The Runstad Center Affiliate Fellows presented excerpts from their live documentary, PLACE CAPITAL, earlier today at a lunchtime colloquium hosted by PhD students in the College of Built Environments. This year’s Affiliate Fellows traveled to Berlin, Krakow and Detroit to study the strategies and synergies that create value and vitality in challenged urban environments. They produced a film with vignettes documenting their key observations and shared several of those film vignettes in their presentation. One key theme revolves around the “sharing economy” and how collaborative consumption (co-working, AirBNB, Zipcar etc.) is reshaping the demand for urban spaces. Faculty respondents were on hand to spur the dialogue – including Carrie Dossick, Gundula Proksch and Susan Jones.
The purpose of the Fellowship is to engage the college community in an interdisciplinary dialogue with practitioners in the field. The group that gathered today engaged in a rich discussion around the tension between co-creation of spaces and regulatory requirements that tend to chill innovation and creative expression. Real estate students were active participants in the conversation, and at the end of the session were recruited to participate in an interdisciplinary studio which will examine waterfront development in Seattle.