On November 1, 2013, the Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE.) will host the Building the Digitial City: Tech and the Transformation of New York -- day long multi-disciplinary conference exploring the dramatic rise of the tech industry in New York and its growing impact on the planning, development and urbanism of the city. Organizaed by Senior Fellow James Sanders, AIA, together with Prof. 

Jesse M. Keenan, Research Director of CURE., and Prof. Andrew Laing, the event will feature distinquished participants from a wide variety of sectors, including MaryAnne Gilmartin, CEO, Forest City Ratner; Craig Nevil-Manning, Director of Engineering, Google; David Hantman, Head of Global Public Policy, Airbnb; Kevin Ryan, former CEO, DoubleClick, and founder of the start-ups Gilt Groupe, Business Insider and MongoDB; Jed Walentas, Managing Partner, Two Trees Management; Ben Fried, CIO, Google; Andrew Rasiej, Board Chair, NY Tech Meetup; and Rachel Stern Haot, NYC Chief Digital Officer, among others.

Focused on issues and opportunities in New York, Building the Digital City will present state-of-the-art (and science) research and will feature innovative projects from across the five boroughs, as well as urban centers from across the globe. In turn, the signifigance of the conference will extended to cities everywhere, which are increasingly looking to tech and digital enterprises as a source of urban growth and innovation in the 21st century.

On November 1, 2013, the Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE.) will host the Building the Digitial City: Tech and the Transformation of New York -- day long multi-disciplinary conference exploring the dramatic rise of the tech industry in New York and its growing impact on the planning, development and urbanism of the city.

Organizaed by Senior Fellow James Sanders, AIA, together with Prof. Jesse M. Keenan, Research Director of CURE., and Prof. Andrew Laing, the event will feature distinquished participants from a wide variety of sectors, including MaryAnne Gilmartin, CEO, Forest City Ratner; Craig Nevil-Manning, Director of Engineering, Google; David Hantman, Head of Global Public Policy, Airbnb; Kevin Ryan, former CEO, DoubleClick, and founder of the start-ups Gilt Groupe, Business Insider and MongoDB; Jed Walentas, Managing Partner, Two Trees Management; Ben Fried, CIO, Google; Andrew Rasiej, Board Chair, NY Tech Meetup; and Rachel Stern Haot, NYC Chief Digital Officer, among others.

Focused on issues and opportunities in New York, Building the Digital City will present state-of-the-art (and science) research and will feature innovative projects from across the five boroughs, as well as urban centers from across the globe. In turn, the signifigance of the conference will extended to cities everywhere, which are increasingly looking to tech and digital enterprises as a source of urban growth and innovation in the 21st century.

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Registration 

Location: The Altman Building, 135 West 18th Street

Date: Noveember 1, 2013

Time: 8:15 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Partners: ARUP, Jamestown, The Durst Organization, Airbnb, Google, Inc.

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Conference Program

Friday, November 1, 2013

8:15 am Registration and Coffee/Refreshments

9:00 am Welcome and Introduction

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA

Holliday Professor of Real Estate Development, Columbia University GSAPP,

Director of CURE., and Principal, SHoP Architects

9:20 am Address: Tech and the City: The Long Viez

James Sanders, AIA

Project Director and Conference Organizer

Principal, James Sanders + Associates, and CURE. Senior Fellow

This opening address will establish several themes of the conference by exploring the historic relationship between great cities – above all, New York – and technological innovation, especially in the area of telecommunications, information, and media. In the recent explosion in the digital industry in New York, and in its striking attraction to a classically dense urban environment – utterly distinct from the suburban-oriented growth of Silicon Valley – can be seen the rebirth of a culture of urban tech innovation, whose roots stretch back to the 19th century.

10:00 am Panel 1: The Rise of an Urban Digital Culture

This panel will provide an introduction to the day’s program by looking in broad terms at the sudden (and largely unexpected) emergence of New York’s tech industry over the past decade, and its complex relationship with – and orientation to – the distinctive urban character of the city. It will explore the ways in which the rise of new tech-driven communities – which have developed around a complex mix of live/work uses, high-quality data infrastructure, a rich layer of urban amenity, and a decided preference for older, smaller, more idiosyncratic structures over large, conventional “modern” office buildings – have already begun to change the urban fabric of the city, and carry profound implications for its future.

Panelists 

Ben Fried
Chief Information Officer, Google

David Hantman
Head of Global Policy, AirBnB

Rachel Sterne Haot
Chief Digital Officer of the City of New York

Kevin Ryan
Former CEO, DoubleClick;
Founder, Gilt Groupe, Business Insider, and Mongo DB

Moderator
Jonathan Bowles
Executive Director, Center for an Urban Future, and co-author, New Tech City

11:00 am Morning coffee break

11:15 am Panel 2: Accelerator: The New Urban Workplace

Among the most evident ways in which digital culture is transforming city life is in the rapid emergence of new kinds of tech-oriented workplaces, and, more generally, of new ways of working in the city.

This panel, comprised of some of the leading designers and developers of these new spaces, will explore the different type of new workplace models – including “coworking,” “incubator” and “accelerator” spaces– that are reshaping basic notions of the layout and structure of the urban office.

The panel will also explore the ways in which these interior spaces interact with the larger urban environment – including such classic public settings as cafes, hotel lobbies, parks, and plazas – to turn the city itself into a kind of vast, seamless, indoor-outdoor workspace.

Panelists

Eric Liftin, AIA
Principal, Mesh Architectures

Jennifer Magnolfi
Advanced R&D Consultant

Miguel McKelvey
Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, WeWork

Andrea Steele, AIA
Partner, TEN Arquitectos

Moderator
Greg Lindsay
Journalist (Fast Company) and co-author of Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next

12:15 pm Lunch
A complimentary lunch will be provided for all conference registrants.

1:00 pm Afternoon Welcome
Katherine Oliver

Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment

1:15 pm Conversation
A conversation with Google’s Craig Nevill-Manning about the rise of the tech industry in New York, and the larger relationship of tech and the city.

Craig Nevill-Manning
Director of Engineering, Google

1:45 pm Panel 3: The Wired and Wireless City: Challenges and Opportunities

This panel will look at what might be considered the basic foundation block for “building the digital city,” by examining the significance of data infrastructure to urban development and redevelopment. From the starting point of the (still-emerging) understanding that in the 21st century digital access has become as essential to urban life as electricity, gas, water, and sewerage, the panel will look at the current challenges in providing broadband access within existing urban areas (and its impact on growth), at the emerging possibilities for digitally propelled “smart development,” and at new initiatives to create a standardized, widely adopted digital certification program for buildings and developments, equivalent to LEED.

Panelists

Scott Anderson
Chief Strategy Officer and Partner, Control Group

Arie Barendrecht
Partner, WiredNYC

Carlos Dominguez
Senior Vice President, Cisco

Andrew Rasiej
Chairperson, NY Tech Meetup

Tom Touchet
CEO and President, City 24/7

Moderator
Andrew Blum
Journalist (Wired, Metropolis) and author of The Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.

2:45 pm Afternoon coffee break

3:00 pm Presentation:
Work and Workplaces in the Digital City: The Emerging Technology Workplace in New York City

Andrew Laing
Global Practice Lead, AECOM, and Senior Fellow, CURE.

Technology and patterns of work are resetting expectations for what the future workplace should provide. The tech sector plays a unique role both as a creator of products that enable new ways of working, and as a pioneer of new kinds of workplaces. In New York, the sector thrives in the city’s dense collaborative culture that re-mixes how technology and space can be used.

Flexible and mobile ways of working are enabling new concepts of workplace.
Three models are identified: Co-working, Open House, and Co-Habiting. Technology is also enabling new ways of providing space: workplace as a service and collaborative consumption. Propositions for the future tech workplace are highlighted.

3:30 pm Afternoon coffee break

3:40 pm Panel 4: The New Tech District and the Changing City

This panel, comprised of leaders in tech-oriented real-estate and collaborative workspace development in New York, will look at the emergence and significance of the new tech districts in the city, and discuss how and where existing growth can be sustained and encouraged in the next decade. It will also explore the long-term implications for New York’s development and transportation patterns – as new tech clusters in Brooklyn and Queens challenge the city’s historic “hub-and-spoke” orientation to its midtown central business district, in favor of an emerging multi-centered urban network.

Panelists
MaryAnne Gilmartin
CEO, Forest City Ratner

Adam Neumann
CEO and Co-Founder, WeWork

Jamie Torres Springer
Partner, HR&A Advisors

Jed Walentas
Managing Partner, Two Trees Management

Moderator
Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA

4:40 pm Presentation
Media City: A New Tech Corridor for New York

An illustrated presentation of the draft materials from the research and visioning project associated with the conference, exploring the urban characteristics of the digital industry in the city and studying new areas and models for tech-driven development in New York and other cities.

James Sanders, AIA

Raj Patel
Principal, Arup

5:00 pm Closing Remarks
Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA

5:10-7 pm Cocktail Reception
Installations and Activities

Throughout the day, Building the Digital City will host a variety of tech-related activities and installations on the main floor and lower level of its Altman Building venue. A pop-up coworking installation on the main floor, sponsored by the New York-based collaborative space WeWork, will feature start-up entrepreneurs, engineers and designers developing applications, along with members of the WeWork staff, who will be live-tweeting the event and conducting interviews tobe streamed through social media platforms.

The venue will also include a range of digital installations and projections, curated by Hannah Cloepfil, including the work of such noted New York-based artists and studios as Makery, Nils Hickey, Tomorrow Lab, SoftLab, Artist Build Collaborative, Potion, and Makerbot.

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