TUP and DUE Thesis Works 2017

TUP DUE MA THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE

MS DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES

‘17

MA THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE

The Master of Arts in Theories of Urban Practice program offers a critical understanding of design practices in the context of cities and urban ecosystems and brings about the transdisciplinary knowledge required to produce urban change. Students reframe the study of urbanism, urban planning and design as transformative practices that draw on an expanding body of knowledge, research, and action.

They study design as a vehicle and a catalyst for bringing together government agencies, community-based groups, civic associations, and advocacy organizations, as well as the nonprofit and the private sector in pursuance of coproducing and transforming urban and ecological networks.

This research-based program is housed in Parsons’ School of Design Strategies, an academic environment that fosters innovative thinking about and experimentation with the design of cities, services, and ecosystems. Parson’s interdisciplinary space along with other schools of The New School, offers some of the nation’s most respected programs in design, social sciences, liberal arts, performing arts, public engagement and urban management and policy. This academic diversity opens up an array of opportunities for students to create their own academic pathways and participate in other programs and projects offered throughout the university.

Since its inception, this program has focused on urban practices entangled in and subject of urbanization processes, urban systems and the ecology of cities as well as in their relationship to social, spatial and environmental justice, and co-production of urban space. Student work has been multidisciplinary in focus. A large body of projects to date has had international focus as well as in-depth connections to New York City. Students have immersed themselves in intricate urban issues responsible of the spatial fragmentation, racial polarization and uneven economic and spatial development of cities, and in turn developed progressive analysis and propositions in search of more sustainable and just cities. This year graduates from the Master of Arts in Theories of Urban Practice continue to engage with new enquires, theoretical and practical explorations, and calls for action leading to new paths to create systematic change in urban systems and the economic, physical, ecological and social infrastructures that give life to our cities and communities.

The Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies program radically reframes the study of and design approaches to cities. Through fieldwork, research, policy analysis, and activism students gain a broad understanding of the intricate forces that influence urban development and restructuring. They explore the urban complex and its interconnections with political, social, economic, and environmental systems. Using world cities like New York as a laboratory and working in transdisciplinary teams, students design processes for urban transformation alongside and with, not for, the communities most deeply affected by these processes.

MS DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES

Inspired by The New School’s long-standing commitment to social justice, students develop and implement innovative urban processes and strategic projects with the objective of bringing about systematic change in spatial planning, urban policy, community organizing, non profit management, public transportation, cultural, social and art practices, as well as in housing, health, education and food systems. Bringing together the academic strengths of Parsons and other schools of The New School, this studiobased program offers a platform for students to shape new urban practices and become agents of change, working with citizens, communities, experts, and institutions that shape urban ecosystems.

Since the inception of the program students have worked in urban contexts pressed by current challenges brought about by local and global forces. Using different methodologies, they have delved into the racial, environmental, economic, spatial and political inequalities which have inflicted and continue to generate fragmentation, conflict and crisis in our cities and communities. During their academic journey, they have committed to address these urban affairs in territories where there is a need of emergent urban practices and progressive approaches to produce just cities and guarantee the human rights which have been progressively disregarded in urban environments, including the right to the city. This year is not an exception, graduates from the Master in Science in Design and Urban Ecologies continue to critically reframe urban questions, contest inequality and uneven development, call for new paradigms through praxis, and collectively commit to instigate urban change.

Urban Council Gabriela Rendón and Evren Uzer (Co-chairs), William Morrish, Miodrag Mitrašinovic, and Miguel Robles-Durán

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THE FIGHT FOR LOS SURES: Tracing Welfare Policy “Reform” and Resistance to Displacement , Page 10

THE URBAN NONPROFIT COMPLEX: Thwarting the Rebel New York City, Page 12

Anna Nichole Gorman

Fernando Canteli De Castro

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05

EXTRACTIVISM AND DISENFRANCHISEMENT: Empowering Inhabitants by Bridging the RuralUrban Divide,Page 14 Francisco Miranda

04

A HUNDRED YEARS OF HEALTH IN EAST HARLEM: Reconceptualizing a Model of Neighborhood-Based Care, Page 18

ENGAGING NATURE: Exploring Multi-scalar Methodologies to Map Nature, Page 16

Julia Bartholomew-King

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07

Ruchika Narendra Lodha

DISPOSITIONING SYSTEMS: Infrastructures of Affect in the Locative City,Page 20

HUDSON VALLEY IN FLUX: Uneven Socio-Spatial Development in the Wake of the Great Recession, Page 22

Joshua McWhirter

Kieran Gannon

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GROUNDED ANAESTHETICS: A Surface Survey Practice for Buried Urban Infrastructure, Page 24 Kevin Clyne

TUP

10

THE FUTURE LITERACY PROJECT: Designing a Methodology for Collective Urban Futuring, Page 26 Leonore Snoek

URGENCIA TERRITORIAL/ TERRITORIAL URGENCY An Exhibition on Critical Urban Practices Towards a Just City: Mercado San Roque in Quito, Ecuador, Page 28 Sascia Bailer

DUE

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MOBILITY FOR EQUITY: Coopting Existing Resources to Bring Together Disconnected Neighborhoods in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Page 34

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Paul Kardous

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REPARATIONAL DESIGN: A Place-Based Approach to Reparative Justice, Page 36 Michaela Kramer

RESISTING EXCLUSIONS: Organizing Against Displacement in Rapidly Urbanizing Delhi, Page 38 Sruti Penumetsa

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FROM [UN]USED TO [RE]CLAIMED: Exploring a Methodology of Spatial Appropriation to use [Un]used Land Previously Plundered in the Colombian Post-Conflict, Page 42

Isabel Saffon

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CRITICAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF CHANGE: Resisting Urban Renewal Through Radical Mapping, Page 44 Jakob Winkler

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RELIGION AND URBAN MOTILITY, Page 40 Priya Pinjani

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CHINATOWN RETHINKS WALKABLE NEIGHBORHOODS: An Innovational Storytelling Model for Everyday Walking, Page 46 Heming Zhang

#UrbanPedagogy

#Underground

#methods

#speculative #future mapping

#community engagement

#access #infrastructure #urban marginality #urban cluster

#community outreach

#identity &culture

#urban periphery

#community planning #nonprofit sector

#access #Welfare

#geology #layers #infrastructure

#socio-spatial transformation

#situated experience #mapping

#NatureMapping #sense of place

#Jerome Ave rezoning

#identity #culture #senseofplace

#DCP #PLACES #participation

#epistemologies #sensorial

#participatoryplanning

#contradictions

#contested spaces

#reappropriating resources #natural resources

#exploitation

#NYC history

#neoliberal urbanism

#extraction

#pastoral #nonprofit #diplacement

#Uneven Development

#gowanus rezoning #sense ofplace #activism

#resistance

#planetary urbanization #rural/ urban

#right to thecity

#Extractive Economies

#speculative design #urban imaginary

#accessto govenment

#oppression #social welfare #urban marginality

#oppressed

#legitimization

#disenfranchisement

#basic human rights

#Philanthropy

#narrative

#psychogeography #infrastructure

#markviverito #NYC #connections /relations

#non human agencies

#planetary urbanization

#nonprofit

#narrative

#movilization

#HistoricInfrastructure

#Interface

Diagram visualizing thesis themes and keywords of TUP 2017 cohort. Made by Fernando Canteli de Castro 6

TUP

INTRODUCTION

by Evren Uzer, PhD

Assistant Professor of Urban Planning

Embracing the progressive history of The New School, MA Theories of Urban Practice (TUP) Program’s works contribute to our understanding of critical urban practice, and the body of work that is produced from within, goes beyond the disciplinary silos of conventional urbanism and urban planning education, embracing a transdisciplinary understanding of urban research and propose alternative interpretations and analysis of urban practice.

MA Theories of Urban Practice 2017 thesis works focused on diverse topics mainly on New York City, with the exception of two, which focused on Peru and Ecuador. TUP students conducted in depth research and reframed emerging and existing urban conditions to critically address the issues of: • Urban practices, collectives and institutions that produce inequality and spatial and social injustice, and methods to trace these complex ecologies; • Tracing and theorizing emerging urban conditions and interfaces, and conducting critical historiography for existing concepts that would contribute to expanding our understanding of urban research; and • Current participation, philanthropy and advocacy mechanisms, and exploring alternatives, which would enable just access and benefit and create community driven urban imaginaries.

Anna Nichole Gorman reveals marginalizing affects of Welfare policy with two cases from North Brooklyn, in successfully demonstrating multiple views weaving both policy level and community level.

Kieran Gannon traces the impact of financial crisis on homeownership along Hudson Valley, visualizes how social inequality appears in the area and proposes an alternative narrative to the mainstream image of Newburgh.

Francisco Miranda unfolds the mechanisms, environmental impact and economical flows of conflict creating extractive economies in Peru and proposes set of recommendations that range from awareness campaigns to policy proposals.

Fernando Canteli de Castro reveals how non-profit ecology of New York is affected from the available funding resources and how this, in return impacts the very essence of urban democracy through removal of conflict and opposition from participatory processes which ends with a forward looking proposition.

Leonore Snoek, utilizes design process to generate a space for individuals to engage with community led future imaginaries and envision alternative forms of spatial production.

Julia Bartholomew-King examines the health demonstrations of the 1920’s and the Neighborhood Health Action Centers of today, and lays out the backdrop of the last one hundred years in East Harlem and she draws parallels with current health Action Centers through an understanding in relation with displacement and segregation on community health.

Sascia Bailer’s thesis is a research-based curatorial project, “Urgencia Territorial” which focuses on Quito’s largest traditional food market and was developed under advisory of Miguel Robles Duran and Lydia Matthews in 2016-2017. Project got exhibited in Spring 2017 at Aronson Gallery in NYC.

Kevin Clyne explores the underground through three cases in Bronx, deploying theoretical threads from contemporary urban theory, produces a lexicon and framework for understanding the ways unseen underground elements have intrinsic socio-spatial impacts.

TUP 2017 cohort collaborated and exchanged ideas with their peers, helped develop and enrich each others work also widely benefited from faculty within The New School. In Spring 2017, the students narrowed down their research interests into focused inquiries with valuable contributions of secondary advisors and mentors from The New School community. The distinguished list of secondary advisors and other contributors to TUP 2017 theses (listed alphabetically): Tom Angotti, Mindy Fullilove, Joseph Heathcott, Aaron Jakes, Erica Kohn-Arenas, Chris London, Lydia Matthews, Shannon Mattern, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Elliott Montgomery, William Morrish, Gabriela Rendon, Miguel Robles-Duran, Jilly Traganou and McKenzie Wark. We are indebted to their valuable contributions, which without these works wouldn’t be as rich and comprehensive.

Ruchika Lodha focuses on three conceptions of nature through an exploration of epistemologies of nature and the shifting relationships of humans within nature in order to elicit new ways to engage with nature within situated environments, which culminates in her nature atlas.

Theories of Urban Practice MA graduates take the complicated and challenging task of creatively defining urban practice and actionable theory in a constantly changing urban world and field of urbanism, making significant contributions to the continuing production of practice and knowledge.

Joshua McWhirter, through an extensive account of locative, mixed-reality media, proposes them as dispositioning systems, as a means of understanding and operationalizing theories of space, inhabitation and mobility through interfacial urbanisms. His proposition frames locative media as an emerging urban site in which we are yet to develop new methods of research.

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THE FIGHT FOR LOS SURES: TRACING WELFARE POLICY “REFORM” AND RESISTANCE TO DISPLACEMENT

by Anna Nichole Gorman

8

This thesis examines the troubling relationship between federal social welfare policy and urban displacement through the study of two sites in North Brooklyn: the Los Sures (“Southside”) neighborhood, and the Domino Sugar Refinery. This place-based investigation suggests that rather than reducing the need for public benefits, welfare “reform” advanced the neoliberal agenda of disenfranchisement, stratification, and displacement in the urban context. Specifically, this research suggests that the cultivation – or maintenance – of established “sense of place” (i.e. place attachment and place identity) may lay the groundwork necessary to operationalize alternative urban systems required to transcend the neoliberal urban policies driving displacement and marginalization.

Neoliberal urbanism, Social welfare, Corporate welfare, Displacement, Urban marginality, Sense of place, Policy, Sociospatial Transformation

Through its research, this thesis posits that social welfare policy “reform” (specifically the ratification of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) actually facilitated the neoliberal objective of marginalizing and displacing vulnerable residents (the “unprofitable”) in order to replace these populations with wealthier (and more “profitable”) residents. Situation analysis – a hybrid research methodology leveraging analytical, dialectical, critical cartographic, and community engagement approaches – was employed to investigate the link between welfare policy and changing community composition on the urban scale. Building on the work of Rennis and Fullilove, et al. (2013), this thesis applies the situation analysis method to describe the effects that welfare policy “reform” had on marginalized urban residents in North Brooklyn.

Policymakers, residents (both current and former), advocates/activists, as well as academics/urban practitioners were interviewed, and extensive secondary and archival research was conducted.

Several lines of inquiry were explored, including census data to investigate the relationship between welfare “reform” and the displacement of low-income Latinos from South Williamsburg; interviews and cognitive mapping exercises to better understand the experience of the sociospatial transformation of a neighborhood; as well as site observations and the collection of ephemera to explore and document the other forces that acted in concert with welfare “reform”

to transform North Brooklyn. Given the nuances and challenges of tracing the connections between social policy and urban spatial transformation, this research opted for illustrating correlations between policy change and urban space/ displacement, rather than seeking to suggest a causal relationship between or among the variables of interest.

Through its nuanced analysis, this research reveals strong connections between Los Sures residents and their neighborhood, and reveals the trauma of displacement. The research also shows that this sense of belonging among residents was undermined with the retreat of the social welfare state and the advance of new development – and with these developments, new residents. By failing to provide supports to meaningfully aid in the transition from welfare to work, this welfare retrenchment forced individuals – and in some cases entire communities – to detach from their place in search of economic relief. The research also shows that such strategic forced detachment allowed for the cooptation and reoccupation of economically desirable places by more profitable and “productive” populations and communities once the original inhabitants had been stripped of their right to assistance and successfully vacated.

Despite the story of displacement highlighted in the data, local residents and advocacy organizations continue to make a concerted effort to assert their place – and their history – in the South Williamsburg ecosystem. Rather than fighting to resist the influx of new residents, the community has shifted to protecting the spaces that they do occupy, to highlighting their culture and shared identity, to shining the spotlight on the predatory practices of the real estate industry and government policies of neglect while embracing the growing diversity of residents in the neighborhood. Although cultivating and maintaining such a strong sense of place is by no means the only path to contesting trends of marginalization and displacement associated with social welfare retrenchment, it does provide value as an approach to achieve local group empowerment and community activation – requisite precursors for meaningful local resistance, which can then agitate for radical systems change.

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THE URBAN NONPROFIT COMPLEX: THWARTING THE REBEL NEW YORK CITY

By Fernando Canteli De Castro

10

How does urban dialogue take place in a neoliberal metropolis where the preeminent stakeholders have removed conflict for the sake urban productivity?

Exploring New York City’s ongoing rezoning participation process as an example of a conflict removal process, this research analyzes the roles of the city planning agency, nonprofit technical intermediaries, community-based organizations, and civil society groups that work within the urban context. This research aims to evaluate the capacity of these entities in representing the voice of the inhabitants within these current predatory urban transformations and explore the availability of independent community action for urban democracy.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Neighborhood Plans, formerly referred to as “rezonings”, are responding to the intense real estate powers of the globalized financial markets.

Therefore, the Department of City Planning has created PLACES, a tool to promote community participation that controls the opposition against these voracious urban transformations and supposedly collects insight from the same neighbors that will soon be displaced.

Participation is structured through workshops conceptualized as marketing campaigns that aim to pay lip service to the already exhausted concept of the Right to the City. Through the ideology removal mechanism, the neighbors’ engagement practices are transformed into simplistic exercises to exclusively “educate” communities in the field of zoning through technocratic lenses.

Philanthro-capitalism, New York City, Urban planning, Municipalism, Mayor de Blasio’s Plan

Consequently, with the specific goal of bringing neighbors to the participation table while also controlling their actions and the outcomes of the process, a philanthrocapitalist complex of foundations, financial institutions, and intermediaries has been recently configurated. This is Neighborhoods First Fund (NFF), a goal-oriented collaborative fund and its partnership with diverse nonprofit organizations’ experts in the field of community development designated as Technical Assistants. This philanthropic and technocratic initiative attracts community-based organizations and neighborhood coalitions in need of funding and support. Nevertheless, the financial resources which NFF is providing also require the agreement to

collaborate with an apparently unbiased technical assistance team, which defines the tools and goals of communities to face the threats of rezoning through the participatory process.

As a result, the provided economic support makes community-based organizations dependent on and submissive to the imposed guidelines of the partial techno-philanthrocapitalist collaborative throughout the whole rezoning development. At the same time, the other community-based organizations that do not want to be part of these coalitions become considered “the difficult folks” to diminish their capacities to represent the community and effectively oppose the rezoning. This mechanism avoids the urban “Antagonism”, or dialogue between opposites, through commercial and social taming methods while reducing the emergence of the traditional confrontational urban milieu (Mouffe).

The community-based organizations are subordinated to the funders that, through the yearly renewal application to continue receiving resources, control the behavior and impact of communitybased organizations. The neoliberal agenda disguises real estate’s individually designed futures as community shaped compositions and extracts tangible and intangible common assets for their own profit while co-opting public institutions and civil social organizations.

The mission of this research is to discern between independent community action and this techno-philanthrocapitalist complex to interpret from which spaces the imminent future rebel New York City that will protect its citizens from the menaces of the neoliberal voracious urbanization can emerge. This research believes that in New York there are “abundant signs” of free social movements materializing across the oppressed areas and an increasing “critical mass” aware of these threats that there is an enormous “political energy available to do it” (Harvey). Consequently, through the investigation of independent community stakeholders working to represent their communities without an imposed agenda, this study aims to differentiate between the co-opted associative milieu and the substantial future of urban democracy.

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EXTRACTIVISM AND DISENFRANCHISEMENT: EMPOWERING INHABITANTS

BY BRIDGING THE RURAL-URBAN DIVIDE

by Francisco Miranda

12

Extractive economies are globally deemed as the fuel to international economic stability. On many developing countries this narrative is also framed under the notion that extractivism is the “key to progress”. Under this premise, the abuse around extractivism has been extreme, affecting thousands of communities worldwide. The problematic around extractivism has followed me around for years, especially the issues surrounding mining tax money distribution and its effects on the urban and rural layers.

Through my research, I start to uncover how many communities are governments and private companies willing to oppress in order to maintain an economic status.

My entry point dealt with economy, where does mining tax money go and how are the cities and areas surrounding mining sites affected? To do that, I zoom out into analyzing the global systems that allow these economies to keep functioning unchallenged regardless of their destructive effects both on the people and the environment. I focused my research on a case study in the highlands of Perú, in the city of Espinar (Cusco Region).

Perú’s economy regarding mining money switched in mid 2000s, the canon minero policy was approved and through a very ‘equitable’ law, part of mining tax money was now channeled directly into areas near the location of mining sites, all in the hopes of a more just redistribution of wealth. This money, according to the law, must be used for the development of these cities following the most critical and pressing needs. Unfortunately,, the money usually ends up being allocated to either corruption schemes or huge ‘empty shell’ infrastructure projects, projects that are developed without following any criteria (eg. building a stadium and two coliseums in a city where over 40% of the population does not have basic water and sewer services). These ‘empty shells’ seemed to me, the tip of the iceberg.

Extractive economies, Displacement, Rural-urban divide, Tax policy, Participatory planning

Although I started my research focusing solely on the economics, once I started my on-site research, my questions started to change. I was directly exposed with violent displacement, environmental issues and their health repercussions, as well as an oppressive system that maintains a vicious circle. Andean communities are not considered part of ‘the city’ or ‘the

urban’, therefore, their access to mining tax money is very limited even though it is because of their displacement that extractivism operates. These communities are disenfranchised not only from participating in the redistribution of wealth but also obstructed from exercising their right to urban democracy processes.

Throughout my paper, I intend to evidentiate the shortcomings of these economic policies as well as to unpack Peruvian identity and culture as well as the historical divide between the traditional ‘rural’ and ‘urban’; a divide that has led to heavy discrimination, leading to reinforcement of corporate power over the disenfranchised communities surrounding mining sites. I researched into historical processes that date back to colonialism and that explain how this system has managed to ingrain in Peruvian society.

My research allowed me to interview local activists, disenfranchised Andean communities as well as ‘urban’ citizens.

These connections, paired with interviews with the Vice-Minister of Economy and a local participatory planning expert, led me to start thinking about concrete recommendations that would empower disenfranchised communities into further action. I question who gets access to mining tax money? How do we achieve a more just redistribution of it? How can we bridge ‘rural’ and ‘urban’? How does the concept of planetary urbanization fit?

The recommendations I propose range from awareness to policy proposals; securing inclusive access to real political and economic power through effective urban democracy processes. Ultimately, I intend to reconfigure the way money is being invested while acknowledging what at times might feel like an unchallengeable economic system that sustains extractivism. Even though the overarching capitalist system might maintain itself in this landscape, there are ways to mitigate its effects and I explore those through a reimagining of the rural and urban divide.

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ENGAGING NATURE:

EXPLORING MULTI-SCALAR METHODOLOGIES TO MAP NATURE

by Ruchika Lodha

14

Although it has not been deemed as an official division of geologic time, the current age is being considered as the Anthropocene (by some scientists, chemists, environmentalists, and policy makers thus, informally popularizing it) - an epoch where humans have an unprecedented impact on the geology and biosphere of the Earth. The recent acknowledgement and awareness of the anthropogenic nature of contemporary policies and practices have provoked theories that speculate an imminent apocalypse of human civilization and thus an urgent need for humans to live responsibly and sustainably. At a moment like this, it is important to understand, analyze, and evaluate the impacts of humans as individuals and as a species on the planet. Although it may not be intuitive or conscious, the process begins by actively assessing individual and collective engagement with/in their environments and eventually, on a broader or planetary scale, with/in nature.

Anthropocene, Multiple natures, Gowanus Canal, Superfund, Alternative mapping

Nature is a realm with many meanings and manifestations. The ambiguous genealogies debunk a universal theory to understand (epistemology) or know (ontology) nature. My interest lies in exploring the multiplicities of epistemologies of nature and the shifting relationships of humans within nature in order to elicit new ways to engage with nature within situated environments. My research is framed through dominant theories of American nature from the 1600s to contemporary philosophies – Pastoralism (Leo Marx), Industrial Nature (Alfred Schmidt), and Ecological theories (Timothy Morton, Jane Bennett). Although these authors may have incongruous points of view, my aim is in no way to reconcile these philosophies, but to study them as separate systems to approach human-nature relationships. In order to examine their applicability within empirical contexts, I employ dialects and hierarchy theory to deconstruct the theories through specific temporal moments, scales, and perspectives. The analyses thus obtained are applied within Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York which is designated as ‘Superfund’ – one of the most polluted and toxic sites in the country – and is currently undergoing remediation. Its long history of contested narratives of pastoral, industrial, ecological nature allows for a fascinating example to explore shifting and overlapping

epistemologies of nature. Although I study the theories as three separate epochs of nature, the empirical research and analysis reveal the granularity of epistemologies of nature - while physical nature (inhabited or experienced through everyday interactions) may be shaped or influenced by theoretical concepts of nature, it is not a definite manifestation of theories, neither is it clearly defined through and within those concepts. Rather, it exists through multiple narratives – complementing, contending, overlapping, or ambiguous.

Additionally, contemporary concepts of nature may advocate ecological thinking, but that knowledge is esoteric or abstract and nature is, even today, predominantly understood through nature/society binaries. Instead of challenging fundamental ways in which we understand nature, I choose to work within the variable space in order to (incrementally) shift the narratives of nature. I develop the Nature Atlas which employs alternative mapping techniques in order to excavate the hidden, tacit, or disregarded layers of nature within Gowanus Canal. The atlas is a compendium of interpretative and speculative maps, diagrams, illustrations, stories, and praxis projects visualizing quantitative, qualitative, archival, scientific, empirical, and anecdotal research on Gowanus Canal. This collection of ‘maps’ is both a research method and a presentation technique that translates abstract and esoteric knowledge to understand and engage nature within empirical context in two ways: one, by re-telling the story of Gowanus with the focus on human-nature relationships, and two, by addressing the diversity of epistemologies of nature through an assembly of praxis projects in order to create a collective knowledge of and engagement with nature. The purpose of the atlas is to invoke diverse ways of perceiving, understanding, and engaging nature by actively and consciously interacting with our environments through various practices across disciplines, inclinations, expertise, and capacities.

I envision the Nature Atlas to be a step towards the creation of a larger collective of knowledge that yields diverse ways to actively and consciously acknowledge and engage nature through sensorial experiences, reflection and speculation in order to understand how we intervene with/in the Anthropocene.

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A HUNDRED YEARS OF HEALTH IN EAST HARLEM: RECONCEPTUALIZING A MODEL OF NEIGHBORHOODBASED CARE

By Julia Bartholomew-King

16

In 2014 when New York City’s Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett proposed the idea of a neighborhood health hub to improve health outcomes in East Harlem, she actually was refreshing an idea implemented one hundred years ago. In 1920, the New York Department of Health and the American Red Cross joined forces to pioneer the vision of a district-wide healthdemonstration project, in which health and welfare projects would be coordinated in a needy area. They chose East Harlem, and over the course of ten years, the East Harlem Health Center successful served thousands of men, women, and children. Today in 2017, a Neighborhood Health Action Center has been opened in the exact same historic infrastructure occupied by the reform era East Harlem Health Center. Taking a cue from earlier successes, Mayor de Blasio and Health Commissioner Mary Bassett are strong proponents of the “health hub” model of health care, opening first in East Harlem and slated to expand to seven other needy neighborhoods in New York City.

Infrastructure, Ethnography, Narrative, Basic human rights, Sense of place, Public health, East Harlem, New York City History

This thesis examines the health demonstrations of the 1920’s and the recently opened Neighborhood Health Action Centers and lays out the backdrop of the last one hundred years in East Harlem by employing a model created by Eva-Marie Simms (and introduced to me

by Dr. Mindy Fullilove) that examines community disintegration by time period.

Studying decentralization in the New York City Department of Health , I consider the “ebb and flow” that has existed in the government agency throughout the years. Theoretically, I propose that social, economic and political context sets constraints on the human relationships that produce health, and shifts in context reset the constraints. This must be considered when making policies; old policies need to be adapted to new conditions. The necessary success of Health Commissioner Mary Bassett’s new co-located health hubs requires more than simply occupying historic infrastructure, it demands careful analysis of the events, urban policies, and neighborhood dynamics of previous eras. Using interviews, ethnographic, historical and medical literature, current data and reports, and archival photographs, I consider the importance of social infrastructure, and the effects

of serial forced displacement and deindustrialization on the neighborhood in order to unpack how the city makes health. I argue that the reconceptualization of the health hub model is part of the arc of a larger story, that of a neighborhood coming together, splitting apart and now attempting to reorganize.

My study is significant because now, almost one hundred years later, new efforts are being taken to reconceptualize old ideas, occupy historic infrastructure and build upon the foundations of the original East Harlem health demonstrations to bring better public health to the neighborhood. By showing the span of two eras in East Harlem -- from the 1920’s East Harlem health demonstrations to the advent of the current 2017 Neighborhood Health Action Hubs -- I propose to show that a policy effective in an earlier context may prove inadequate in solving problems in the later context. This is important because it informs the way in which policies are made: we need to make changes that take into account the current social, economic and political context of this reveal an embedded context of disintegration, displacement, and disruptive urban policy that has posed a threat to the inherent value of community.

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DISPOSITIONING SYSTEMS:

INFRASTRUCTURES OF AFFECT IN THE LOCATIVE CITY

by Joshua McWhirter

18

Since the U.S. Department of Defense first made the Global Positioning System available for civilian use at the end of the 1990s, digital, location-based “mixed reality” interfaces have been experimented with, and theorized, as a medium for situated play, storytelling, and art practice.

With roots as deep in gaming and new media art as in commercial and military applications — and often inspired by urban theory — locative, mixed reality media have taken forms as varied as spatial novels, digital graffiti, subaltern navigation tools, experimental “sound walks,” speculative visual overlays, alternatereality games, and even political manifestos.

Yet, with the 2016 release of Pokémon Go, these media have arguably entered a new, mainstream phase of mass appeal, in which such projects are increasingly subject to intense critical, financial, and popular speculation. As locative media’s reach and impact expand amidst, and integrate with, other forms of emerging and immersive media-forms such as virtual and augmented reality, this thesis considers how locative interfaces are mediating space and subjectivity within networked, increasingly “smart” cities, and how the history of locative media as a critical practice, and an analysis of its current popular iterations, may help foster a better understanding of the tensions produced through the medium’s transgressive blurring of reality and representation. Moreover, this thesis speculates how these tensions might productively generate novel forms of critical urban practice.

Geolocation, Interface, Media, Infrastructure, Imaginary

Locative, mixed reality media, whether in playful or politically-charged registers, can all too often reproduce flattened psychogeographies of decontextualized locative information — the city understood as bits, reified through mobile performances of the triangulating and universalizing protocols of satellite systems and Cartesian mapping standards. This mobility may, in turn, be helping to condition and sustain urban imaginaries which are amenable to highly connected, yet proprietary and panoptic visions of the city (i.e. big data; sharing economies). But, through such embodied performances, locative media also afford the ability to foreground and problematize issues around spatial inclusions and exclusions, situated within social matrices of citizenship, class, race, gender, sexuality

and physical ability. And as locative mass media interfaces continue to develop, they are also, often inadvertently, becoming material-semiotic platforms for discourse, action, illicitappropriation and community formation. Upon such platforms, multiple dialectics are played out: the layering of reality and virtuality within the interface itself; the conjunction between interface and infrastructure; and mediations, riding vectors of power downward from developer to interface to user — and back up again. Locative media, then, may be a mode of prototyping social futures, as well as an analytical engine for understanding current social dispositions and their underlying infrastructures of affect.

Furthermore, these media may serve as something of a bellweather for emerging urbanization processes in our hypermediated, hyperreal moment. This thesis concludes with an exploration of what kinds of agency are emerging, or could emerge, in this strange milieu: questions which in turn, lead us to consider where publics and communities are located within the landscapes of interfacial urbanism. One could argue that urban social life can increasingly be found somewhere between, and intersecting, both real and virtual geographies. Many others have argued that, far before the advent of digital space, publics have always been constituted somewhere between reality and the virtuality of shared discourses and social imaginaries — themselves constituted by media as old as oral monologue or the written word. In any case, the geography of “hybrid space” may be uneven, but it is truly global, increasingly accessible and immersive, and generating new modes of collective life.

Locative, mixed reality media, at the moment, may seem like useless diversions, but perhaps they are, in fact, working upon us, conditioning perceptions of space and acting as a form of socio-spatial praxis.

The relevant question, then, is: praxis for whom and what? I argue that locative, mixed-reality media are dispositioning systems: means of understanding and operationalizing theories of space, inhabitation and mobility through the interfacial urbanisms we already have, and the ones to come.

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07

HUDSON VALLEY IN FLUX: UNEVEN SOCIO-SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE WAKE OF THE GREAT RECESSION

By Kieran Gannon

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It is now well-known that more people on our planet live within urban regions than outside of them. Though, the boundaries between urban and non-urban spaces are at the very least blurry, if not completely illusory. Some critical geographers, beginning with Henri Lefebvre, have argued that our entire planet is in fact part of one all-encompassing urban fabric. This planetary network formed as a result of increasing relations forged via the need for ever-expanding growth under a capitalistic system. And it is no coincidence that our planet is perhaps more socially unequal than ever before, for one result of capitalism is spatially uneven development. Economic crisis is a contradictory result of this structure, one that is realized periodically. In the wake of crisis, a geographic restructuring of capital [dis]investments takes place that alters the sociospatial urban fabric. Though this is a global system, each local expression is unique to the specific factors that exist in that space.

The Hudson Valley of New York State is undergoing significant changes in its sociospatial makeup in the wake of the Great Recession. This is because of its geographic proximity to New York City, an anchor point in the global financial system.

The Hudson Valley is composed of ten counties, but the six closest to New York City are part of the larger metropolitan region, and thus have been greatly affected by this most recent financial crisis. The Mid Hudson region has been disproportionately affected, having barely recovered from the housing foreclosure crisis that sparked the Great Recession nearly ten years ago. This is the very same region that, in the post-crisis years, has been home to an increase in both poverty and extreme wealth.

Hudson Valley, Right to the City, Great Recession, Uneven Development, Planetary Urbanization

Newburgh, NY is a rust belt city along the Hudson River in Orange County. Since the early 1970s, this city has stagnated in a postindustrial environment. And though Newburgh is host to the largest historic district in the state, its vacancy rate is disproportionately high. Zombie homes, an official term for vacant homes trapped within New York State’s long foreclosure process, are prevalent in the city. There are laws and state sponsored programs in place to combat the large number of zombie homes, such as the Newburgh Community Land Bank which

was created to assist in the redistribution of these vacant properties. Though, there are strict rules and procedures in place that result in large expenses, and little financial assistance is available. This makes the restoration of Newburgh extremely prone to waves of gentrification that have begun to reach its shores, as only those in possession of significant amounts of liquid capital are able to fund a tedious and expensive restoration project in an area that is increasingly targeted as a new and attractive place for investment.

In order to prove how and where social inequality is growing in the Hudson Valley, this thesis first maps qualitative data relating to household income and foreclosure rates in the years 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2016. These different snapshots illustrate how the region’s sociospatial fabric has been affected before, during, and after the most recent financial crisis. Then, through the analysis of conversational interviews, this thesis unpacks ways in which this alteration has been observed and understood by everyday people who live, have lived, or want to live within the Hudson Valley. Though each subject offered a unique perspective and experience, they were all acutely aware of rapid change and related it an increased cost of living due to the ramifications of people moving in from New York City.

The ultimate aim of this thesis is to connect these local manifestations of planetary urbanization on the periphery of New York City to the larger global processes in order to further provoke the questions previous scholars have asked: How can we restructure the distribution of surplus accumulations? To pursue this goal is to pursue the realization of Lefebvre’s conception of a Right to the City. This is, in David Harvey’s interpretation, a right to the shaping power over the process urbanization. It is a means to determine how people manage the exchange of resources and commodities, a reflection of such that is manifested within the built environment of our cities.

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08

GROUNDED ANAESTHETICS:

A SURFACE SURVEY PRACTICE FOR BURIED URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE

By Kevin Clyne

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Look at any contemporary depiction of the form of the city in maps and models and you’ll likely see a city rendered as flat, a single layer of the whole urban story.

More and more, theorists are questioning the ways that cities exist as a series of vertical strata, and how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below.

We understand the layers above because they can be seen, observed, and even intercepted. Satellites surveilling and transmitting from afar can still be traced by the keen and informed eye. What lies underground, however, is a harder to explore. The very virtue of the ground plane produces a phantasmagorical quality, shielding infrastructural networks and even the function of the ground itself in obfuscation.

What is the social construction of this quality? What is Underground and what methods can be used to un-script the politics of the underground in place?

Climate change and the promulgation of internet infrastructure, arguably two of thwe most important developments of our time, have begun placing a new focus on the role of the ground in New York City and practitioners have responded in kind with ad hoc projects producing tools to uncover truths related to these topics.

Underground, Representation, Infrastructure, Psychogeography, Fieldwork

This research attempts to suggest a coalescence of these informal practices with contemporary urban theory to produce a method for understanding the ways that unseen underground elements have intrinsic socio-spatial impacts not only above but also how they themselves are reflexively impacted by the politics of the aboveground, tying together a broader urban story. In testing this method, it is my hope to exemplify what sorts of knowledge can be uncovered when any one underground area is explored in situ, allowing practitioners to expand ideas of the urban in their own communities and un-script the hidden social relations and power mechanisms affecting their everyday lives. Beginning with an exploration of epistemologies of “the underground,” my research traces the evolution of human associations and understandings of the world below and the various culturally co-produced narratives that interweave and inform the contemporary urban context of underground space.

In an attempt to highlight the potential of these methods to de-obscure in any location, I will be focusing my research on the place where I’ve grown roots: The Bronx. Sometimes referred to as “The Forgotten Borough,” The Bronx is home to a number of the poorest congressional district in the country, and it is the city’s poorest borough with around 27% of residents living below the poverty level.

Outside of its socio-economic standing, The Bronx is the city’s only mainland borough, inheriting a uniquely rocky topography as the result of receding glaciations. Its geographic situation also positions it as the entry point for many of the city’s urban technological networks, linking the city with the rest of the state and country. I hope that in researching a borough that’s been narratively neglected, I might produce original research that also serves to highlight the rich history of the place.

My work contains three different case studies, situated in separate areas of the Bronx, each beginning with a meditation and practice of the constructed method I define. They depart on different threads, weaving in narrative field notes with self-reflection to describe the process of construction of these situated underground knowledges, allowing me to test the effectiveness of this practice and suggest ways forward for more intensive and critical underground research. I weave these case studies together with various urban theorists to link these particular strands of research into a larger canon of work, correlating them to each other and to other salient urban practices.

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09

THE FUTURE LITERACY PROJECT: DESIGNING A METHODOLOGY FOR COLLECTIVE URBAN FUTURING

by Leonore Snoek

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This research project revolves around the creation of a generative space for citizens to engage with questions of the far future and imagine alternative forms of spatial production. The need for this is two-fold.

First, often the exploration of possible futures is reserved for the professional futurist, architect or city planner. Second, when citizens are asked to contribute to visioning sessions, the act of future thinking is often co-opted and designed to solicit limited reactionary responses from participants.

This project has revolved around creating a community outreach strategy that educates on speculative future thinking and creates a space where participants can envision their personal hopes and dreams for their neighborhood. Looking specifically into the practice of future visioning as described by futures studies and speculative design, this thesis uses immersive scenarios and prototypes to engage audiences in debates about possible futures.

By researching precedent practices, collaborating with experts and conducting three prototypes of my project, the Future Literacy Project that teaches students speculative design thinking about their urban environment and engages them in the production and materialization of their future visions of their neighborhood.

This project is concerned with fostering a feeling of empowerment and an understanding of co-production of the city.

To achieve this, prototyping in the form of visualizations and materializations of individual hopes and dreams has become an important part of this process. The materialized results become the outcomes of the pedagogical practice in which students literacy becomes visualized.

Speculative design, Prototyping, Urban Pedagogy, Possible futures, High school students

city movement and questions concerning privacy, predictions of technological developments in agriculture and food systems, predictions on the automation of transportation and its potential effects on public space, and climate change to flooding and storm surges.

Third, I asked students to work in teams of two and voice their fears and hopes for the Rockaways about their future topic. The students visualized one of their hopes before using raw materials that I had brought over to prototype one of their hopes. Some students needed some guidance in what it means- or what it can mean to speculative about the far future. It gives students an opportunity to envision solutions or different ways of doing things that simply aren’t possible today. Even though one student decided to focus her prototype in the present because the problems facing the Rockaways like flooding are “simply too prominent today.�

Other students took up the challenge and created flood fueled lightning rail public transportation systems engaging with the lack of transportation today, and floating eco houses that can house families and feed the community in the event of ongoing flooding.

Learning about future thinking as a space for possibilities and creating spaces where students have the opportunity to become co-producers of their urban context is I believe the biggest outcome and contribution of this research project. The Future Literacy Project is a methodology that aims to educate students on speculation and the possibilities that lie in future thinking that can inform their critical understanding of shortsighted plans and teaches them on the potential of becoming active co-producers of their city.

To illustrate, one of the iterations of the methodology conducted at the Non-Profit Rockaway Waterfront Alliance with twelve high school students primarily living in the Rockaways and its direct surroundings yielded some of the most impressive results. After presenting on Future thinking as a practice, I asked the students to map their current understanding of the Rockaways using sharpies and stickers.

This way, the students could use their local knowledge to extrapolate into the future.

Second, we conducted a conversation on specific future topics such as the smart 25

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URGENCIA TERRITORIAL/ TERRITORIAL URGENCY AN EXHIBITION ON CRITICAL URBAN PRACTICES TOWARDS A JUST CITY: MERCADO SAN ROQUE IN QUITO, ECUADOR

By Sascia Bailer

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students from Parsons’ graduate urban programs have focused on Mercado San Roque as a site for their thesis research.

Through their collaboration with the Quito-based activist group Red de Saberes [Network of Knowledges] that consists of a range of scholars, artists, researchers and cultural agents, the student collective was able to explore the Mercado as an entry point into urban tensions and relations of power.

The conditions of the Mercado propel a “territorial urgency”, as a site in which the social, economic and cultural politics insist on a demand for action. The group seeks to respond these urgencies in their research agenda by focusing on intersecting issues of indigenous rights, uneven development, aggressive tourism campaigns, cultural heritage, alternative pedagogies and food sovereignty. Out of this research, they created five site-specific proposals that could strengthen the existing resistance movements in the market, and to extend its networks and strategies towards solidarity with international movements.

Social justice, Ecuador, Curatorial practice, Collaborative design, Right to the city

As a research-based curatorial project, “URGENCIA TERRITORIAL/ TERRITORIAL URGENCY” focuses on Quito’s largest traditional food market that feeds approximately one third of the city. Even though the market is a significant social, cultural and economic hub for many, it is often devalued in public perception as a site of crime, chaos and informal labor. Current global political and economic pressures put the market under constant threat of displacement.

Associations of market workers and local allied activist groups have come together in resistance, exposing and challenging the state and global market forces that create precarious conditions in this vital site of exchange.

For the last two years, an interdisciplinary research and design group of eight

URGENCIA TERRITORIAL / TERRITORIAL URGENCY features these five thesis projects alongside multimedia works from Red de Saberes, introducing the viewer to the everyday life in the market. Together, the works formulate an alternative vision towards a more locally empowered and just city.

The exhibition was on view at the Sheila Johnson Design Center in New York from Jan 19th – Feb 6th, 2017.

Curated and organized by Sascia Bailer (MA Theories of Urban Practice, ‘17) With works by Gamar Markarian (MS Design and Urban Ecologies, ‘16), Tait Mandler (MS Design and Urban Ecologies, ‘16), Masoom Moitra (MS Design and Urban Ecologies, ‘16), Mateo FernandezMuro (MS Design and Urban Ecologies, ‘16), Maria Morales (MS Design and Urban Ecologies, ‘16), Alexandra Venner (MS Design and Urban Ecologies, ‘16), Sinead Petrasek (MA Theories of Urban Practice, ‘16), Luis Herrera (Red de Saberes, Quito) Project supervision by Miguel RoblesDurán (Professor of Urbanism, Parsons School of Design) and Lydia Matthews (Professor of Visual Culture, Parsons School of Design) 27

BIOS

Kevin Clyne

is a former journalist and media practitioner with an interest in obscure histories of New York.

Holding a bachelor’s degree from Fordham University in Journalism and Peace and Justice Studies, Kevin has worked in both broadcast media and in nonprofit management. His interest in urbanism spawns from the intersection of these two fields and the contradiction between the narrative of the urban experience and the reality on the ground. He currently works for The Bryant Park Corporation and 34th Street Partnership business improvement districts.

Sascia Bailer

is a cultural producer, curator and critical thinker of art and urbanrelated issues. After her studies of Communication and Cultural Management (BA) at Zeppelin University, she pursued her masters in Theories of Urban Practice (MA) at Parsons School of Design, where she developed a curatorial platform to investigate the transformative potential of design and artistic practices within the urban realm.

During her Fellowship for Art and Social Justice from the Vera List Center for Art and Politics she was able to advance her research through critical programming.

Sascia has worked with a range of art foundations, museums, cultural centers and artist-led projects in Europe, North and Latin America; she has received numerous fellowships and awards for her initiatives and academic work.

Fernando Canteli de Castro

holds a MSc in Architecture and Urban Planning from the Polytechnical University of Madrid.

His final thesis focused on the unavoidable renovation of the European first-outskirt neighborhoods in a real estate bubble crash context.

He has collaborated in different architectural and urban design firms, and in New York, he has worked in the Urban Design Division at the Department of City Planning and the Planning and Preservation Department of the Municipal Arts Society.

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Julia Bartholomew-King

arrived at Parsons after a career as a commercial wardrobe stylist and costume designer for film and television. Born and raised in California, she is graduate of San Francisco State University, and currently studying in the MA Theories of Urban Practice program.

Experience working with Architects Without Borders, the Oregon Food Bank, and Red Hook Check-In and Placeful in East Harlem, she was recently chosen to participate overseas in the Metrolab Brussels Masterclass, focusing on hospitality and urban inclusion. Julia hopes to continue to engage with issues surrounding public health, infrastructure and social justice.

Kieran Gannon

holds his bachelor’s degree in Historical Studies from Eugene Lang College, right here at The New School.

His interest in the social history of cities led him to pursue the MA in Theories of Urban Practice, in which he has studied changing relations between the Hudson Valley and NYC. He has researched how individuals have observed or been affected by sociospatial manifestations of urbanization in this region. Kieran is also a tour guide for Big Onion Walking Tours, and is currently interning for “The Bowery Boys” podcast.

Ruchika Lodha

Anna Nichole Gorman enrolled in the Theories of Urban Practice MA program at Parsons in order to develop a deeper theoretical and practical understanding of the nuanced relationships across urban residents, urban places, and urban governance. As such, Anna chose to investigate the troubling relationship between federal social welfare policy reform and urban displacement in her MA thesis, which explored issues of urban marginality, community identity, and politics of place.

Moving forward, Anna is interested in finding ways to leverage both her professional and educational experiences to build a better bridge between urban decision-makers and the individuals and communities on the receiving end of policy change and planning interventions. Anna recently assumed the position of Director of Operations at the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs Office of Financial Empowerment, and prior to that had worked as the Programs and Policy Manager at the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City. Anna graduated cum laude from Vassar College in 2010, where she studied Russian and Social/Human Geography.

is a designer, urbanist, and architect who earned her bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Mumbai, India where she researched one of the most backward villages in India and designed a skill centre for artisans to stimulate dwindling local art, craftsmanship, and culture and create a platform for local communities to interact and exchange with a broader, global community. Since, has worked with design firms at various scales including architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Arts in Theories of Urban Practice at Parsons School of Design Strategies, New York. Her research focuses on developing alternative nature mapping techniques to facilitate active, conscious, and unconventional methods to experience, interact and engage with urban environments, specifically based in Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York.

Joshua McWhirter is an urbanist, researcher, and audio producer based in New York City. His work explores geolocative interfaces, mixed reality media, cities, spectacles and publics.

Francisco Miranda

Leonore Snoek As a designer, her work situates itself at the intersection of social sciences and strategic design. Her interest in the collaborative production of urban space has led her practice to engage with questions of equitable urban development and urban democracy.

Before moving to New York City to pursue my M.A. in Theories of Urban Practice at Parsons School of Design, Leonore gained her B.Sc. degree in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.

is a lawyer currently finishing the MA in Theories of Urban Practice program at Parsons School of Design. He has working experience in criminal law, intellectual property, mining law and construction & real estate law.

Francisco moved to New York from Peru in 2015 after working directly with local governments on zoning as well as private-public initiatives.

While in New York, Francisco has been researching and working in issues that relate to the right to the city, public space, access to public land, urban displacement and gentrification as well as the right to housing. His thesis research has centered on the disenfranchised communities surrounding mining sites in the highlands of Peru, with particular focus on the rural-urban divide and the economic and social problems behind andean urbanization and extractive economies.

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DUE

INTRODUCTION

by Miguel Robles-Durán

Associate Professor of Urbanism

Racial segregation, citizen displacement, territorial peace, transportation equity, minority justice and informal settlements are a few of the critical urban issues addressed in the MS Design and Urban Ecologies’ 2017 theses. Seven graduate students dedicated a full year to research, theorize, critique and develop urban intervention strategies in relation to the imminent re-structuring of the urban ecology in which their projects were immersed. From Karachi in Pakistan, to the Colombian territory, New Delhi in India, Charlotte in North Carolina, Montgomery in Alabama, Chinatown in New York City and New York City at large, the projects coincide in their intent to design feasible urban processes and direct instruments that support the need for transforming an urgent socio-spatial condition.

Together with the diverse New School faculty and the many local and international partners that the students worked with, I had the pleasure of directing the last semester of this cohort’s year long thesis, introducing the graduate students to dialectical thinking as the project’s core methodology, and later tasking them with substantial efforts to conduct secondary source, ethnographic, and open fieldwork research in order to produce a conceptual frame that translated to an operative agenda through design interventions, critique and theoretical arguments on the many different urban struggles that the students addressed: Jakob Winkler looked into the history of New York City’s Urban Renewal program as a way to understand the impact it currently has in the unjust forms in which urbanization processes are enacted in the city. His hypothesis is provocative, claiming that from its inception, the Urban Renewal program was structured as a policy mechanism to segregate African-Americans and those inhabitants that belong to the lowest income bracket. His

project developed as a didactic instrument for the purpose of supporting the knowledge transfer between the many civic and non-profit groups currently fighting the consequences of this program.

Paul Kardous focused on the problematics of public transportation equity and justice in one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, Charlotte, North Carolina.

His research on the city’s public transportation infrastructure led him to question why is it that it is designed to benefit those who need it less? And why hasn’t the city explored new transportation modalities that can help fill the existing lack of efficient service in the poorest areas of Charlotte? His project consists of a feasible proposal to utilize an existing transport infrastructure and repurpose it to achieve greater equity.

Michaela Kramer’s preoccupation with the increase of racial injustice, drove her to propose a project that supports the widening reparations movement in the United States. By working on an urban installation that purposefully brings to front in public space the urgent discussions surrounding the claim for acknowledging the crimes against humanity that were conducted to African Americans for centuries and by doing so exposes the fragility of this knowledge vis-a-vis the limited history that gets projected about slavery and racism in the country.

Having lived through the complexities of the Colombian peace process, Isabel Saffon focused on the territorial consequences of the process and with this, developed a series of actionable strategies to guide equitable territorial repartitions and land organization that will be urgent as the peace processes advance. Isabel’s project is inscribed in the necessity for achieving a new form of socially just and collective land organizations, which oppose the common private property regime that has

began to appropriate the territories left by the guerrillas.

Being from New Delhi, Sruti Penumetsa addressed the urban shifts that have occurred her city with the neoliberal turn, especially policies that have facilitated the displacement of large amount of citizens from what it is referred to as illegally occupied land, mostly in favor of capital accumulation through the private seizure of land values. Sruti began a dialog with three non-profit organizations working in Delhi supporting the victims of these policies.

Together they realized the need to establish a parity of knowledge around these issues through the development of a manual to support decision making and resistance of non-profits and displaced populations.

Raised as a Hindu minority in Pakistan, Priya Pinjani saw the urgency to address the diminishing representation of minority groups in the city and its urbanization processes. By working together with cultural institutions in Karachi, Priya developed a living archive of urban minorities inscribed in a detailed curatorial proposal for a feasible exhibition and series of public and virtual installations that raise the voice surrounding a historical process of misrepresentation, demagogy and erasure of other cultures besides the dominant one.

Heming Zhang’s concern with rapidly gentrifying Chinatown in NYC, led her to explore the different forms in which the city utilizes expert knowledge to achieve the means of enforcing this process.

Heming focused in the way cities choose to promote “good living standards”, specifically the standard of walkability and promotion of walkable neighborhoods. The project led her to propose a series of complementary qualitative methodologies that address social justice and cultural traits, as a different way to understand and measure walkability.

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01

MOBILITY FOR EQUITY:

COOPTING EXISTING RESOURCES TO BRING TOGETHER DISCONNECTED NEIGHBORHOODS IN CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG

By Paul Kardous

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Mobility, Equity, Vanpools, Transportation, Economic inequality, Race, Class, Coopting resources

Charlotte, North Carolina is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, more than doubling in size since the 1980s, and still growing exponentially.

With this massive growth, has come the shift from a medium sized southern city to the second largest financial center in the country, as well as the fulcrum of one of the America’s largest urban regions.

Migration into the region has increased greatly, drawing from all over the country—but mainly the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic—as well as from all over the world, instead of from solely from rural communities across the Carolinas. This great influx has changed both the thinking and the policies put in place to address development, education, and spending, and not always for the better. Major shifts have also exacerbated and unearthed decisions made over 100 years ago as Charlotte transformed from an integrated ‘salt and pepper’ city, to one with stark divisions of race, class, and income levels.

A city that once led the nation in school integration through busing in the 1970s, now finds itself with a school system that is again almost completely segregated, due to lawsuits undoing much of the work done previously. This all compounds with the growth changing the way the city is designed and planned, from a car centric sprawling metropolis to one with an ambitious focus on transit and more urban focused development. All these changes have continued to leave some populations with limited access to mobility. This growth, and the policies proceeding it have also helped to create an environment where upward economic mobility is more difficult than in any of the other 50 largest cities in the United States. Children born in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution in Mecklenburg County had just a 4.4 percent chance of making it to the top 20 percent. This shocking statistic, and the fallout from the killing of Keith Scott by police and the subsequent protests in September 2016, have suddenly awakened the city and its citizens that collective and urgent action needed to be taken.

This thesis looks at the large divide between income groups, upward mobility, and race in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, through the lens of mobility and access to transportation. Commuting time is the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping poverty. This means that

leaving certain parts of the community disconnected or further away from employment, education, healthcare, and other essentials of daily life, via longer and more complex commutes, has helped to drive the inequality in Charlotte.

The research for the thesis has been realized through analysis of historical planning moves made since the forming of the city, speaking to stakeholders on the ground, and analytical mapping.

Analyzing precedents and parallel studies of transportation options around the world, as well as investigating ways of leveraging existing systems to better provide access to the city for its citizens have also been deeply explored. The proposal, presented in this thesis will look at coopting an existing transportation system, namely vanpools, to connect underserved neighborhoods. A vanpool is a vehicle owned by—in this case— the local transit authority, which acts as a shared ride carpool, driven by its passengers, for between seven and 15 people. Using the existing vanpool system and protocol, a new citizen led, co-op style transportation system will connect underserved parts of the community to the existing transit network, as well as provide direct, significantly shorter journeys to jobs, education, and healthcare. Acting as transportation tool, instead of solely as a commuting tool, this new type of ‘hacked’ vanpool has the ability to create a parallel yet complementary part of the transportation network. By focusing on an option that is open and available to all the citizens in the community, and using it to target those most in need of access, allows it to retain the possibility to be scaled up in the future, and lead to new regular interval transit services. The network will also be able to further support community strengthening initiatives by empowering residents in areas lacking strong neighborhood organizational structures, as well as those that have long been viewed as more transient in nature in the past. Simple acts such as neighbors having a daily conversation in the vanpool can increase the strong and weak ties in communities, leading to further interaction, dialogue, as well as increased connectivity. When implemented, this system will act as an additional tool to help the city combat the lopsided nature of economic inequality for all the citizens in Charlotte.

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02

REPARATIONAL DESIGN:

A PLACE-BASED APPROACH TO REPARATIVE JUSTICE

By Michaela Kramer

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The legacy of racialized chattel slavery, and the policies, practices and myths it initiated, marks a geography of inclusion and exclusion in the United States. The need to attend to this shameful past and the contemporary harms it animates is a problem worthy of deep consideration.

One strategy that has received renewed attention is the case for African American reparations. Reparations are initiatives— monetary or otherwise—that address the harm caused by slavery and subsequent forms of institutionalized racism on descendants and provide opportunities for a more just future. Reparations require that those who have benefited from acts of injustice take responsibility for their role in the harms done and respond appropriately.

In this thesis, I consider the strategy of reparations to address the lingering problems of racial difference, particularly as it is constituted in and by place, ultimately offering an argument in favor of reparative justice. The marriage between claims for reparations and geography is useful because it reflects the spatial quality of racialized subordination, that too often goes missed in policy or economicsdriven campaigns for reparations, and speaks to the potential of oppositional geographies for a collective reckoning with, and recovery from, the shameful and destructive past of the United States.

Reparations, Black geographies, Space, Memorial, Interactive installation

Consider three spatial schemes— the plantation, urbicide, and the prison— all linked by processes of dispossession and violence, uneven disciplining of racialized bodies and situating racialized imaginaries across time and space, as argued by Katherine Mckittrick. While these three spaces are not identical, they act as blueprints for one another, linking together legacies of placed racial violence.

Still, practices of racialized spatial domination are not wholly successful.

There are, and have always been, dissenting geographies. It is this transformative potential of counter geographies that I find so favorable to a project for reparations. A placed-based approach to reparations both accurately reflects the spatial conditions of racialized domination and respatializes geographies of subordination towards a more just future.

a mobile, interactive installation situated in public spaces, that engages the urgent need for just acknowledgment of the discrimination and terror inflicted on people of color in the United States. It makes actionable a project for collectively acknowledging and responding to the legacy of racialized injustice by supporting oppositional geographies in public space. The project takes inspiration from examples such as the Equal Justice Initiative’s project for marking lynching sites, the States of Incarceration project, and a body of literature which deals with the potential of interactive installations for public acts of critical communication.

This and the previous research informed the design of the Living Memorial which consists of interfaces each reflecting themes in the legacy of racial violence, including: discriminatory public policies, destruction of black sense of place, carceral power, intersections of racial and sexual violence and modes of resistance.

It also includes locally added materials from each site and opportunities to share visitor reactions. The installation provides occasions for the visitor to engage with the subject matter in an embodied and critical manner, connect with others in shared experiences and reconfigure spatial narratives of the site.

The Living Memorial blends symbolic and material actions, encouraging subversive meaning-making in our civic spaces.

It takes up a politics of reparations, answering to the state-sanctioned and state-led policies, practices and mythologies of white supremacy and racialized inequality so central to the history of the United States. Moreover, the spatial dimension of this legacy, both as a reflection of and force for injustice, makes a placed-based approach to reparations apt. It complicates the story of American history as being the conditions for our fight for justice today.

From this theoretical framework, I offer a proposal for a reparational design strategy called the Living Memorial to the Legacy of Racial Violence. The Living Memorial is 35

03

RESISTING EXCLUSIONS: ORGANIZING AGAINST DISPLACEMENT IN RAPIDLY URBANIZING DELHI

by Sruti Penumetsa

Indu prakash singh

Dunnu Roy

Hazard Centre

Organizations at

Sajha Manch

Both the platforms collaborate

MANUAL

Action Aid

Invite to the next meeting

To create a new platform

Sajha Manch Combined Meet

Discussion of the Manual Dr. Renu Khosla

Centre for Regional and Urban Excellence

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Samvaadh

Organizations at

India is a developing nation, where the markers of progressive growth are defined by technological advancements and an inexorable growth in infrastructure.

While development is substantially increasing, the Indian government is conveniently ignoring a more dynamic process that is redefining the ‘urban’ of India. Internal displacement caused due to development has uprooted millions of Indians from their land, homes, culture and neighborhoods. The most adversely affected in this process are the squatter settlements living within the city. The displaced are further exploited with no compensation provided or are put into resettlement camps with minimum facilities to survive. India does not have a National Resettlement Policy; displaced people are only entitled to meagre cash compensation. Across the country, the experiences of slum dwellers are characterized by sudden evictions without adequate rehabilitation and local governments that do not provide low-cost housing for the urban poor.

Social exclusions, Displacement, Right to the city, Pedagogy, Collective awareness

These patterns of spatial exclusions are most deeply manifested in Delhi, the capital city of India.

As a capital city although Delhi has enjoyed many advantages, it is a deeply divided city marked by extreme forms of social exclusion. Today as urban governance is shifting from ‘managerial to entrepreneurial’, the redistributive role of the governing system is shedding away to promote profit accumulation, deepening social exclusions in the public sphere. ‘Entrepreneurial Urbanism’ promotes public-private partnerships as a response to global capital, thus questioning social redistributive policies within the cities. The city today is dotted with 675 squatter settlements or what are known as Jhuggi Jhopri Clusters who often fall prey to unwarranted displacement. In this course of multiple displacements with an overpowering political system, NGOs and civil society organizations play a very important role in advocating for the rights of Jhuggi Jhopri Clusters in Delhi. With the onset of the smart city initiatives and India’s growing need to achieve the ‘world class image’ it is all the more necessary to research, understand and analyze the contemporary patterns of spatial exclusion in India’s capital city. My research aims to analyze the forces of internal displacement in Delhi to identify the socio-political

and spatial-political parameters that defy the Jhuggi Jhopris’ right to the city and identify the role of NGOs and CSOs in advocating for their rights. My thesis builds on identified gaps of existing structures of mobilization.

In Delhi mobilization by NGOs, worker unions and various other individuals do exist, and their protests against slum demolitions include rallies, public meetings, legal actions, capacity building to affected people, etc. Although, they have been successful at a very local level in denouncing slum demolitions, they have not altered the implementation of slum clearance. The mobilization has more often been fragmented and sporadic and has lacked significance as far as slum demolition is concerned. The underlying reasons being lack of knowledge, resources and most importantly the lack of identifying the issue of discontent in the larger political context.

Having identified the gap in the dominant narrative my thesis aims to provide a resource to the NGOs and civil society organizations to situate themselves in the political context of displacement in Delhi and to help them tackle the situation by exploring possibilities and identifying ways of building capacities and stronger networks amongst existing capabilities.

The envisioned strategy is a manual that aims to catalyze a collective action to advocate for the rights of Jhuggi Jhopri Clusters. The manual documents the displacement of Jhuggi Jhopris in Delhi through the historical context, policy formations and political organization aiming to unify awareness amongst NGOs. The manual consequently satisfies three parameters; knowledge transfer, reflection and collaboration through its publication and distribution in order to create opportunities for intervening in the larger political context of the city and concurrently embedding values of collective action. The strategy holistically builds capacities and capabilities of NGOs by building collective awareness to entail a collectivized action to claim Jhopris’ Right to the city.

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04

RELIGION AND URBAN MOTILITY

LOST & FOUND mapping Hindus in Karachi

By Priya Pinjani

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1947

2017

In a country like Pakistan, where 99% of the population(s) identify with some religion, effectively, religion becomes the greatest factor of integration and disintegration for its civil society. The creation of a religious urban identity, with specific attributes, has been at play, and experienced, throughout the country’s history, and resulted in a very segregated Karachi. It’s many dynamic networks of political, social, economic and spatial agents have reshaped the contours of the city, as well as the way its inhabitants thread through it. The distinctions between these religious populations have now become visible and audible to the naked eye and ear by just a walk down the street, through attires, names and greetings. But when did religion convert from a personal belief to a political stratification in Karachi?

How does one tackle a problem like that of a religious-urban identity? How did it become a problem to begin with? I contest that the answers to these questions can be traced back to the creation of the country, constitutional changes and archival practices since. Therefore, with this proposal, I shift the questions to how can the national narrative be widened, to be more democratic and inclusive, and be representative of the complexities of the many relationships and many ways of inhabiting Karachi; I want to identify and foreground the networks that have, and continue to, construct Karachi differently for Muslims and Hindus.

Religion, Urbanization, Archive, Visibility, Pedagogy

Pakistani theocratic democracy, from Islamic Secularism to Islamization, Islamic Moderation to today, has made religion a complex phenomenon, so, our responding politics must be a complexed one too. It must tackle different pieces of the assemblage, allowing for more continuous flows of (ex)change between the communities. Therefore, this proposal works towards legibility and visibility. It is a civic engagement campaign towards first visibility, and then change. Visibility here can be seen as the first step to that change, or the only step. In both cases, it (re)builds agency, and (re)constructs a Hindu narrative that has long been ignored, shifted, removed and replaced.

This proposal is thus a composition of many discordant voices, claiming no final authority. It is an unfolding story that remains to be told even in twenty first century.

To that end, Lost & Found: mapping Hindus of Karachi, will foreground ethnographic and urbanistic research on spatial and cultural appropriation of Hindu populations in Karachi – exploring links between Religion, State and Urbanization.

The project is not to submerge art under a political agenda, or to provide data for an eventual analysis. Hence, the projects are not a recorder of evidence, but, a companion in the act of witnessing, and a relay device in the interminable network of critical thinking. Lost & Found believes that bringing historical narratives, social practices and cultural forms to the foreground, and available to the public, it will make the situation hard to ignore; foster dialogue and exchange within, and among, a diverse community of practitioners and multi-faith citizens.

The artists, photographers, architects, urbanists, writers, historians and journalists in this project will demonstrate the socio-eco-politico-spatial aspects of religion as a tool of statecraft in Pakistan: its histories and promises, risks and limits, and its intersectionalities. Put together to create, and recreate, worlds from what they see around them, and to generate new, alternate or even counter-archives.

In the neutral, yet provocative gestures, I hope to find a momentum of optimism, and energy(ies) that could offer us another window into the past, and therefore, the future. But how might these collections and maps act with broader social and artistic relevance? Can they be active in critical discourses, and, by doing so, participate in constructing a new social imaginary? This campaign expands the role of research and design as an agent of social transformation through co-creation and an orchestrated dialogical exchange for a broader public. There can be no isolated solution to the urban undertaking, and so it relies on an inclusive strategy of accumulating and disseminating new values. Under that model, and tapping various sources of powers at play, this project aims to create a space of thorough learning and critical discussions, for its participants and audience alike, that explores possible forms of knowledge production, collaboration, engagement, representation, and tools within the postcolonial capitalist public spheres in multifaith Karachi.

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05

FROM [UN] USED TO [RE] CLAIMED:

EXPLORING A METHODOLOGY OF SPATIAL APPROPRIATION TO USE [UN]USED LAND PREVIOUSLY PLUNDERED IN THE COLOMBIAN POST-CONFLICT

By Isabel Saffon

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Colombia’s geopolitical landscape is highly contested. For more than 100 years numerous actors, armed and civilians, have struggled over the power and control of land. Today, the Peace Agreement between FARC-EP and the Government brings an opportunity to radically change this context. This political momentum opens up a new question, how can ‘we’ contribute to radically change the territory so it mirrors greater equity and justice?

From Unused to Reclaim explores strategies of co-governance to reclaim unused common land (known as baldíos) in the Colombian post-conflict. Studying principles of self-determination, spatial appropriation and institution innovation, this thesis intends to trigger a ‘new dialogue’ where action is conveyed, by proposing a scenario; a ‘right to the new un-chanted territory of peace’.

Spatial appropriation, Rural commons, Reclaimed land, Unused land (baldíos), Plundered land, Conflict of ownership, Post-conflict, Colombia

Basing my self on an historical study of the geographies that have shaped the narratives of exclusion and disparity in Colombia, and acknowledging the new opportunities the Peace Agreement between FARC-EP and the Government bring to reverse these dynamics, I propose an alternative in which national land that have been previously plunder can be used to benefit rural communities. Taking into account that the appropriation of public land has historically highlighted the imminent tension between, guerrilla groups, right wing paramilitary groups, the army, drug lords, rural elites and civic peasant population; this thesis builds on the idea that the clarification of public [un] used land is an important capstone to draw a more equitable landscape. As a result, this thesis will try to unpack and visualize (1) the historic tension of appropriation of land; (2) the current importance on how we envision the distribution of land; and (3) a proposal to use community engagement to retrieve public land that has been previously plundered, and collectively imagine it with rural folks to satisfy their needs and desires.

of the countryside. Rather than defining how the comunes should be, this thesis explore a methodology to identify possible plots and proposes tactics to re-scale governance and promote collaboration between governmental institutions and rural folks.

The aim of this project is to expose the necessity to 1) strengthen the presence of the State and its accountability, and 2) support rural economies and empower peasants to shape their own environment.

Hence, the value of this exploration is to study how the State can be seen as facilitator instead of as an administrator.

This thesis is grounded in the ideal that power (land an d political participation) should be distributed more evenly and that policies should advocate for cooperation and collective decision-making. *** This thesis has enormous constrains. 1) I am not in Colombia and linking with peasant communities is not possible (yet); 2) The integral rural reform hasn’t been implemented, and the practical issues haven’t been defined. However, its value relies in imagining how to specialize concepts of equity and participation and sparkle a dialogue on refining trust paths.

Within the guidelines proposed by the Peace Agreement, 1) Integral Rural Reform and 2) Political Participation, I explore a methodology in which new public rural hubs of peasant production and education –COMUNES CAMPESINOS- can be envisioned by transferring decisionmaking power to the existing inhabitants 41

06

CRITICAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF CHANGE:

RESISTING URBAN RENEWAL THROUGH RADICAL MAPPING

by Jakob Winkler

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Urban Renewal has been a major factor in the uneven development of US cities along the lines of race and class.

Introduced in 1949 as a federal program to fight the decline of cities, the policy has drastically reshaped both the physical and social landscape of urban America.

It did so through bulldozing “slums” or “blighted” neighborhoods, uprooting their inhabitants, and rebuilding “healthier” forms of living. Urban renewal built on practices and policies of institutionalized racism, above all redlining, and reinforced patterns of socio-spatial exclusion. While urban renewal is typically discussed as a long-gone policy of the post WWII era, it has in fact continued to be implemented in New York City after the downfall of the federal program in 1974 on the basis of State and Municipal laws. Today, urban renewal is one framework for the neoliberal development of the City, employed alongside rezoning and other forms of urban restructuring and stateled gentrification. But despite these changes, urban renewal continues to promote growth at the expense of the most vulnerable communities in our society.

Most recently, the Willets Point Urban Renewal Plan, adopted by the City in 2008 and currently under construction, is displacing 250 immigrant-run businesses employing over 2,500 local workers to make way for an upscale residential and commercial neighborhood of “better” and “higher” uses.

Critical Mapping, Knowledge Transfer, Capacity Building, Urban Renewal, Race and Space

The ongoing use of urban renewal and eminent domain in New York City is met with little public and academic attention. The common discourse relegates the policy to the past, treating affected communities as passive victims and overlooks the ongoing impact it has on socially and physically restructuring our city. This narrative, in turn, has important implications on the way that this policy is practiced today. It further demystifies an already in-transparent decision-making process that is shut off from access and scrutiny by the public. This lack of public debate reinforces the bureaucratization and specialization of urban renewal and the way it treats deeply political questions of how we define and use urban space as merely technocratic decisions on land use.

on urban renewal and increase the capacities of citizens to resist, intervene in, and appropriate this policy for their own ends. Maps by government officials, city planners, and the private sector have played a major role in the creation of the “problems” that urban renewal set out to solve. Examples range from the redlining maps produced by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in 1938, the maps supporting claims for planned shrinkage in the 1970s, to the various studies of “blight” and the actual urban renewal area maps that preceded the implementation of these plans. Appropriating the power of maps in the tradition of critical cartography, I use mapping as a means to both unveil the reproduction logic of this policy, and to imagine different forms of producing a more equitable urban ecology. My project takes the form of an atlas that builds on successful counter practices to urban renewal, exposes past and current applications and impacts of this policy, and provides a platform for the collective sharing of underrepresented critical knowledges. Acknowledging the limitations as an outsider without any lived experience of urban renewal, as well as the violent history of cartography, I open up the map-making process to affected communities and aim to gradually transfer the authorship of maps to these “experts”. This will be done trough atlas presentations in various venues throughout the city, in which the audience is invited to add to and modify the maps.

Instead of passively “using” the atlas, participants will become co-creators of new knowledges and take ownership over the maps. Finally, the collected knowledges will be collected and made available to a wider public through an online, living archive. Offline labs in urban renewal areas and strategically selected venues will serve as offline engagements to fill the archive with content. The atlas transitions into a platform that connects groups with practical knowledges on urban renewal with people in need of such expertise, and allows for the collective production and sharing of new critical spatial knowledges.

My thesis presents a critical cartographic intervention in this urban situation that aims to reengage a political discussion 43

07

CHINATOWN RETHINKS WALKABLE NEIGHBORHOODS:

AN INNOVATIONAL STORYTELLING MODEL FOR EVERYDAY WALKING Heming Zhang

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In light of various scenarios of physical, mental and social benefits, the “thriving industry” of building walkable neighborhoods has been receiving significant attention from designers, researchers, decision-makers and the wider public. There is no doubt that many positive impacts can result from walkable environments. However, the stereotypes and the simplified quantitative measurements of walkable neighborhoods fail to grasp the whole picture of communities’ everyday walking. In addition, while the general physical and environmental impacts of walkable neighborhoods are being broadly studied by using various quantitative methodologies, the social impacts on specific neighborhoods have not been analyzed in detail. Designing walkable cities, as it is practiced now, not only leads to city-wide homogenous policies and generic design guidelines that ignore the distinct characteristics of neighborhoods, but it also drives communities to become more vulnerable when they are already facing dramatic threats of gentrification.

Everyday walking, Chinatown, Participatory action research, Multimedia Storytelling, Value-protecting oriented model

To critique the stereotypes and foster an alternative way of understanding and measuring walkable neighborhoods in the context of immigrant communities, my thesis proposes a multimedia storytelling model, which encourages and helps researchers and decision-makers to interact with local communities and have a better understanding of the on-ground situation, to enable and facilitate a participatory process while designing plans and strategies leading to the creation of more walkable public spaces in immigrant neighborhoods. My research site is Manhattan Chinatown.

Due to its unique economic, historical and cultural background, the heterogeneity and singularity of Chinatown are the essential characteristics that make Chinatown precious. However, in the context of gentrification without any protection of rezoning, those characters also make Chinatown vulnerable, and communities’ voices difficult to be heard.

My model doesn’t try to assess whether Chinatown is walkable, but it unpacks how local communities understand “walkable neighborhoods” regarding affordability, cultural identity and social capital.

qualitative and participatory methods into existing research, design and decisionmaking processes, which can empower community members in Chinatown to determine what a walkable neighborhood looks like to them based on daily economic, social and cultural characters; how to spark social conversation and share the unique values of what attract people walking and staying in Chinatown.To answer them, I developed a participatory action research strategy which leads to the design of a multimedia storytelling model for unfolding real stories of Chinatown’s street life. This community oriented storytelling model is not only collecting and sharing stories and knowledge, but it should also enhance communities’ capabilities of building scenarios, clarify their positions and make people aware of choices, finally foster a strategic move for promoting new initiatives in decisionmaking processes.

To provide a more practical and feasible tool for the utility of the strategies of the storytelling model, I designed an online toolkit. The framework of toolkit includes: (1) Research Tools— including survey, deep mapping and interview, which can help people develop more profound insights of walking issues in Chinatown and identify stakeholders; (2) Publicize Tools—including story booklet, film events and walking tours, which will help practitioners spread the knowledge and stories with Chinatown communities, which can assist the public become more familiar with the walking issues, and build trust with the people who use this toolkit; (3) Scenarios Building Tools— including participatory mapping and scenario building workshop, which will help communities gain participatory design skills and provide more design-oriented proposals. By designing such a storytelling model and toolkit, I hope to reframe the vision of walkable neighborhoods for immigrant communities, make their voice be heard and foster discussions to redefine and redesign the “walkable neighborhoods” among researchers, decision-makers and the wider public.

Based on the previous insights, my questions are : how to embed more 45

BIOS Paul Kardous is a citizen Architect from Charlotte, North Carolina, having received his Bachelor in Architecture from Auburn University, and completing his thesis at Auburn’s Rural Studio, a community based design build program. He practiced for 7 years in London working for Grimshaw, Hopkins Architects, and PLP / Architecture. Most recently, he worked for Rogers Partners in New York City before pursuing a MS in Urban and Design Ecologies. Paul is interested in the intersections and connections between communities and infrastructure in cities. He plans to establish an architecture and urbanism practice in Charlotte post graduation.

Priya Pinjani

Michaela Kramer was born and raised in Toronto.

She holds a BA in Urban Planning and Philosophy from Concordia University. She has worked as a designer and community engagement facilitator on public spaces across the United States with Project for Public Spaces and is currently pursuing a MS in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons. She is interested in the intersection of critical theory and urban design and the politics of inclusion and exclusion.

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is an architect from Karachi, Pakistan.

A graduate of Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, and a Fulbright Scholar, Priya had been practicing hospitality and residential design before making her way to New York and The New School.

While formal design is something she enjoys thoroughly, she has always gravitated towards issues of politics of space, right to the city and social ecosystems that operate within the built environment. She tries to synthesize these interests with Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons, and hopes to go back home with a much broader, and relevant, definition of both Architecture and Design.

Isabel Saffon

Sruti Penumetsa earned a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Bangalore,India.

After graduating she interned in various cities in India exploring different realms in Architecture. After interning as a Landscape Architect in Colombo, Srilanka, she moved to New York, and is currently pursuing MS in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons School of Design.

Her experience as an architect and currently as an urbanist drives her passion for public spaces. Along with exploring the complexity and diversity of public spaces, she currently finds herself embedded in the intersection of participatory design and collective civic engagement to nurture community development.

With a background in urbanism, architecture, and community engagement, her main interests revolve around the relationship between memory and conflict, open decision-making and co-governance, and the role of design in expanding human rights in a globalizing age.

She holds a Professional degree in Architecture (Magna Cum Laude) from Universidad de los Andes, BogotĂĄ and is now a Masters of Science candidate in Design and Urban Ecologies from Parsons The New School of Design.

Heming Zhang

Jakob Winkler

works at the intersection of social research, urbanism, and design. With a background in political science, he is interested in the production of actionable and accessible knowledge that demystifies the processes shaping our cities. His work in the field of urbanism centers on issues of civic engagement and social justice, including the reclamation of restricted public space. Jakob is currently working on a research project on protests in NYC relating to the built environment at the New School and is finishing his M.Sc. in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons School of Design.

is an urban planner graduated from Beijing Normal University of Zhuhai, in China. She equipped professional research and design skills from learning and practice. To better understand community-oriented planning, she moved to New York City and joined in the Design and Urban Ecologies program at Parsons of The New School. While she was pursuing an MS degree in here, she is exploring her interests in Community Engagement, Social Justice, Public Space, Public Participation Methodologies, Data Visualization, and Interactive Mapping.

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THESIS WORKS 2016 - 2017

MA Theories of Urban Practice & MS Design and Urban Ecologies Designed by: Eduarda Aun Parsons School of Design http://www.newschool.edu/parsons School of Design Strategies http://sds.parsons.edu Urban@Parsons http://sds.parsons.edu/urban/ MA Theories of Urban Practice http://sds.parsons.edu/urban/tup/ MS Design and Urban Ecologies http://sds.parsons.edu/urban/due/ ŠCopyright 2017 by Parsons School of Design

urban@Parsons