Washington, DC., (12/08/2020). The 12th series of BIANKA was attended by several speakers including Dr. David J. Edelman, Director of Master of Community Planning (MCP) – University of Cincinnati who talked about the opportunity for Indonesian students to study Master of Community Planning Program (MCP) and the college of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning in the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Edelman emphasized that the college of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, particularly the School of Planning is the number one School of Design among public universities in the United States. Moreover, all of programs are nationally ranked. It has School of Design, School of Architecture and Interior Design, School of Art, and School of Planning. So, this is a very large and diverse national university. The SOP programs of the University of Cincinnati are BS in Urban Studies, Bachelor of Urban Planning, BS in Horticulture, Master of Community Planning, Accelerated Master of Community Planning, Master of Landscape Architecture, PhD in Regional Development Planning, and Joint Degree Programs.
BIANKA or Bincang Karya is a serial-webinar held by the Indonesian Embassy in Washington D.C., USA through the Attaché for Education and Culture lived from Washington DC., USA. The 12th series of BIANKA carries the theme “Architecture, Design & Urban Planning: Next Normal.”
This webinar was chaired by Prof. Popy Rufaidah, the Education and Cultural Attaché. The recorded live event of BIANKA Seri-12 can be accessed in the following link http://bit.ly/fb-watch-bianka12
Going on the second speaker, he was Christopher Campbell, Ph.D. He is the Chair Department of Urban Design and Planning from the University of Washington. In that occasion, Dr. Campbell talked about a number of programs of Urban Design and Planning Department. He began his presentation with the overview of Seattle, and then followed by the description of the University of Washington. The University of Washington is a largest of state’s 4 public universities which have three campuses; the main campus is in Seattle. In the university, they have 16 colleges and schools. One of them is College of Built Environments (CBE) which is the college of Urban Planning is part of.
The next presenter was Dr. Jan Whittington who is the Director of Urban Infrastructure Lab, the University of Washington, Seattle. First of all, she explained about the faculty interest. Dr. Whittington also told the audiences that she is a researcher in Infrastructure and Economics and she likes to apply her knowledge in Urban Design and Planning to problems and have to do with Collective Action and Market Failures. There were some research topics that she has explained in the presentation. One of them was Capital Investment Planning and Climate Change, how do you integrate factors of this climate change into the budget cycle of cities, provinces, and nation states. Therefore, she has mentioned some preparations that the students should do in order to apply in her laboratory, for example, she stated that the students who want to join, and they can come from many disciplinary backgrounds.
Then, the last three presentations have been done by three speakers coming from Indonesia. They were Erly Kueain, Dian Prasetyawati, and Haryo Winarso, three of them were talking about the different topics and their own research interests. Ms. Erly Kueain who is a PhD student in Regional Development Planning, University of Cincinnati explained about her interest in Urban Tourism Resilience in Secondary Cities. Meanwhile, Ms. Dian Prasetyawati, a PhD student of The Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of washington mostly talked about how the Urban Infrastructure Lab is. Moreover, she also tried to change the students’ paradigm by not thinking about what programs that are provided by such a university, rather than thinking about the ranking of that university. The session was ended by inviting Prof. Haryo Winarso from School of Architecture, planning and Policy Development, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) who also represented the Indonesian State University Chancellors Council discussed about Urban Planning and Design During and After Covid-19: Agenda for Research. In his presentation, he offered a number of topics of the research about Urban Planning and Design during and after Covid-19 pandemic.