On July 21, 2026, the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization gathered diplomats, architects, planners, and educators at United Nations Headquarters to ask how the built environment can actively restore the systems it touches. Across two panels, speakers from around the world made the case for regenerative design as the new normal, grounded in systems thinking, local knowledge, and a recognition that meaningful impact takes time.
July 21, 2026 · United Nations Headquarters, New York
The Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization convened its annual flagship summit at United Nations Headquarters in New York, with the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Singapore to the United Nations in New York, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), American Institute of Architects, New York (AIA New York), HKS, and other partners on July 21, 2026. Throughout the afternoon, diplomats, architects, planners, ecologists, and educators from around the world examined one question from many angles: how the built environment can play a regenerative role within the ecological, social, and economic systems it touches. The framing throughout was regenerative design, an approach that asks buildings and cities to give back more than they take, a shift in paradigm from simply reducing harm.
Severe weather is just one outcome of climate change and throughout the day storms across the East Coast had grounded travel and caught many attendees and speakers on their way to the United Nations. Yasemin Kologlu, the Consortium’s president, recognized that so many attendees still reaching the room was its own act of resilience, fitting for a group that had come to share and learn how design can repair the environment.
The shift from limiting damage to actively restoring the environment was the foundation of the day’s discussions. Anacláudia Rossbach, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, in her impactful video message, urged the audience to see informal settlements as places of resilience and lasting value rather than only through the lens of deprivation, with housing at the foundation of health, opportunity, and dignity. H.E. Lok Bahadur Thapa, President of ECOSOC, in what was noted to be among the final engagements of his tenure in that role, argued that with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 deadline near, the work across fields is to give back more than we take, a step beyond simply limiting the harm. Navid Hanif, Assistant Secretary-General of UN DESA, sharpened the point: the real measure is whether we can make cities capable of restoring what has already been lost, a higher bar than sustainability alone. He left the room with four questions, among them how to move from high-visibility demonstration projects to regenerative design as the new normal, and how to make the case for investment in benefits that may take decades to appear when budgets and policymaking are generally set in years.
The first panel took up restoration as its goal and systems thinking as its method. Speakers returned repeatedly to the idea that nothing in a community stands alone. Housing, several observed, cannot be planned apart from transport, water, and public space. Hanif described managing water as an asset rather than a liability. H.E. Karen Ong, Deputy Permanent Representative of Singapore, described a nation of 280 square miles that treats water and energy as one interconnected system and makes every drop count, pointing to projects that fold coastal protection, freshwater storage, and public parks into a single intervention. Remy Sietchiping of UN-Habitat reminded the room that watersheds almost always transcend political boundaries, and that we are all, as territories and as people, interconnected.
The second panel turned to culture and local knowledge. Kologlu moderated it in place of Lori Ferriss, co-founder of Built Buildings Lab, whom the morning’s storms had kept from New York, and she shared a few thoughts Ferriss had sent along. Mariam Issoufou, founder of Mariam Issoufou Architects, described becoming an architect in part because of the climate effects she has seen unfold over twenty years in West Africa. She said we can no longer afford to debate the cause of effects like these. The belief that good design can proceed without local knowledge, she argued, is mistaken and offensive. Tony Montalto, Chief Design Officer at HKS, called designers back to careful observation of the world around us and to learn from forms that worked long before designers tried to impose their own. He offered that nature is always designing. Erin English of Biohabitats described a practice that treats nature as its ultimate client, measures success first through biodiversity, and has restructured as a perpetual purpose trust with a seat for nature on its board. Running through these remarks was a shared note of humility, captured in Sietchiping’s reminder that we do not know it all.
A longer sense of time bound the day together. H.E Karen Ong spoke of designing for seven generations, and of living within our means as our ancestors long knew how to do. Frances Bronet, President of Pratt Institute, noted students treat the campus as a living laboratory and increasingly demand regenerative practice rather than merely less harm. She observed that there are two good times to plant a tree, twenty years ago and now, and argued for beginning this education far earlier, with children of three, four, and five. Margaret Waldock, Executive Director of Duke Farms, described stewarding three thousand acres as a single working landscape and reforesting four hundred acres of floodplain for the benefit of communities downstream, and suggested that regenerative design is less about good design than about asking good questions, beginning with what a particular place can make possible. Mark Gardner, President of AIA New York, found the act of repairing something deeply human. He argued that every construction materials decision in design is a heritage decision and pressed the audience to recognize the agency in small gestures and to make room for a younger generation already impatient for change.
Naomi Parekh, a board member of the Consortium, closed by tying the day to Article 21 of the New Urban Agenda and its call to revitalize partnerships to implement the global standards for sustainable urban development, which she suggested was exactly what the summit had modeled. Kologlu offered a final gathering of the day’s themes: regenerative design should run as an underlay for everything rather than a separate track. The summit ended with a sense of urgency and hope, and with a line borrowed from Gloria Steinem by Frances Bronet. Asked by a young person what we should do now, she was reported to have replied: “It is your project now, but we are all here to help.”