Event

URBANIZED

Thursday, January 12 at 7:30pm
Members $9 / Public $13 Includes Film, Discussion and Reception

Panel Discussion featuring TULLIO BERTOLI, Commissioner of Planning for Brookhaven
ELA DOKONOL, co-chair of the LI Chapter of the American Planning Association

Gary Hustwit has an impressive track record when it comes to exploring the world of design.
His films Helvetica and Objectified profiled the makers of graphics and household objects,
respectively, by combining smart interviews with stylish cinematography. In Urbanized, we meet
architects, politicians, city planners, activists and others who bring fresh approaches to urban
living. City planning has inspired great writers from Jane Jacobs to Rem Koolhaas, both
covered in Urbanized but not as many filmmakers. Yet cinema has an advantage, as Hustwit
demonstrates by transporting us around the world to visually experience urban projects. In
Santiago, the architect Alejandro Aravena tours new models for low-income housing. In Cape Town, landscape architect Tarna
Klitzner explains how better walking paths in the Khayelitsha township reduced violence by forty per cent. In New Orleans, the artist
Candy Chang solicits local input, placing stickers on abandoned buildings that read "I Wish This Was" In Bogotá, mayor Enrique
Peñalosa puts public transportation ahead of private automobiles. Describing his mission, he quotes the Colombian constitution,
which stipulates, "All citizens are equal before the law." As Peñalosa pointedly adds, "This is not just poetry." Over half of today's
world population lives in cities; demographers expect that number to rise to seventy-five per cent by 2050. Urbanized looks at how
governments implement decisions from the top down, but also how movements can rise from the bottom up. Hustwit's film inspires us
to look more carefully at our cities and become active in shaping their future. Thom Powers (USA, 2011, 82 min., color, Blu-ray)