Driving advocacy, influence and quality in the urban design profession.
Urban designer, research lead and DesignInc Sydney Associate, Dr. Michael Kahn, has been elected as a committee member for the Urban Design Association (UDA) NSW—an independent body focused on the practice, advocacy and professional status of urban design.
With a PhD in architecture, Michael’s ten-plus year career across transport, infrastructure and civic portfolios has seen him deliver a range of multidisciplinary scales and typologies. Most recently, Michael has worked on the design delivery for transformative Sydney mega project, Western Harbour Tunnel.
Leveraging such experience, Michael’s participation in UDA is driven by a desire to ‘elevate public discourse on the role of design in the everyday life of the city,’ he said.
‘The biggest challenge for NSW is accommodating growing housing demand and changing work patterns in a way that allows equitable access to jobs, services, and recreation opportunities in a climate-aware way.
‘The opportunity to address this is to encourage medium and high-density development around existing and future public transport offerings as part of an effort to reduce private vehicles. In turn, decreasing the need for major roads in favour of the creation of lively neighbourhoods.
‘We can unlock this through strategic investment in linking our existing centres with a robust and multi-modal public transport system, learning from some of our oldest neighbourhoods that have grown organically over time to accommodate urban vibrancy, and aggressively pursuing urban greening as we implement higher densities.’
In addition to his work, Michael lectures on architecture and transport, presently teaching masters urban design students at the University of Sydney. Working across practice and academia, he seeks to lead research and discussions surrounding the potential of city-shaping infrastructure projects.
Michael joins an array of decorated urban design professionals on the committee, which you can view here.
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