Elements that facilitate socializing – a garden chair, a porch, a bench – strongly boosted residents’ sense of place in every dimension and scale, whether it was their view of their home, their street or their neighborhood.
Author Archives: Conrad Kickert and Kelly Gregg/University at Buffalo
Conrad Kickert studies the evolving relationship between urban form, urban life and the urban economy. He has a background in urbanism and architecture from the TU Delft (Netherlands) and holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Michigan. He has worked as an urban researcher and designer for various design offices, property developers and non-profit organizations in The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Dr. Kickert has authored award-winning articles and books on the interrelation between cities, their evolution, and their economy, including articles for the Journal of Urban Studies and the London School of Economics, an Oxford University bibliography, the recent monograph "Dream City - Creation, Destruction and Reinvention in downtown Detroit" with MIT Press and upcoming books on urban retail and street-level architecture. Among others, his work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ax:son Johnson Foundation, UBER, the Haile/US Bank Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
Kelly Gregg, assistant professor of urban planning, pursues place-based research at the intersection of planning, urban design, and landscape architecture. Specifically her work focuses on street design and pedestrian environments in both an historic and contemporary context. Her current research includes examining recent street adaptations to enable physical distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. She strives to approach challenges in practice and in research with an interdisciplinary perspective that references her background in both planning and design. She completed her PhD in Planning at the University of Toronto in 2019. She also holds a Master's Degree in Urban Planning (MUP) and Urban Design (MUD) from The University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (BLA) from The Pennsylvania State University.