Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb (Island Press, 2013).

_Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs. With Ellen Dunham-Jones (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2008, updated edition 2011).

Articles and Book Chapters:

_“Incremental Metropolitanism: An Assessment of Retrofitting Suburbia’s Endgame,” Peripheral Centralities: Instances of Anticipatory Urbanism, Nicholas A. Phelps, Roger Keil, and Paul J. Maginn, eds. (Berlin: JOVIS Verlag. (2025).

_“Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges.” With Ellen Dunham-jones; In The New Australian City: The Suburban Evolution, Guy Gibson and Ross Elliott, eds. (Redland Bay: Connor Court Publishing, 2024).

_“What Colors are the Crabgrass?” Urban Omnibus, October 31, 2024. https://urbanomnibus.net/2024/10/what-colors-are-the-crabgrass/

_“Five Myths About the Suburbs,” Washington Post, October 2, 2020.

_“Urban Design Tactics for Suburban Retrofitting” in Emily Talen, ed., Retrofitting Sprawl: Addressing Seventy Years of Failed Urban Form (University of Georgia Press, 2015).

_“Protest on the Astroturf at Downtown Silver Spring: July 4, 2007” in Christopher Niedt, ed., Social Justice in Diverse Suburbs: History, Politics, and Prospects (Temple University Press, 2013).

_Organizer, ParkingPLUS Design Challenge (2013-14) and Build a Better Burb Ideas Competition (2010).

Buy the books here:

Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, Updated Edition

Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges

Key words:

Suburbia, retrofitting suburbia, urban design, landscape architecture, architecture, planning, designing suburban futures, urban design strategies, New York, Tucson.

Episode production:

Soundscapes by June Williamson and Eduardo Guerrero.

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

Please subscribe on your favorite platforms.

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January ‘25

A conversation with Walter Hood about Black landscapes matter, difference, sameness postcolonial, and cultural aspects of design.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

17 Walter Hood, Black landscapes matter / Oakland

Oakland soundscapes by Eduardo Guerrero.

Biography:

Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally.

He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and the 2021 recipient of the Architectural League’s President’s Medal award.

Source: https://www.hooddesignstudio.com/team

Education:

Bachelor of Landscape Architecture. North Carolina A&T State University. 1981.

Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture. The University of California, Berkeley. 1989.

Master of Fine Arts. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 2013.

Studio arts and sculpture, exploring the role of sculpture and urbanism.

Workplace: Hood Design Studio, Oakland, California.

Current city: Oakland

Web: https://www.hooddesignstudio.com/

Websites of interest: 

TED talk: How urban spaces can preserve history and build community.

https://www.ted.com/talks/walter_hood_how_urban_spaces_can_preserve_history_and_build_community?subtitle=en

GSD, Harvard

https://aadn.gsd.harvard.edu/people/walter-hood/

Instagram: Hood Design Studio

https://www.instagram.com/hooddesignstudio/?hl=en

Publications:

_Black Landscapes Matter. Edited by Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada.

University of Virginia Press (December 9, 2020)

Buy the book here:

https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5389/

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Landscapes-Matter-Walter-Hood/dp/0813944864

ASLA, award of excellence

https://www.asla.org/2021awards/2794.html

_Urban Diaries. Spacemaker Press, 1997.

_Blues & Jazz Landscape Improvisations. Poltroon Press, 1993.

Key words:

black lives matter, black landscapes matter, urban design, landscape architecture, architecture, postcolonial, heritage, memory, race, stewardship, art, culpture, California, Oakland, Berkeley, Community Whisperer

Episode production:

Soundscapes by Eduardo Guerrero.

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

Please subscribe on your favorite platforms.

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August ‘24

A conversation with urban designer Daniel Parolek about Missing middle housing, and the car-free urban housing project Culdesac.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

16 Daniel Parolek, Missing middle housing / Berkeley

Berkeley soundscapes by Eduardo Guerrero.

Biography:

Dan is an architect, urban designer, and the founding principal of Opticos Design, which has grown into a nationally sought-after company of thought leaders in urban placemaking, innovative housing design and policy, and zoning reform. He has been featured in many high-profile publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NextCity, and Professional Builder. Dan coined the term Missing Middle Housing and is a champion of the now-international Missing Middle Housing movement. He recently presented on the topic at the Chicago Humanities Festival. Dan also co-authored the book, “Form Based Codes,” which Planetizen called “one of the top planning books of 2007” and co-founded the non-profit think tank, the Form-Based Code Institute. He released the book Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis, also a top urban planning book of 2020. In 2023, Dan was voted one of Planetizen’s 100 Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present.

His innovative work is diverse across public and private sector clients and includes the master plan, building type design, and architecture for Culdesac Tempe, which will be the largest car-free community in the country when completed; the country’s first Missing Middle Neighborhood in the Omaha, Nebraska metro; a citywide Missing Middle Plan for Sacramento, California; one of the most advanced applications of Form-Based Coding in Cincinnati, Ohio; and a sustainable growth strategy for Libreville, the capital city of Gabon, Africa.

Prior to founding Opticos Design, Daniel worked with Robert A.M. Stern in New York City on a broad range of projects including a professional baseball stadium and homes for Michael Eisner and Jon Bon Jovi. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Urban Design from the University of California at Berkeley. Daniel loves to travel internationally, particularly in Italy.

Source: https://opticosdesign.com/about/staff/daniel-parolek/

Education:

Master of Urban Design. University of California, Berkeley.

Bachelor of Architecture. University of Notre Dame.

Workplace: Opticos Design, Berkeley

Current city: Berkeley

Web: https://opticosdesign.com/

Websites of interest: 

https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

https://courses.planetizen.com/course/missing-middle-housing

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/author/dan-parolek

The 100 Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present (2023 Planetizen)

https://www.planetizen.com/features/124594-100-most-influential-urbanists-past-and-present

X: @DanielParolek

Publications:

Missing Middle Housing,

Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis.

Island Press, 2020

Buy the book here:

https://islandpress.org/books/missing-middle-housing#desc

Form-Based Codes,

A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities, and Developers

By Daniel G. Parolek, AIA, Karen Parolek, and Paul C. Crawford, FAICP

John Wiley & Sons, 2008

Buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Form-Based-Codes-Municipalities-Developers/dp/0470049855

Key words:

#MissingMiddleHousing #zoningreform #walkableurbanliving #equity

participatory design, citizen participation, grassroots urbanism, community-based stewardship,

car-free, urban housing, California, Berkeley

Episode production:

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

Soundscapes by Eduardo Guerrero.

Please subscribe on your favorite platforms.

CrossingCityLimits_LinkTree

April ‘24

A conversation with Abby Ivory and Anna Dorn about Hack-A-House, a “hackathon” style competition for innovative solutions in housing affordability.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

15 Abby Ivory and Anna Dorn, Hack-A-House / Salt Lake City

Hack-A-House

Hack-A-House is an annual 24-hour “hackathon” created to engage students in proposing innovative solutions to address the housing affordability crisis. Students are encouraged to engage with peers, our industry experts, and our competition judges in an exploration of housing affordability. Through innovation, participants can help solidify economic opportunity for vulnerable populations in their communities and beyond.

Students will receive a prompt at 12pm MT on September 22nd and will have 24 hours to complete and pitch their proposal for an innovative and scalable solution to a prompt in one of the following categories:

Construction & Design

Finance

Policy & Regulatory Reform

Teams will tailor their solutions to fit their selected theme and participants are encouraged to consider how their solution interacts with existing policy, finance, and/or construction and design practices.

Co-sponsors include: The University of Utah, The University of California at Berkeley, The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, The University of Arizona, and The University of Denver.

There is no limit to the number of student teams able to participate from each school.

Teams may consist of one student and have a maximum of five students.

Any student from an accredited college or university is encouraged to participate, no matter their experience of background!

Competition judges will be listed on the Hack-A-House website at

hackahouse.org

Ideas will be judged by their feasibility, uniqueness, and adherence to the prompt released on September 22nd at 12pm MT. Once the competition begins, participants will have access to a wide array of online resources that will help them understand the issue and prepare their presentations.

Four prizes will be awarded, totaling $12,000:

Overall winner - $5,000

Category winner - $3,000

Category winner - $3,000

People’s choice award - $1,000

Once the competition begins, participants can access a wide array of online resources that will help them tackle the issue and prepare their presentations. These will include links to informative articles and short videos featuring expert practitioners and faculty discussing key issues.

Biography

Abby Ivory - Ivory Innovations was born while Abby was working on the Impact Investing team for the Sorenson Impact Center. Prior to her experience in impact investing, she worked as an intern focused on researching Green Bonds with Equilibrium Capital in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Abby graduated with a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Utah in 2016 with an emphasis in Sustainability.

Anna Dorn - Anna graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in finance and a minor in management. She joined the Ivory Innovations team as a student associate during her junior year of college, then joined the team full time in May 2023. She became more passionate about affordable housing throughout this time and enjoys being able to connect with companies that are truly making a difference. Anna interned for Jones Lang LaSalle on the Salt Lake City capital markets team and served as a mentor for the Goff Strategic Leadership Center.

Workplace

Ivory innovations

Hack-A-House

https://ivoryinnovations.org/hackahouse 

Key words:

Student competition, housing affordability, housing crisis, innovative solutions, construction and design, Finance, Policy and regulatory reform, teams, sustainability, Utah, Salt Lake City, The University of Utah, The University of California at Berkeley, The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, The University of Arizona, and The University of Denver.

Episode production:

Soundscapes by Anna Dorn.

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

Please subscribe on your favorite platforms.

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August ‘23

A conversation with Landscape architect Hugo Bruley about Paris urban life, constraints and beauty, and the work of HBLA office.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

Paris soundscapes by Hugo Bruley.

14 Hugo Bruley, Landscape architecture / Paris

Biography:

Hugo Bruley is a French landscape architect and founder of HBLA – Hugo Bruley Landscape Architecture, in Paris.

For over a decade, he gained experience working in international landscape architecture firms such as Integrated Design in India, Peter Walker & Partners in San Francisco, or Michel Desvigne in Paris. 

He has worked on a great number of projects, very diverse in scale and nature. Involved at every stage of the project’s development and implementation, he now has a complete approach of the landscape architecture field. Hugo is also Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Loire Valley Institute of Technology (INSA-ENP) in Blois, France. He previously taught at the University of California, UC Berkeley and the Paris-La Villette Architecture School in Paris.

Education:

Master of Landscape Architecture · College of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning · University of California, Berkeley · USA · 2011

Master Ingénieur Paysagiste · National School for Higher Studies in Nature and Landscape Architecture · Blois · France · 2008

Office / Workplace:

HBLA is a landscape architecture and urban planning office based in Paris.

HBLA designers imagine projects in various countries, working alongside public or private entities. Among the office’s core values is the belief that landscape architecture stands as an essential practice to the resolution of some of the most important challenges faced by our societies. It implies a fundamental multidisciplinary approach, which leads us to work with all environmental design practices such as architects, urban designers but also city and traffic planners, artists or even historians. Every project’s challenges design the specific collaboration we aim for. Therefore, the work of the office spans over a wide diversity of projects varying in scale, nature, and context, from large urban and territorial planning studies to the design of public spaces, urban parks, or gardens. Since scales engage with one another, HBLA is focused on maintaining a versatile practice. Reaching far beyond a green trend, the office uses tools of landscape and geography to create strong yet sensitive landscapes through simple but impactful interventions. Each project is an opportunity to (re)connect a site with its identity and larger context.

Distinctions & Publications:

2020 Oct. · AMC n° 290 · Requalification du Quai de Southampton · Le Havre · France

2020 · Equerre d'Argent · Requalification du Quai de Southampton · Le Havre · France · (Hugo Bruley Project Director for MDP)

2015 Jan. · AM Architecture du Maroc n°63 · Concours Habitat Durable, Economique et Innovant

2015 · AM Architecture du Maroc n°63 · Concours Habitat Durable, Economique et Innovant · first prize

2014 · Vision42 Design Competition · New-York · USA · first prize

2011 · Everyday Landscape: Designing for informal uses at the edge. The Case of the Mission District San Francisco · Master thesis · UC Berkeley

2011 · Geraldine Knight Scott Fellowship

2011 · American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) · Merit Award

2008 · JOLA Journal of Landscape Architecture · Young Professionals Competition

Website:

https://hbla-landscape.com/en/projects/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hugobruley_landarch/?hl=fr

Key words:

Landscape architecture, urban design, sustainability, participatory design, restoration, public space, inhabitants, quality of life, France, Italy, Paris, Tuscany

Episode production:

Soundscapes by Hugo Bruley.

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

Please subscribe on your favorite platforms.

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June ‘23

A conversation with associate professor David de la Peña PhD about Participatory design, grassroots urbanism, and community-based stewardship.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

Sacramento soundscapes by David de la Peña.

13 David de la Peña PhD, Participatory design / Sacramento

Biography:

David de la Peña is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design in the Department of Human Ecology, and also a member of the Geography and Community Development Graduate Groups. He received his Masters in Architecture from UT Austin, and his Masters in Urban Design and PhD in Environmental Planning from UC Berkeley. His research focuses on participatory design and planning methods, social housing, sustainable architecture, and urban agriculture. Current projects include an analysis and design for urban farms and community gardens in Sacramento, an examination of grassroots urbanism and housing in Barcelona, and a comparative study of community-based stewardship between California and Chile.

Source: David de la Peña | Department of Human Ecology (ucdavis.edu)

Education:

Ph.D., Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. University of California, Berkeley, 2013

Master of Urban Design. University of California, Berkeley, 2006.

Master of Architecture. University of Texas at Austin, school of Architecture, 1998.

Bachelor of Arts, German. California State University, Fullerton, 1994.

Workplace: University of California Davis, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture + Environmental Design

Current city: Sacramento/Barcelona

Websites of interest: 

https://humanecology.ucdavis.edu/david-de-la-pena

Web: David de la Peña – Architect, PhD, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture + Environmental Design at UC Davis (daviddelapena.com)

Twitter: @dsdelapena

Publications:

2017 De la Peña, David, Diane Jones Allen, Randolph Hester, Jeffrey Hou, Laura Lawson, Marcia McNally, editors. Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity. Island Press. (2017) Received EDRA / Places Book Award 2018.

Journal articles:

2020 Boults, Elizabeth and David de la Peña. “Drawn to Place: A Summary of the CELA2019 Sketch Crawl.” In Landscape Journal. 37:2 2018, pp. 137-141.

2019* De la Peña, David. “Beyond Guerrilla Urbanism: Can Batlló and the Slowness of Knowing, Managing, and Making.” In Urban Design International, Special Issue: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Social Practice of Urban Design.

2015* De la Peña, David, Randolph Hester, Jeffrey Hou, Diane Jones Allen, Laura Lawson. “Together We Design: Landscape architects offer their best techniques for transactive form-making.” Landscape Research Record 03.

2015* De la Peña, David. “Edible Sacramento: Soil Born Farms as a community-based approach to expanding urban agriculture” in Keane, Tim, ed., “incite Change | Change insight”. New Prairie Press.

2015** De la Peña, David. “New Landscape Urbanisms: Promising new paths for urban design. Journal of Urban Design.

2015 Cole-Weiss, Alex and David de la Peña. “International Garden of Many Colors.” The Community Greening Review, Journal of the American Community Garden Association. Volume 20.

(*peer-reviewed, **invited)

Key words:

participatory design, citizen participation, grassroots urbanism, community-based stewardship, urban design, California, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, Chile, Villarrica, Lago Villarica

Episode production:

Soundscapes by David de la Peña.

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

Please subscribe on your favorite platforms.

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April ‘23

A conversation with Professor Carlos Moreno about the 15-minute city, one of the urban planning concepts embraced by the United Nations Habitat on their latest World Cities Report 2022.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

Paris soundscapes by

Mémo Dumay, sound artist, musician / Paris

https://memodumay.tumblr.com/

12 Carlos Moreno, 15-minute city / Paris

Biography:

Carlos Moreno was born in Colombia in 1959 and moved to France at the age of 20. He is a Senior University Professor, an international expert of the Human Smart City, and a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. This scientist and humanist describe his exceptional career as a path guided through and through by passion: a passion not only for innovation, creativity and exploration but also one for sharing, connecting, and building ties with others. A journey on which he has explored a variety of disciplines and fields in a wide range of spheres – teaching, research, business and industry – strong in his conviction that innovation springs from interaction among them.

TEACHING, RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTATION

Carlos Moreno swiftly joined France’s scientific community in 1979. In 1983 he became a researcher and lecturer at the IUT in Cachan at the Université de Paris Sud, working in the computer science and robotics laboratory (LIMRO). There, he was a leading figure in robotics, a budding discipline at the time which draws on IT, electronics and mathematics and studies the interface between robots and their environment.

Mr. Moreno’s work in robotics and artificial intelligence made him absolutely certain of two things: one, that systems must be designed in terms of complexity (as defined by French thinkers such as Henri Laborit and Edgar Morin), meaning that an entity can only be understood in relation to its environment and must be studied in the context of how it relates to and depends upon other factors; and two, that this ‘complexity’ can be applied in the real world to create value through innovative services and uses. Also during this period, Mr Moreno helped create one of France’s first technology transfer offices in the Paris region, at the CERMA in Cachan.

In 1990, after taking part in its creation, he began working at the Université d’Evry, where he became a Senior Professor. While working at the computer sciences lab (LaMI – Laboratoire des Méthodes Informatiques), a joint unit run by the CNRS, he founded and directed the “Distributed Reactive and Adaptive Systems” team and developed extensive ties with industry. In the late 1990s, the creation of Genopole, a biotechnology cluster in Evry, gave scientists, research engineers and entrepreneurs at the university an opportunity to work together despite their different backgrounds and specializations — an approach that Carlos Moreno has tirelessly promoted since.

Exploring a system from the viewpoint of complexity means understanding it in context and studying its vitality as manifested in the relationship among its component parts, the energy which creates these, and the changes made in order to establish an equilibrium, extract knowledge, introduce change, make a breakthrough, anticipate a death or predict the emergence of new situations.

 In 1998, a new law on innovation and research in France (the ‘Allegre Law’) enabled researchers to start their own business. Professor Moreno quickly seized this opportunity to rally his best PhD students, capitalise on the critical mass of knowledge they had generated, and find industrial applications for the expertise acquired through intelligent complex systems. His start-up, Sinovia, was created in 1998. Based at the laboratory, Sinovia centred on the intelligent control of complex systems with an emphasis on infrastructure. Aided by government funding, Sinovia signed its first partnerships with industrial firms. Every project developed by Professor Moreno during this period has since proven pertinent (see below) and revealed his visionary spirit.

A pioneer in his field, in 2006 he turned his attention to cities – a complex system par excellence – and developed the concept of the ‘sustainable digital city’ as a viable platform from which to provide the services needed to ensure the well-being of a city’s inhabitants. In this context, Professor Moreno’s start-up began working with INEO, a subsidiary of GDF SUEZ, which acquired Sinovia in 2010.

Carlos Moreno became Scientific Adviser to the Chief Executive Officer in charge of strategy for GDF SUEZ’s Smart Cities programme. For five years, he led international efforts to develop the city of the future and created the Live in a Living City forum which brings together experts from around the world to look at how urban environments are changing.

 Since November 2015, Carlos Moreno has been coaching promising innovators, policy makers and entrepreneurs through his consulting firm InTI in order to transmit and grow his assets.

 Source: https://www.moreno-web.net/portrait-2/

Workplace: University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Current city: Paris, France

Websites of interest: 

World Cities Report 2022

https://unhabitat.org/wcr/

Article about 15 minute city

https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/1/6

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/25/15-minute-city-urban-planning-future-us-cities

The Saigon Times

https://thesaigontimes.vn/thanh-pho-15-phut/

Web: www.moreno-web.net 

Twitter: @CarlosMorenoFr

Instagram: @carlosmorenofr

 Publications:

La revolución de la proximidad: De la «ciudad-mundo» a la «ciudad de los quince minutos»

Publisher: Alianza Editorial; edición February 9, 2023.

Resilient and Sustainable Cities: Research, Policy and Practice

by Zaheer Allam (Editor), Didier Chabaud (Editor), Catherine Gall (Editor), Florent Pratlong (Editor), Carlos Moreno (Editor).

Publisher: Elsevier; 1st edition (December 23, 2022).

World Cities Report 2022 of UN-HABITAT.

https://www.moreno-web.net/world-cities-report-2022-of-un-habitat/

도시에 살 권리
카를로스 모네로 지음
양영란 옮김│정예씨

Vie urbaine et proximité, de Carlos Moreno (Auteur)

Publisher:  aux Editions de l’Observatoire

Droit de cité, de la “ville-monde” à la “ville du quart d’heure”

Publisher: aux Éditions de l’Observatoire.

Audio visual:

TED talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/carlos_moreno_the_15_minute_city

 Key words:

15-minute city, urban planning, UN-Habitat, United Nations Habitat, World Cities Report 2022, Poland, Katowice and UN-Habitat, Eleventh World Urban Forum, WUF11

Episode production:

Soundscapes by

Mémo Dumay, sound artist, musician / Paris, France / January 2023   

https://memodumay.tumblr.com/

Theme music by Sebastian Carreras ONDO, uno. Used with permission.

Art direction by estudiocinco.cl

Edition by sombraurbana.com

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CrossingCityLimits_LinkTree

March ‘23

A conversation with architecture professor René Peralta, About Tijuana / San Diego border presence, daily life, and design. Border astronaut, his latest work.

Join Eduardo Guerrero, urban designer based in Tucson, as he talks with urban idealists and designers about their work and stories. Listen in as he engages these relevant thinkers in reflections and conversations about the environment and culture.

11 René Peralta, The Border / Tijuana

Biography:

René Peralta studied architecture at the New School of Architecture in San Diego and the Architectural Association in London, England. He has been a professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, Professor of Urban Design at the University of Washington in St. Louis and, from 2012-2014, was Director of the Master of Science in Architecture with an emphasis in Landscape + Urbanism at Woodbury University in San Diego. Previously, he served as the inaugural Herb Greene Teaching Fellow at the University of Oklahoma (2019-2021). 

René’s work in recent years explores the contemporary and future forms of the urban border between the United States and Mexico, specifically between the cities of Tijuana and San Diego. René is a coauthor, with Fiamma Montezemolo and Heriberto Yépez, of the book Here is Tijuana, published in 2006 by Black Dog Publishing in London. In 2018, he co-edited, along with Tito Alegría and Roger Lewis, the commemorative edition of the book A Temporary Paradise: A look at the special landscape of the San Diego Region, originally prepared by Kevin Lynch and Donald Appleyard (COLEF 2018).

His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Santa Monica Art Museum, Mexico House at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC, Shenzhen Architecture and Urbanism Biennial 2007 and the Central Society of Architects in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2015, his research on the Experimental Housing Project (PREVI) in Lima, Peru, was part of the exhibition “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2017, he directed Hyperloop West, a group that went on to become a semi-finalist in the global challenge competition organized by Virgin Hyperloop One. In 2017, Rene curated the Tijuana-San Diego exhibit space at the 2017 Architecture and Urbanism Biennial in Seoul, Korea.

René is a member of the board of directors of Fundación Esperanza de México (FEM), a non-profit organization with more than 25 years of experience building communities and improving the quality of life of low-income residents of Tijuana through assisted self-built housing.

René is based in Tijuana and, in his spare time, is the conguero for the band “The Good Times” of Tijuana.

Education:

University of Oklahoma, USA

Architectural Association, London, England

New School of Architecture and Design, San Diego, USA

Workplace: The University of Oklahoma, Division of Architecture. 

Current city: Norman, Oklahoma, USA / Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

Websites of interest: 

www.generica.com.Mx

https://architecture.ou.edu/directory/peralta/https://architecture.ou.edu/directory/peralta/

https://www.generica.com.mx/Profile

Blog: Pensamientos Genericos http://generica.blog/

Twitter: @Rene_Peralta

Instagram: @rperalta

Publications:

Living Border: Replanteando la Geografía entre Tijuana y San Diego. Instituto Metropolitano de Planeación de Tijuana (IMPLAN)

Tijuana, México. Forthcoming: 2022

Metropolis in Motion: Towards a Sustainable Mobility Plan

Report of the mobility challenges in five cities in Latin America. Rene Peralta; Editor and Translator

https://www.metropolis.org/sites/default/files/resources/Metropolis-in-Motion.pdf

2019

Temporary Paradise, A Commemorative Reprint.

Rene Peralta, Tito Alegria, Roger Lewis, Co-Editors. COLEF, With selected essays by Bruce Appleyard, Michael Dear, Larry Herzog, Tito Alegria, Mike Stepner

2017. ISBN 978-607-479-274-4

Here is Tijuana

An infographic walkthrough of the City of Tijuana, with an overview of cultural life, social issues, and the urban environment. Co-authored with Fiamma Montezemolo, Heriberto Yepez, Black Dog Publishing. London, England. 192 pp. ISBN: 1 904772 45 5. March 2006

Aqui es Tijuana (Spanish Edition)

Black Dog Publishing, London England. 192pp. ISBN 1 904772 49 8, Spanish. May 2006

Audio visual:

Previ Lima Film, PREVI_ 45 Years after its conception,

included in “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H9yQ5GdWvw

https://www.generica.com.mx/PREVI-Peru-MOMA-NY

Tijuana Border, Mexico 🇲🇽 - by drone [4K]

https://youtu.be/QMutN3mdS8k

Key words:

US Border, Mexico Border, Tijuana, San Diego, urban design, migration, daily life, trans frontier, border astronaut

Episode production:

Soundscapes by Rene Peralta / Tijuana, Mexico / August 2022

sombraurbana.com

December ‘22

Book by Ernesto Mireles

Vistazos de la frontera (Spanish edition) Apr 28, 2023

https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Ernesto-Mireles/dp/B0C3WTZ6HM/

May 2023