The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome urban designer and former Harrisburg resident Matthew Frederick as he presents his new book, 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School. This new title in the bestselling 101 Things I Learned® series provides unique, accessible lessons on urban design for students, professionals, and even general readers who wish to better understand the design of cities and towns.
In this presentation, Frederick will show how the urban designer’s unique understanding of space can reshape how we see Harrisburg and envision its future. Frederick will focus on a few early lessons in his own schooling that profoundly impacted his understanding of cities. His search for a deeper understanding of the urban problem led him all the way back to the Copernican Revolution, when a monumental shift in perception and consciousness came to place urbanism outside our preferred mental models. This eventually led to the blighting of our cities; today it hampers and distorts our efforts to repair them. Indeed, America’s “successful” cities are beset by runaway rents, over-scaled buildings, the displacement of low-income residents, and a loss of authenticity. The truly successful cities of the 21st century will pursue a different course. They will eschew today’s top-down, developer-centric fixations and will re-engage the organic, bottom-up processes that once built and sustained them. A successful Harrisburg of the future will be built by and for everyone, not by a privileged few.
Join us afterward for a sale and signing of Matthew Frederick’s new book, 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School, and the rest of the 101 Things I Learned series.
About the Author:
MATTHEW FREDERICK, a former Harrisburg resident, is an architect, urban designer, author of the bestselling 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, and the creator of the 101 Things I Learned book series. He previously served as HACC professor of architecture and as architecture columnist for the Patriot-News. His latest book, 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School, will be released by Penguin Random House on April 3.
