Urban design is becoming increasingly important as cities across the globe face the twin pressures of rapid urbanization and the need for sustainability. This field is about designing aesthetically pleasing spaces and creating environments that can withstand climate challenges, cultivate community interaction, and integrate with natural ecosystems. As the urban area grows, the approach to planning has shifted towards ecological urbanism, which highlights the connection between urban areas and their surrounding environments. This shift reflects a growing awareness of the need to address climate change, resilience, and sustainable development in a more integrated and holistic way.
Steven Velegrinis, as Design Director for Cities and Urban Design, brings a visionary approach to this growing field. With a career that spans nearly three decades, Steven brings a creative and open-minded approach to urban planning. His leadership is marked by focusing on interdisciplinary collaboration, blending urban design with landscape architecture and ecological principles. Steven’s method of encouraging Socratic dialogue within his teams has cultivated a culture of innovation, allowing for both imaginative and practical solutions in addressing the intricate issues facing urban environments today.
At Gensler, one of the world’s leading design firms, the focus on combining resilient and regenerative design practices has expanded under Steven’s guidance. The firm’s projects, like the one in Turkana County, Kenya, demonstrate how Gensler is pushing the boundaries of traditional urban planning by incorporating sustainable finance and ecological urbanism. This approach allows Gensler to develop comprehensive urban solutions that respect cultural and natural heritage while addressing the global challenges of climate change and urbanization. Gensler’s work is a testament to how thoughtful urban design can profoundly impact the future of cities and their inhabitants.
Let’s explore Steven’s shifting perspectives in urban design to tackle climate change:
Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Creative Expression
Steven has been in the business for almost 30 years, starting his career in Melbourne, Australia, where he grew up. He studied Urban Planning in his undergraduate studies and began working in the Government Sector as an Urban Planner. He quickly found that kind of work very bland and not really give him the creative expression he had been seeking.
At that stage, he pursued Postgraduate Studies in Heritage Conservation and joined a consulting firm where he was exposed to multi-disciplinary ways of working, particularly with Landscape Architects.
This inspired him to study Landscape Architecture, which really opened the possibilities of what he was doing. He moved to Singapore at this point and also embarked on a PhD, looking at the ways that the ideas of Landscape and Ecological Urbanism could work for fast-developing cities.
After almost ten years in Asia, Steven moved to Dubai in 2008 and, for 16 years, has worked in several roles that always blended Urban Design and Landscape Planning. Part of that experience was working with Perkins+Will in Dubai for several years, where he had an amazing experience working with Tim Martin and Dianne Thorsen (who are now Principals within Gensler Middle East). A couple of years ago, Tim and Dianne approached him to build a Cities Practice within the Middle East offices, and they have been amazingly supportive and fabulous to work with.
Integrating Urban Settlements and Heritage
Gensler is in the process of expanding that field of ‘what we do.’ Steven has always had a strong interest in Climate Change, Resilience, and Regenerative Development underpinned by an understanding of Landscape Dynamics. Gensler has been amazingly supportive of that interest.
It is a practice genuinely driven by the desire to transform the world, and so they have been pushing into projects that use Sustainable Finance instruments to fund Regenerative Design projects. Those initiatives are driving him to use his skills and training in new ways.
Gensler’s current project in Turkana County in Kenya is a great example. At 80,000 square kilometers, the project demands a Regional Ecological understanding of Landscape Dynamics, an understanding of planning and development of Urban Settlements, and a sensitivity to the immense Cultural and Natural Heritage of the land.
Broadening Perspectives in Urban Design
Steven believes it is essential to engender an openness to other modes of thinking. He has observed that “there are many ways to approach a problem, and by narrowing the focus to one disciplinary area, we often lose out on creative and holistic approaches.” Understanding cities as new ecologies or ‘next natures’ opens the conceptual scope of solving Climate change-sized challenges.
Effective Leadership Through Trust and Openness
Steven finds that an effective leadership strategy must involve hiring and trusting great people. As Steve Jobs once said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” In the studio, they practice complete openness, and he tries to encourage everyone by taking an approach of Socratic Dialogue.
That means rather than suggesting an answer, he asks the team a series of questions, which leads them to provide the answers and own the design. A lot of that approach has developed from his experience teaching at University-Level design schools, where you need to be able to draw people’s best out of them.
Tools for Achieving Work-Life Balance
He believes the design industry is typically bad at preserving work-life balance, and for many years, he was very poor at balancing them. But earlier this year, he was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, which really gave him reason to pause and reconsider what he was doing.
Steven has also been very fortunate to have worked with a mentor and coach, Richard Marshall, who taught him how to manage and balance his professional goals with his personal ones.
He now uses tools like mindfulness meditation and strategic goal setting to determine what is truly important and what things he can set aside for more important endeavors, like his family, his health, and his life outside of work.
Advice for Aspiring Urban Planners
Steven advises young professionals that he has given his daughter, who is currently studying, to move into the Sustainability and Urban Planning field to be broad in their approach. He encourages them to explore, be curious, and see their career as a journey that will take many twists and turns. He highlights. “Explore and be curious, and see your career as a journey that will take many twists and turns. Don’t be afraid to make drastic changes to your career, as you will most likely have multiple careers, not just one.”
Urban Planning for Resilient Cities
The built-form industry has really struggled to understand the scale of the challenges facing the planet, mostly because Steven’s team has taught designers to embrace a boundary to their site and to see the things they create in cities as inert objects, not directly connected to their ecological setting.
Ecological Urbanism has given the industry a framework to understand the way the team could intervene in cities and ecosystems at a scale that can meaningfully address Climate Change. This has been a somewhat slow process, and clients have had to be taken through a journey to understand this perspective.
One example is when Steven was leading a team at Perkins+Will working for the Mayor of Antalya, who wanted to put a Marina in Bogacay Creek (which regularly flooded and was also the city’s key water supply).
Using an Ecological Urbanism approach, they convinced the Mayor to expand the scope of the project to the entire 900-square-kilometer watershed to understand the entire Hydrological and Ecological Story.
When they did that, they ended up creating an urban planning framework for the entire city that was based on creating resilient and healthy ecosystems and water regimes while enabling the growth of the city.
When the team now links this approach to the sustainable finance mechanisms that are available to fund regenerative and resilient approaches, a transformation is foreseen where multi-disciplinary approaches embrace the idea of cities as ecologies.
Future Goals for Regenerative Design Practice
Gensler is moving ahead fast on building a global practice entirely focused on the creation of Regenerative and Resilient Design. A practice that is intentionally focused on Climate finance-enabled work powered by an Ecological Urbanism approach. One of the things Gensler has been looking at is the scale of the market over the next ten years.
Right now, the global sustainable finance market size is estimated to be USD 6.61 trillion in 2024 and is anticipated to reach around USD 38.19 trillion by 2034. So, one of Steven’s future goals is to be part of constructing that practice and doing great work for the most vulnerable people on the planet and achieving Negative Emissions outcomes every day on Gensler’s projects.
