Stefanos spoke about the unique role of the street and the block in the urban landscape at the International Seminar on Architecture in the Age of Austerity and served on the jury for the associated Prix Rafael Manzano Martos. Leading thinkers and practitioners from around the globe gathered at the seminar in Madrid to examine the role of traditional architecture and urbanism in the contemporary world.

"Since the beginning of urbanism as a conscious community practice, the street and the block have been the bridge between the architecture of individual projects, and the form of the city and nature as a whole. Through regulation by lot, blocks have been used to guarantee individual rights to property and to deliver both single projects and a humanly scaled urban fabric. Together with a rich array of streets, they have generated a shared urban public realm that is the place signature of every human settlement. 20th century attempts to recast urbanism in modern form, by enlarging streets and blocks, have produced car- and building- dominated subdivisions of inferior character: A suburbia and slaburbia of impoverished form, social definition and economic performance. A return to typology-based housing and street design and codes can restore the practice of an urbanism in balance between public and private interests, engaging both individual choice and community well being."

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