Atlanta Urbanists Ellen Dunham-Jones and Ryan Gravel Present at Intensification Métropolitaine Conference in Marseille

This fall, Atlanta urbanists Ellen Dunham-Jones and Ryan Gravel will participate in the 2024 Intensification Métropolitaine conference & workshops in Marseille.

Intensification Métropolitaine is a two-week conference bringing together industry professionals, designers, architects, and students from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille (ENSAM) to imagine the city of tomorrow. This year’s conference is the first step of the collaboration between Georgia Tech and ENSAM as part of Villa Albertine’s City/Cité Atlanta x Marseille program. This university partnership also recently received a Transatlantic Mobility Program grant from the Embassy of France in the United States, and the Embassy of the United States of America in France, and Albertine Foundation. This grant will allow the two schools to reinforce their collaborative efforts and allow for more projects and events to be created between Georgia Tech and ENSAM, bringing together more urbanists, designers and architects between the two institutions.

On Monday, August 26 at 6pm, in her talk “Retrofitting Suburbia,” Ellen Dunham-Jones will present her work on the transformation of American suburbs and the challenges of this research in an American context.

On Monday, September 2 at 6pm, Ryan Gravel will give a talk entitled “Where We Want to Live,” presenting his work in Atlanta, from the first conception of the Beltline to more recent urban transformations.

Click here for more information on the 2024 Intensification Métropolitaine conference & workshops.

Ellen Dunham-Jones is the Director of the Urban Design Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, an authority on sustainable suburban redevelopment, and a leading urbanist. Author of over 100 articles, she is co-author with June Williamson of the retrofitting suburbia book series documenting successful retrofits of aging big box stores, malls, and office parks into healthier and more sustainable places. This series includes Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, (Wiley, 2009, 2011) and Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges (Wiley, 2020).

Ryan Gravel is an urban designer, author, and civic entrepreneur working on ideas about the future of cities. Best known for his master’s thesis at Georgia Tech and early work that launched the Atlanta Beltline, Ryan was also the lead creator of the Atlanta City Design, which designs the city’s inevitable change so that it grows into a better version of itself. Along with other projects and his book, Where We Want to Live, Ryan investigates the cultural side of infrastructure, describing how its intimate relationship with our way of life can illuminate a brighter path forward for cities.