Trains: Shaping Cities, Architecture, and Everyday Lives

Описание: Speaker: Fredrik Skåtar, architect

Swedish architect Fredrik Skåtar presents how passenger rail shapes everyday life by influencing where people live, work, and build. Rather than treating passenger rail as transport alone, the webinar discusses great train networks as spatial and social frameworks that organize cities, regions, and communities.

Drawing on European examples from Berlin, Stuttgart, and the Flemish Diamond, Skåtar shows how trains connect cities into functional regions, support rural–urban living, and help counter depopulation by allowing people to work in one place while living in another. These examples highlight how economies and communities increasingly depend on trains to connect regions and nations.

We will also reflect on the role of train stations within this system. Instead of seeing stations purely as technical hubs, we will consider their potential as civic and cultural places that can foster identity, everyday encounters, and community life—particularly in smaller cities.

Fredrik Skåtar is an architect and founder of Studio Skåtar, working in architecture, urban research, and education. His practice is based in Berlin and grounded in cultural sustainability and urban mapping, focusing on the relationship between built form and people’s everyday lives.

His work is carried out through architectural projects, urban studies, research trips, lectures, and commissioned courses, combining urban research with craftsmanship, geometry, and human-attentive algorithmic design methods.

Learn about upcoming webinars hosted by the Alliance: https://www.hsrail.org/events/

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The High Speed Rail Alliance is a 501(C)(3) non-profit, supported by individual members like you, who want fast, frequent, and affordable trains throughout North America.