Some conversations are meant to be continued. Crain's published a cover story in the fall exploring the fundamental challenge facing our city: preparing for a population of 9 million New Yorkers. A day later, on Nov. 1, we hosted a morning-long conference on the subject keynoted by Mayor Bill de Blasio that featured a panel composed of the head of each city transportation agency. Apparently we were just getting started. Thursday at the Center for Architecture, the engineering and architectural firms whose ideas for growing the city's housing and infrastructure were published in our 9 Million New Yorkers issue gathered for wine, cheese and PechaKucha. Wait, PechaKucha? Don't worry, I had to look that one up too. The word refers to a Japanese solution to endlessly long PowerPoint presentations: 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each. That format gave the urban designers a chance to expound on their ideas, despite the snowstorm that rolled in earlier in the day. Jeffrey Raven, an architect who helped organize the event through the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, later described what we had started as a "project for New York City."

The ideas themselves varied from the whimsical repurposing of space under elevated tracks to a subway extension to Red Hook that would lead to as many as 45,000 apartments. Crain's encouraged the designers to think beyond Manhattan because the so-called outer boroughs will be central to the city's ability to accommodate another 450,000 residents. The designers agreed. "We're moving away from the centric megacity and heading to a more distributive one," said Oliver Schaper of Gensler, which envisioned using existing tracks—some now abandoned—to create more public transit connecting far-flung neighborhoods outside Manhattan.

The moderator of the post-PechaKucha discussion, John Shapiro, chairman of the Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, synthesized the disparate elements. What they all shared, Shapiro said, was an intention to respect the communities already in place. "And that is the new normal," he said.

When we wrote about the challenge of preparing for 9 million New Yorkers, we also asked whether New York needed another super builder like Robert Moses, who knew how to pull the levers of power to push through big, expensive projects—often at the expense of the neighborhoods affected by them. But can New York meet the demand of its population growth by empowering the PechaKucha planners, meeting in klatches throughout the city, to implement their ideas of tomorrow?

I don't know the answer, but I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation.

Some conversations are meant to be continued. Crain's published a cover story in the fall exploring the fundamental challenge facing our city: preparing for a population of 9 million New Yorkers. A day later, on Nov. 1, we hosted a morning-long conference on the subject keynoted by Mayor Bill de Blasio that featured a panel composed of the head of each city transportation agency. Apparently we were just getting started. Thursday at the Center for Architecture, the engineering and architectural firms whose ideas for growing the city's housing and infrastructure were published in our 9 Million New Yorkers issue gathered for wine, cheese and PechaKucha. Wait, PechaKucha? Don't worry, I had to look that one up too. The word refers to a Japanese solution to endlessly long PowerPoint presentations: 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each. That format gave the urban designers a chance to expound on their ideas, despite the snowstorm that rolled in earlier in the day. Jeffrey Raven, an architect who helped organize the event through the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, later described what we had started as a "project for New York City."

The ideas themselves varied from the whimsical repurposing of space under elevated tracks to a subway extension to Red Hook that would lead to as many as 45,000 apartments. Crain's encouraged the designers to think beyond Manhattan because the so-called outer boroughs will be central to the city's ability to accommodate another 450,000 residents. The designers agreed. "We're moving away from the centric megacity and heading to a more distributive one," said Oliver Schaper of Gensler, which envisioned using existing tracks—some now abandoned—to create more public transit connecting far-flung neighborhoods outside Manhattan.

The moderator of the post-PechaKucha discussion, John Shapiro, chairman of the Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, synthesized the disparate elements. What they all shared, Shapiro said, was an intention to respect the communities already in place. "And that is the new normal," he said.

When we wrote about the challenge of preparing for 9 million New Yorkers, we also asked whether New York needed another super builder like Robert Moses, who knew how to pull the levers of power to push through big, expensive projects—often at the expense of the neighborhoods affected by them. But can New York meet the demand of its population growth by empowering the PechaKucha planners, meeting in klatches throughout the city, to implement their ideas of tomorrow?

I don't know the answer, but I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation.

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