Welcome to another episode of the Willoughby Hills podcast!
On today’s episode, I speak with Vishaan Chakrabarti, a New York based architect who is the founder and creative director of PAU, the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism.
Vishaan’s work connects the issues of housing and our built environment with income inequality, racism, and climate change. He paints a clear picture of how all of these issues are interconnected and shows a housing based solution for how we might begin to solve them.
I first learned of Vishaan’s work through an editorial he wrote in December for the New York Times, which looked at ways to add 500,000 new housing units to New York City’s five boroughs without drastically affecting neighborhood character. His proposals in that article have impacts far beyond New York though, as they provide a template for cities, suburbs, and even small towns to build in a more environmentally friendly and sustainable way.
Vishaan also presented a Ted Talk last year about how mid-rise, mixed use housing that’s accessible to transit and can help solve the climate crisis.
Vishaan is also the author of the book A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America, and the upcoming book The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing for Place, Pluralism, and Planet, scheduled to be released later this year. He served as Director of the Manhattan Office for the New York Department of City Planning in the Bloomberg administration, spearheading urban development projects including the High Line.
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118. Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti on Making Cities Work for Everyone