Michelle Martel

Date of lecture: September 18, 2024

Abstract

Building on early work developed as a cultural heritage specialist and social scientist with Arup’s integrated urban design practice, Andrew will present a typology of values to guide a discussion of values and valuation – of how social constructs and contexts shape the planning profession and city building process, emphasizing the criticality of public participation – as issues that challenge conventional notions of responsibilities of planning professionals. A key pragmatic question is how might planning professionals (and researchers) identify and characterize a wide range of social and economic values in a manner that informs (or investigates) the planning process as well as policies and planning decisions that are relevant to all participating disciplines and stakeholder groups?

Through the lens of an anthropologist and borrowing that of an economist’s, Andrew will extend a framework of “place valorization” from urban political economy theory to see why and how “value” is extracted from the built environment, developing Logan and Molotch’s (1987) social typology of a “structural speculator” (“place entrepreneurs … that seek to alter the conditions that structure the market”) in contemporary contexts. Using these frameworks, he’ll draw on examples from his past experience and his colleagues’ landscape-design components on international mega-projects with considerable political complexity and intrigue, including the planned but unrealized Dongtan Eco-city in Shanghai (Arup), the Greater Hanoi Construction Master Plan (PPJ Consortium), the London Olympic Park Legacy Master Plan, and a recent proposed smart-city port on Georgia’s Black Sea coast.

Short Bio

Andrew Simmons, a consultant to the Public Finance Initiative for its work with Pew Charitable Trusts, is an urban development strategist and social scientist committed to context-sensitive, integrated approaches to development. As director of urban innovation and sustainability impact with the London-based Resilience Brokers, Andrew works with a variety of local authorities, developers, and multilateral institutions on climate resilience, civic technology, open data policies, sustainability-driven master plans, and market-aligned visions for urban regeneration projects that produce wide-ranging public benefits.

Past appointments include serving as a project manager contractor on a major mixed-use, mixed-income property development by Eastern Market on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., completed in 2017, and with the PPJ consortium as heritage planner for the Vietnam Ministry of Construction’s Greater Hanoi Capital Master Plan. With Arup, Andrew led a team of social scientists from the Shanghai office for Arup’s world-pioneering, low-carbon planning projects in China, the U.K., and beyond. Andrew has reviewed planning projects at the World Bank and is a guest lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He holds a master’s in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics.

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