Online Program: "The Suburbs After COVID, A Changed Landscape?"
This program is part of the “Learning from the Pandemic” series, sponsored by Bayer. Co-hosted between the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents and the National Press Foundation, which are solely responsible for the content.
June Williamson of the City College of New York and Richard Fry of the Pew Research Center will present data and other research on how suburbs are changing – and what they can do to accommodate more people in a post-COVID world.
The suburban dream has waxed and waned. American suburbs grew for decades while central cities declined, then lost influence in the 2000s as cities became the destination for the young and affluent. Now, with COVID-19 prompting people around the world to flee big cities, suburbs could once again regain some of their luster. They are increasingly different than the suburbs of yesteryear: older, more racially diverse, less tied to city jobs. In this briefing, we’ll explore the demographic trends of today’s suburbs – in the U.S. and around the world. We’ll also talk with land-use experts about “retrofitting suburbia,” making it more efficient and welcoming to those decamping from big cities.
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June Williamson
Architect June Williamson is Department Chair and Associate Professor at the City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture. She is co-author with Ellen Dunham-Jones of “Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges,” next in the Retrofitting Suburbia series from Wiley. She wrote “Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb,” documenting the 2010 urban design ideas competition for Long Island. A frequent speaker and consultant, her writing is also published in the books “The Once and Future Shopping Mall,” “Retrofitting Sprawl,” “Social Justice in Diverse Suburbs,” and “Independent for Life: Homes and Neighborhoods for an Aging America,” as well as many journals, magazines, and blogs. Now based in New York City, she has also consulted, practiced, and taught architecture and urban design in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Boston.
Richard Fry
Richard Fry is a senior researcher at Pew Research Center. He is an expert on school and college enrollment in the United States, as well as the returns to education in the labor market and marriage market, and its connection to household economic well-being such as net worth. Fry’s analyses are largely empirical, as he has extensive expertise analyzing U.S. Census Bureau and other federal data collections. Before joining Pew Research Center in 2002, he was a senior economist at the Educational Testing Service. Fry received his doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan. Fry regularly documents U.S. educational and enrollment milestones, the economic well-being of the nation’s young adults, the role of student debt in financing college education, and the changing relationship between education and marriage and cohabitation.