The Savannah Urbanism Series will welcome guest speaker Hank Dittmar, a renowned urban designer and expert on city resilience and transit, advising governments, companies and communities across the world of strategies for the Urban Century. The free Savannah Urbanism Series event will take place on Monday, October 9th at 5:30 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church (225 W. President Street). Mr. Dittmar is principal at Hank Dittmar Associates and co-director of the project for Lean Urbanism, and formally Chief Executive of the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community.
Hank Dittmar is a global sustainability authority and urbanist, advising governments, companies and communities all over the world on making cities and towns more liveable and resilient.
Mr. Dittmar’s visit to Savannah is timely as our city was selected by The Project for Lean Urbanism as one of five U.S. cities to participate in a pilot project to identify viable, short-term, incremental improvements and the talent and resources needed to make these improvements. The project will develop mechanisms for getting past blockages and barriers, and develop an action plan for implementation by local people.
The Congress for the New Urbanism discussed Lean Urbanism with Mr. Dittmar earlier this year:
Lean Urbanism was conceived as an effort to deal with a problem that many of us had. It was difficult to get common sense ideas through the planning and building process. We observed that it was almost as hard to do 5 homes as it was 500. And so Lean Urbanism, unlike the New Urbanism, is much more about incremental development. It’s much more about identifying projects in an infill context and short-term opportunism. In British planning, there’s a phrase for things that come along that aren’t in the master plan. They’re called windfall projects, as in apples that fall from the tree. Lean Urbanism recognizes that a lot of what’s great about our cities are windfall projects. — Hank Dittmar
Hear more from Hank Dittmar when he visits Savannah for The Savannah Urbanism Series on Monday, October 9. The Savannah Urbanism Series is presented through the generosity of Engel & Völkers Savannah, Brown Design Studio and NAI Mopper Benton Commercial Real Estate.