“We are in another period of crisis, like the earlier ones in American history, that led to these big fundamental redirections of national energy and national policy.” – Robert Yaro, Co-author of Megaregions and America’s Future
The most significant challenges of our time from climate change to updating large-scale infrastructure do not confine themselves within existing country, state, county, city, or community borders. Begging the question: Are those geographies adequate to properly address these issues at the scale required?
Listen in as Ten Across founder Duke Reiter explores new ways of thinking and problem solving with the authors of Megaregions and America’s Future, Robert Yaro, Fritz Steiner, and Ming Zhang.
Guest Speakers
Frederick Steiner is Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Most recently, he served as Dean of the School of Architecture and Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin for 15 years. He previously taught at Penn and the following institutions: Arizona State University, Washington State University, the University of Colorado at Denver. He earned a Master of Community Planning and a B.S. in Design from the University of Cincinnati, and his Ph.D. and M.A. in city and regional planning and a Master of Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
Robert D. Yaro was Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design from 2002-2020. His teaching and research focus on land use, urban development and infrastructure planning for megaregions and metropolitan areas. In 2004 he identified the emergence of 11 megaregions across the United States, and since then has led seminars and studios on planning for emerging megaregions in the US, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, Singapore and Morocco. He is also President Emeritus of the Regional Plan Association. He led RPA from 1990 until his retirement as President and CEO in December 2014.
Ming Zhang is Professor of Community and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining UT Austin, he held several academic and professional positions, including tenure-track Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University, Research Scientist at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, New York, and Lecturer and licensed Planner/Architect at the Huazhong (Central China) University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, China. His research and teaching interests include urban and regional planning, the built environment-travel behavior relationship, GIS applications, and planning/transportation issues in developing countries.
