Towards Ecological Cities: a French-American Dialogue with Whitney Barr, Darryl Haddock, Paul-Hervé Lavessière & Marion Waller
Talk
Atlanta Design Festival, Fourth Ward Offices Atlanta
405 N Angier Ave NE
Atlanta, GA, 30308
October 14, 2023 | 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
What should the sustainable cities of tomorrow look like? Why do we need to connect ecology and urban planning, environmental solutions and social justice? How can we reconnect our cities to the earth, and to our ecosystems? How can we design the “ecological future of our cities”?
City/Cité brings together 4 French and American experts to discuss these issues: Whitney Barr (Food Systems Innovation Fellow for the City of Atlanta’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience), Darryl Haddock (environmental scientist, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance), Paul-Hervé Lavessière (urbanist, Metropolitan Trails Agency, Marseille), and Marion Waller (curator and urbanist, Director of Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris).
This talk is presented by Villa Albertine, as part of City/Cité – Towards Earthly Cities, Creative Futures Conference 2023 / Atlanta Design Festival and France-Atlanta.
Creative Futures Conference is a 2-day conference (October 14-15, 2023) at the new Fourth Ward Offices along the Beltline. Registration required for entry.
Whitney Barr is a trained landscape designer, food and environmental justice activist, grower, and international research scholar with over ten years of work experience in various sectors at the intentional intersection of social, racial, food, land, and design justices. Currently, she is the Food Systems Innovation Fellow for the City of Atlanta’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience. Whitney R. Barr is leading the co-design of the City’s first Food Systems Plan and also works on local food systems-related policy, planning, and design projects that support increasing food accessibility for Atlanta residents. She is a graduate of Spelman College with a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia’s College of Environment and Design with graduate certificates in Sustainable Food Systems (Crop and Soil Science) and Entrepreneurship (Terry College of Business). She has also worked as a Fulbright Researcher and studied abroad throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Darryl Haddock is an environmental scientist and Education Director at West Atlanta Watershed Alliance. He has over 20 years of professional experience as an environmental scientist working for the consulting firm, Dames and Moore, as a principal investigator with USGS on a subsurface mapping project and as Environmental Specialist for the State of Georgia, Environmental Protection Division. He is also certified as a Project WET Trainer, an Interpretive Guide by the National Association for Interpretation, and is completing an Environmental Education certification program with Advanced Training for Environmental Education in Georgia (ATEEG); a nationally accredited, professional certification program for formal and non-formal educators. Darryl Haddock coordinates educational programs, community outreach, and citizen science research activities and participates in WAWA’s day to day operations.
Paul-Hervé Lavessière is a geographer-urban planner and co-founder of the Agence des sentiers métropolitains (Metropolitan Trails Agency). He is the author of two books on walking in Greater Paris: La Révolution de Paris (Wildproject, 2014, Prix Haussmann) and Le Sentier du Grand Paris (Wildproject, 2020). Paul-Hervé Lavessière has coordinated several metropolitan trail projects in France (Grand Paris, Toulon, Avignon, Angoulême). He also supports project developers through training, workshops and studies. Paul-Hervé is a coordinator of Terrestrial Cities, a course designed by the Metropolitan Trails Agency (Marseille) and crafted by people working toward the ecological future of cities.
Marion Waller is a curator and urbanist, formerly advising the Mayor of Paris on urban planning, architecture and green space. She studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and urban affairs at Sciences Po Paris. She is the Director of the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, the principal locus of exhibition and debate about built and natural systems in Paris. In addition to this position, she lectures at a number of institutions, teaches urban planning at Sciences Po Paris and École Polytechnique, and previously taught environmental ethics at Université Paris-Est. In 2023, she published Natural Artefacts (Nybrogade Press, 2023, Denmark), an essay on environmental philosophy devoted to the challenges of ecological restoration.
About City/Cité – Towards Earthly Cities – Atlanta, Oct 11-22, 2023
City/Cité – Towards Earthly Cities (Atlanta, Oct 11-22, 2023) is a program inviting professionals from Atlanta and Marseille and the public to learn together about urban ecology and the future of our cities. Associate curator: Alexandre Field (Marseille).
