AC TIVE DIS POSI TION 9 SPACES OF POSSIBILITY
MS DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES
This Master of Science program radically reframes the study of cities. Through research and fieldwork, students gain a broad understanding of the complex economic, political, social, environmental, and physical forces that influence urban growth and development. Working in multidisciplinary teams, they design processes for urban transformation.
INTRODUCTION by William Rees Morrish
Professor of Urban Ecologies
“Disposition is the character or propensity of an organization that results from all its activity. It is the medium, not the message. It is not the pattern printed on the fabric but the way the fabric floats. It is not the shape of the game piece but the way the game piece plays. It is not the text but the constantly updating software that manages the text. Not the object form, but the active form.” ExtraStateCraft, Keller Easterling “If we are to overcome the debilitating pessimism of the current era, it is crucial to combine the gritty realities, with a sense of educated hope that taps into our deepest experiences, allowing us to take risks and to think beyond our current thinking. As Alain Badiou states, this is ‘a matter of showing how the space of the possible is larger than the one assignedthat something else is possible, but not that everything is possible’. Imagining the unimaginable necessitates asking crucial questions regarding what types of knowledge, politics, and moral order are necessary to sustain a vibrant democracy.” The Violence of Organized Forgetting, Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine, Henry A. Giroux
Abstracts from nine urban ecology praxis form the collective intelligence contained in this pamphlet, documenting the work of eleven graduate students in the 2015 class of Masters of Design and Urban Ecologies program. Each praxis is an integration of field research, extensive interviews, discursive writing, spatial synthesis, and reflective questioning and is rooted in every day urban situations, truthed through walking with working and living city people who are ‘planning to stay’ as active residents for their community. Over a year’s work each has learned a deeper understanding of what it means to unite the words “design with urban ecology”. As they helped each other decipher individual urban questions, they wrote plays about personal urban episodes, held workshops and drew extensive diagrams together as collaborating class and individually with their community colleagues. Design is more than producing a single project or solving a problem. Paraphrasing Professor Easterling, design and urban ecologists seek to detect and develop the active forms that shape society and its spatial disposition, revealing hidden relationships between potentials and spaces of possibility. In Henry Giroux’s powerful text he quotes the French philosopher Alain Badiou Alain. The words “how the space of the possible is larger than the one assigned”capture the embedded context and interpersonal episodes, that in a manner of speaking defines the “site of inquiry” or “urban question frame” question that is a common thread through each praxis. For example, Rehanna Azimi, and Monique Baena-Tan are working to strengthen local community institutions by helping them to retain their history and by empowering them with the control to shape the future possibilities of the 30,000 residents who occupy the 2.2 square mile City of Orange, New Jersey. Regional planning authorities and development experts leading spatial plans have “assigned one”, the national urban development policy called SMART GROWTH. In this space, they have displaced this city’s rich 200-year urban history and negated the existence of a fully occupied mixed income community in favor of an empty suburban community marked by underutilized land in need of immediate “in fill” with new transit oriented compact housing geared to professional people making $100,000 and working in the World Trade Center. Marcea L. Decker investigates the myth and truth of Wikipedia being assigned the model of the digital “open platform” and “collective intelligence”, that we should follow in our community building work. In fact it is neither open nor an equitable representation of our collective common wealth, given the fact that 87% of its material is edited by men. Following the words of Henry Giroux, each praxis was began by digging deep into the gritty realities
through situational analysis and urban research. For example, working with local “first responders”, Aran Baker, spent hours interviewing the community residents of Red Hook, deciphering the Office of Emergency Management’s organizational charts and procedures, walking with media through the “postSandy’s gritty reality”. Aran’s work seeks to foreground the elderly NYCHA folks who have been relegated to the shadow periphery of governmental agency disaster recovery plans. These aging residents’ daily lives depend upon a precarious health and safety system heavily damaged by Sandy’s destruction, with few options as they age in fear of the next hurricane, remembering the trauma of Sandy. Through historical and field investigation they built their knowledge and confidence to offer their community partners a sense of “educated hope”—together setting the terms by which they can name and frame the questions to be addressed, as well as values, actions and tasks that need to be performed. In many cases their praxis design “dispositions” are being adopted by their partnering colleagues as apparatus-forming ways to throw off the constraints of their “assigned space”, to design an urban ecology that offers, in the words of Henry Giroux --- “imagining the unimaginable necessitates asking crucial questions regarding what types of knowledge, politics, and moral order are necessary to sustain a vibrant democracy”. The graduate’s work has been enriched from a supportive network of talented faculty and community partners, who have labored as advisors, coactivists and friends. We thank them for contributing their energy and knowledge to the emerging field of Design and Urban Ecology. (listed alphabetically) Emanuel Admassu, Adjunct Assistant Professor Architecture and Planning, Senior Designer MDeAS; Anne Balsamo, Dean Media Studies and Professor; Eric Belsford Lecturer Digital Methods; Ben Berkowitz, Founder, SEECLICKFIX; TL Cowan , Feminist Technology Network (FemTechNet) Chair of Experimental Pedagogies in the School of Media Studies; Linda Bryant ED for Project EATS; Miguel RoblesDuran, Assistant Professor of Urbanism, Dr. Mindy T. Fullilove, MD, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences; Dr. Matt Kraushar, MD, Red Hook; Molly Kaufman, Provost/Director University of Orange; Mathew Kwatinetz, Senior Vice Presidenrt NYC/EDC/ and Managing Partner QBL; Kevin McQueen, Adjunct Associate Professor of Policy; Alison Mears, Dean of School of Design Strategies; Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism; Victoria Marshall, Associate Professor of Urban Design; Aubery Murdock, Academic Dean, University of Orange; Ren Provey, Developer, SEECLICKFIX; Robert Semper, Artist; Carlos Teixeira, Associate Professor of Design Strategies; Jilly Traganou, Associate Professor in Spatial Design Studies; Anasa Scott, Lecturer, Design Management
Schedule
May 14, 2015 WELCOME OVERVIEW William Morrish 5:45 - 6:00
May 15, 2015 WELCOME OVERVIEW William Morrish 12:45 - 1:00
01. 02. 03.
Digital Ground Truthing: Re-Projections of Daily Life
Santiago Giraldo Anduaga 6:00 - 6:30
Luis Macias 6:30 - 7:00
Designed to be Ignored: Exposing Algorithmic Exclusion
Marcea L. Decker 7:00 - 7:30
04. 05. 06.
Co‐designing a Pre‐emptive, “Storm‐Proof” Red Hook
Aran Baker 1:00 - 1:30
extra.ORDINARY - Integrating methodologies for change
Dagny Tucker 1:30 - 2:00
Connecting the Corners: Towards a collaborative food ecology.
Anne Duquennois + Ron Morrison 2:00 - 2:40
07. 08. 09.
Orange Counters Unsettling Dynamics of Regional Planning Power
BREAK 2:40 - 3:00
Scoring Economic Revitalization
Monique Baena-Tan + Rehanna Azimi 3:00 - 3:40
Mapping Values, Building Networks: A Path Towards Cultural Equity in Urban Arts Planning
Raquel De Anda 3:40 - 4:10
Disrupting Discourse for HOME
Antwan Rucker 4:10 - 4:40
Social Stressors
Spatial Understanding
Preconcieved Notions
Strong Ties
Preconcieved Notions
Academic Elementary & Observation Media Research
Academic Elementary & Media Observation Research
Political Understanding
Physical Barriers
Weak Ties
Complex Political, Social, and Spatial Realities
Complex Political, Social, and Spatial Realities
+ Prepared Foods & Nutrition Research
Socio-Spatial Design
Education
01.
Digital Ground Truthing: Re-Projections of Daily Life by Santiago Giraldo Anduaga
In our current age, the expanding use of crowd sourced technology, engaging at the intersection of on the ground reality and accountable civic action, is key to shaping the future of cities, politics, and communities in their own neighborhoods. Peopledriven approaches to existing social, political, and spatial structures increase the capacity for civic energy to redesign community systems and elevate citizen presence. In the following pages, I will carefully decompress the theoretical constructs, real life experiences, and research that have led to the emergence of new theories and concepts around issues of civic action and technology. From these ideas, I have created a praxis in collaboration with civic technology enterprise SeeClickFix, and urban agriculture and educational non profit Project EATS. From this praxis I seek to deeply explore these concepts to further understand how these applications can help shape cities and citizens lives. From walking the land to crowdsourced gathering of collective information and data, there is a long standing tradition of peopledriven methods for understanding our surrounding urban landscapes. They are the driving force for almost every social, political, and spatial change that cities have faced. Urbanized areas are seldom thought of as iterations of ecological systems. Spatial orientations, social and political infrastructures, and the lives of citizens have a tendency to be siloed and thought about as independent entities, yet decisions made by policy makers, developers, financial interests, and various groups in cities have significant – and often detrimental – impacts on the lives of people that make the city their home. Key elements in this reality are embedded in how city decision makers and civic groups perceive the realities of people on the ground, and what is perceived as necessary and beneficial for the city as a whole. These impressions of what is beneficial and necessary are often more guided by preconceived notions and superficial understandings than by the real challenges people face. Today, our daily lives are threatened by the acceleration of competitive global city identities that dictate how sociopolitical space, and space itself, is negotiated. There is a necessity to move beyond existing normative understandings by pushing the methods of investigation and understanding previously defined by current decision maker understandings of how projects and changes are actualized. How can we begin to understand the dimensions of social and physical reality that otherwise we might have never imagined? Drawing from personal
experiences, walking is an effective device for critical urban research that creates a significant perceptual shift in the ways which we understand landscapes. These perceptual shifts are critical in unpacking new ways of organizing and designing for communities and spaces. In order to push these boundaries further, it is important to understand that my experiences with walking in the workshop setting serves as a vital step in unpacking how these perceptual shifts can be catalyzed into action within a rapidly evolving world. I argue that the key to creating a perceptual shift lies in the hands of people on the ground – the people that walk the streets everyday – and magnifying their capacity for civic action with technological tools that expand collective knowledge, deepen public dialogue, and enhance collaboration between people, civic actors, and designers. Citizens have the capacity to harness the tools and resources that can lead to meaningful participation in designing both the spaces and systems that they permeate daily. While the technological paradigm by nature has a tendency to exclude certain groups and populations, it is the space within this realm – between the analog and digital – that can create an inclusive environment functioning to facilitate discourse and activate the civic potentials within communities. How do we begin to instigate this perceptual shift to allow people, designers, and decision makers to understand cities as dynamic iteration of the people within them? The case for technology as a civic activator is not a new narrative. Social media platforms and portable communication devices have played a role in scaling action such as the global Occupy movement and the Peoples Climate March, yet often times the nature of these platforms fall short of impactful political, economic, or social change. In this work, we will test these theories in practice to better understand how citizens can more effectively shape their cities and lives.
The Historic Center of Mexico City
02.
Scoring Economic Revitalization by Luis Macias
The official narrative that revitalization projects in the Historic Center of Mexico City have benefited local communities is unclear and questionable. Current plans addressing the central space do not have evaluation mechanisms to assess their impact and determine their effectiveness. For this reason, evaluation methods emerge as an urgent need for policy makers. This praxis presents scoring as planning and action processes to understand, describe and guide renewal projects in the context of public policy. By transcending lines of work, this project aims to bridge visions and experiences of local business owners, politicians and real estate developers with the objective of creating a solid economic Historic Center. Rather than approaching the site as an urban development project, this praxis envisions this contested space as a process to shape a political platform. Shifting the focus from heritage conservation to local economic diversity generates additional entry points to assess the role of public policy in the production, management and representation of the central space. Instead of understanding policy as plans provided to the people, policy can actively become a process of engagement through participation, feedback and communication strategies. In this sense, this work was an opportunity to address the questions of how public policies impact people’s life and how local actors can participate and interact in the production and management of the city. This thesis is divided into three main sections. The first section describes the Historic Center of Mexico City as the conceptualization of public space and urban development. It critically examines the context and design of the Revitalization Plan of the Historic Center formulated by the alliance between the federal and city government, and the private sector (Carlos Slim). The second section analyzes the Comprehensive Management Plan of the Historic Center 2011‐2018 in comparison with the Revitalization Plan describing how both plans have understood the central space as a project to be finalized through financial investments in heritage preservation works and rehabilitation of public spaces. The last section describes my work with a political party for influencing evaluation measurements of the revitalization and management plan in the central space.
Additionally, I present an alternative view of the Historic Center as a polycentric economic system in the attempt to score, preserve and enhance local economic diversity. Through the use of four main research techniques (1) archive review (2) mapping (3) photographic survey and (4) semi‐structured interviews, the present work provides elements to understand the Historic Center as a socio‐political site and to present the central space of Mexico City as a multimodal and dynamic economic node that deserves closer examination from different lenses in order to be preserved in the long term.
03.
Designed to be Ignored: Exposing Algorithmic Exclusion by Marcea L. Decker
Digital space is a reproduction of the power structures, relationships, dynamics, and predicaments that are found within urban society; it is now one of the many dimensions of our reality. As Design and Urban Ecologies seeks to learn from other disciplines to break past traditional and institutional barriers, it is key to recognize the hidden infrastructures that algorithmically marginalize the voices of the ‘other’. It is not a utopia free from politics of identity, the body, race, or gender. The infrastructure, in both physical and digital spaces, is designed to be ignored. This construction acts as an algorithm, reproducing inequity across many scales and types of spaces: the body, the physical environment, the social, and the digital. Digital space itself is an urbanizing ecology of its own, influenced by the tangible world, similarly viral, ever-changing and evolving, and an integral part to many other ecologies. What is unique to digital space is that while it possesses the many flawed characteristics of power and politics, it still remains a beacon of hope, a hope that its potential will help us achieve something better. Yet, the system is already flawed in its very structure, from its conception as a tool for militarization, to ushering in a new form of globalization by including some while excluding others, inducing a geography of social, economic, and technological inequality. Under the guise of open platforms and its empty promises, much like the geopolitical globalization rhetoric that has now become deeply embedded with the digital, we all feel its effects in some way or another. If we want to reach the ‘something better’ within society and establish more inclusivity and transparency in digital space (and distinguish fallacies of the open platform), then we firstly need to realize that we are missing too much, and through exclusion, too many actors. The inequity is too great not to call into question the subtle infrastructures of power and politics that maintain it. With this in mind, the praxis portion of my thesis demonstrates how Urban Ecologists can begin to expose the consequences of hidden infrastructures that reinforce an inclusive urban society. In exposing these consequences, we may begin to equip ourselves with necessary tools, strategies, and tactics to illuminate what has been kept in the dark. Using conceptual frameworks from feminist history and theory, as well as thought from the field of Media Studies, my thesis work identifies and explores the exclusion of diverse actors across various scales of physical and digital space. The focus on digital space is not exclusive to itself;
lessons learned through examining inequity in the realm of technology, data, open platforms, and the inherent discrimination that is built into these structures are lessons to be learned in everyday urban society, as the digital space has no doubt become inextricably linked with all of its facets. What is disappearing? What is kept? How are we interacting, communicating, influencing culture? What relationships, ideals, and structures does this reinforce? I conducted two situational analyses to understand these questions further, interviews and case studies of women in STEM-workplaces, and hybrid physical and digital meet-ups to edit Wikipedia. Through the Praxis semester of my work, I researched and engaged across multiple disciplines, exploring FemTechNet’s Distributed Open Collaborative Courses (DOCCs) as an alternative to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons, and formatting all of my thesis research into an interactive Twine game, an open-source tool for non-programmers and programmers alike to share nonlinear stories and games. Major themes coded throughout my work are also the chapter titles: Embodiment Matters: Experiencing the Gender Bias in the Everyday, Sexualization and Strategy, The Environment Needs to Change and Network Structures. These case studies and major themes lend valuable lessons, insights, and critiques that are relevant to Design and Urban Ecologies, while also providing an interdisciplinary approach to the systemic gender and representation gaps in digital spaces.
04.
Co‐designing a Pre‐emptive, “Storm‐Proof” Red Hook by Aran Baker
This praxis outlines the process of designing an initial framework and action plan for a pre‐ emptive medical support system in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a neighborhood in the hundred‐year flood plain with few existing medical services, whereby seniors and medically fragile residents can be reached in times of crisis. One of the key features of this system is that it not only function in times of disaster, but also in the everyday, as it will help build social capital, local health knowledge, and strengthen existing support structures. In the global resiliency conversation, there has been perhaps an over‐emphasis on physical infrastructure, such as floodwalls, floodgates, etc., but not as much emphasis on social infrastructure and the capacity of communities to plan ahead. Eric Klinenberg defines social infrastructure as, “The people, places, and institutions that foster cohesion and support” (2013). The strength of our social infrastructure—our social connections and communication networks—will undoubtedly save lives in future climate change events and we need to recognize its importance. However, unlike physical infrastructure, which is quite tangible, these social systems are hard to quantify and measure, therefore have been seen as largely intangible. Through this project, I seek to make these vital and complex social systems more visible. During hurricane Sandy, my thesis partner, Matthew Kraushar, a combined MD/PhD student at Princeton/Rutgers Universities, organized a successful ad‐hoc, voluntary medical relief effort to reach residents who were stranded in their homes and needed medical attention. He and his team saw nearly four hundred people during that time, eighty‐three percent of which were residents of the Red Hook Houses, the largest public housing development in Brooklyn. We are using his experiences during Sandy and my analysis of the social capital in Red Hook and citywide preparedness and response system as a starting point. In the Design and Urban Ecologies program, we frame the urban as a complex “ecology,” a dynamic system of social, economic, environmental, and political processes which come together to make the city. We also learn to take an inclusive approach, designing “with,” rather than “for.” The most crucial aspect of this project is its iterative approach and emphasis on co‐design. My intention through this project is to develop a design strategy and supporting methodology to
strengthen social capacity given the challenges of climate change we face. We are headed into a period of extreme climate events—more frequent and higher intensity natural disasters, heat waves, periods of drought, etc. These events have a way of bringing to light preexisting socio‐economic disparities and raise questions about the necessary relationship of climate and equity, as has been evidenced in Red Hook.
05.
extra. ORDINARY- Integrating methodologies for change by Dagny Tucker
The praxis “extra.ORDINARY” seeks to disrupt, seed and enable a different norm in how we make the daily choices that impact our shared destiny. Russell Ackoff defines a dilemma as “ a problem, which cannot be solved by the current world view.” extra.ORDINARY proposes an integrated meshwork of methodologies to not only guide design but to shift world views and facilitate others ability to make systems inspired choices. Integrated Methodologies or “IM” help to unravel the complexity of sustainability and bring clear, concise and accessible frameworks to the ordinary everyday decisions. Our entanglement with unsustainable practices is so familiar that we often do not even see it. When we do recognize the damage of our choices it seems overwhelming to forge a different path. Further complicating the issue is sustainability’s frequent reduction to the purely environmental when in fact the social component is equally as crucial. Systems Thinking is a worldview that recognizes siloed thinking as inadequate for addressing complex issues. Despite an expansive body of information on elements of sustainable practice, there still
exist significant gaps between stated objectives, mandates or metrics and actual implementation and/or efficacy. Often technical solutions are implemented but little attention is paid to effecting the behavior change in users required for the technology to function. In other instances, enthused individuals or organizations strive to make change without any real guidance, technical or otherwise, on how to meaningfully implement sustainable practices.
To bridge these silos and further— to address true sustainability—it is necessary to explicitly frame design within systems thinking. The work asserts systems thinking and methodologies such as social and environmental LCAs (SE LCA) no longer need be cloaked in complexity. Through innovative design and compelling stories, these processes of evaluation and thinking can be made accessible to the mainstream.
This praxis aims to address massive information inequalities by bringing to life valuable knowledge assets from the tombs of academia and cutting edge organizations to everyday people and everyday organizations. An invisibility of narratives and absence of easily accessible guidance in decision-making practices are significant barriers to the ability for anyone from an institution to an individual to be able to live up to sustainability mandates. Addressing this accessibility issue is an essential step in activating fully informed and engaged points of entry up and down the decision-making continuum.
Additionally, these tools may also prove useful to an emerging Design and Urban Ecologies field—already implicitly using Systems Thinking. Urban Ecologies itself is the confluence of a variety of systems interacting at a variety of scales; the problems we face are intertwined and effective design interventions have to account for this reality (1). Could the explicit convergence of systems thinking and design, strategically applied, result in what systems scientists call “the small catalytic events that cause significant change” and transition management refers to as—the integrated strategy to orient and organize transformation of complex networks in the context of broader societal transitions?
To address information inequality means taking frameworks such as the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Social Life Cycle Analysis (s/LCA) and designing creative possibilities for their use as everyday tools. Currently, LCA skill sets and tools are cryptic and expensive and s/LCA tool sets in their infancy. But the information these methodologies unveil is deeply informative in demonstrating impact (both positive and negative) and informing better choices.
I suggest that Urban Ecologies aims to inspire or harness these catalytic moments by first understanding and accepting their complexity and then iteratively designing interventions at strategic leverage points to encourage positive transformations. Providing rigor and methodology to the joy and innovation of design offers urban ecologists a freedom of exploration while still keeping track of all the pieces and their relationships.
While the LCA has gained a lot of traction as the go-to methodology for specifically evaluating the environmental impact of a product or service— cradle-to-cradle evaluation of material and energy inputs and their environmental outputs result in an estimate of environmental impacts. The social side of evaluating impact has largely fallen under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility, not-forprofit, non-governmental or watch dog initiatives. Recently a crucial development has emerged; a methodology has been laid out for the s/LCA. Though cumbersome, it does offer a starting point for introducing the social component into the impact assessment of a product or service. Unfortunately the two processes are separate— each within its’ own silo. While segmented analysis is understandable due to the real and perceived intensity of each undertaking, it misses the value of recognizing innate interconnection.
extra.ORDINARY uses a novel combination of proven and emerging methodologies (systems thinking, social and environmental life cycle analysis, transition management and design) to deeply inform innovative approaches and strategies. In doing so it provides a framework to close the gap on what we say we want to do and what we actually do when it comes to issues of sustainability. extra.ORDINARY uses IM for change to engage civil society in creative ways that address the overlooked barriers to making different choices and offering the new narratives and tools necessary to forge the many paths of a sustainable now. (1) Blizzard, J. and Klotz, L. (2012). A Framework for Sustainable Whole Systems Design. Design Studies, 33(5), 456479. Doi:10.1016/j.destud.2012.03.001
connecting the assets
that reveal the potential
to build partnerships
06.
Connecting the Corners: Towards a collaborative food ecology by Anne Duquennois + Ron Morrison
Our project began as an encounter with creating available healthy food options in Central Harlem. In quick time we came to understand the difficulties that lie in aligning the interest of different actors within a neighborhood food system. As in this case, many challenges of our contemporary urban systems lie in the gulf between the particular and the universal. Struggling to operate within these dichotomies of the urban as large and universal, or small and highly differentiated, we move to retune current systems towards collaboration creating engagement points between systems and individuals. Through our collective work we define collaborative infrastructure as the building of flexible entry points to align disparate values that sustain daily life. Starting at the corner, our project engages bodega owners, community food workers, property owners, and neighbors in the creation of a collaborative system for brokering new food services in the Central Harlem area. It is our assertion that through exploring the collaborative potential of infrastructure we, as urban citizens, become more able to fully grow as ourselves and with others. Rather than approaching the design of new services from a logistical perspective this praxis builds upon preexisting food resources and organizations in the neighborhood. Helping connect them to each other and providing them with a common structure, allows for the expansion of individual capacity and the ability to pool efforts to maximize the impact of their work. By valuing pre-existing resources the project aims to derive stronger more adapted networks to demand, manage and sustain a better local food system. We see this as an opportunity to explore two interrelated questions; how can present infrastructures become realigned through collaboration to yield new systems for managing resources, and how can circulating knowledge reduce the risk associated with such resources? By framing these questions through infrastructure, we continually wrestle with longevity of such a system from an innovation to being commonplace. Through an analysis of the project landscape, actors, research methods, and touch points we will reconsider topics of scale, social ties, redundancy, knowledge, adaptation, and collaboration. Through the building of this infrastructure we simultaneously work to produce a fluency of its forms and functions. It is in this way that infrastructure becomes a vantage point through which to view your connection to others as well as the larger ecology. By learning to see the ties
that bind as infrastructure, we begin to see ways to rearrange their pieces, alter their form, and inject new functions. We place ourselves within the system and in turn shape it’s ability to adapt to new users, partnerships, and services.
07.
Orange Counters Unsettling Dynamics of Regional Planning Power
Anchoring Local Community based Institutions as the People’s Intermediary Agents for designing their city
by Monique Baena-Tan + Rehanna Azimi
The situation that local residents face in their City of Orange, New jersey is characterized by the agglomeration of powerful regional political and private sector development interests into the form of the Urban Essex Coalition for Smart Growth, a strategic component of the New York New Jersey Regional Plan for economic development. Through an analysis of community organizations and development plans in the City of Orange, New Jersey, we have come to see that the future of the city depends these regional power dynamics which are shaping the way space is produced for others, as they seek to undermine, ignore and fragment local community based institutions and residents of this city of 2.2 square miles and 33,000 people. This state of fragmentation and coercion is unsettling everyone about their future and pushing institutions to question their relevance and role in building the future of their own city. To counter this power play, we have learned through our research that there are several key local institutions that are searching for alternatives to their marginal role. We have defined these as Anchoring Institutions which can be activated to become the vital intermediary bodies that can not only bring people together and amplify their voices in the face of rapid urban change, but strengthen the community as a whole. They are what is needed to fill the gaps in Orange’s support system. Anchoring institutions literally anchor people in a community, staying when other institutions go and help people situate themselves in a constantly changing environment. They can be community centers, churches, libraries, etc. They are vital stabilizing points for a diverse and increasingly mobile population. They provide the capacity for introducing new possibilities and serve as intermediaries between the micro level tacit knowledge (lived experiences of individuals) and amorphous macro policies. Orange is currently on the precipice of rapid change. The future trajectory of the city can diverge in two drastically different scenarios. The first is one where development plans ignore existing assets and residents to promote luxury residential development focused on its train stations. The second is one where the history of the city, the diversity of its people and institutions, and the richness of its assets are leveraged in the collective production of its future. People in the city have an immense amount of social capital yet they are feeling isolated and confused. They find themselves asking: where
do I fit into these future development plans? The immediate and pressing implications of these powerful forces must be understood in order for the people of Orange to take control of the future of their city. If not fought they will drain the public sphere and leave many institutions and the people they serve in precarious states. The project of activating Orange’s Anchoring Institutions requires reframing their role from that of isolated community organizations to one that highlights their interdependencies in a larger system. This brought us to designing processes that foster collaboration and change the narrative that Orange is empty. Through our research we are observing, experiencing, interacting, mediating, reframing and co-creating pieces of the urban ecologies. Through our praxis we are creating a series of community reports and conducting workshops with local leadership to show that the vital anchors in Orange have the capacity to shape the urban fabric in a way that is equitable and responsive to people’s needs and desires. The praxis portion of our thesis looks to use design and urban ecologies as a method for: 1. Strengthening support networks through reinvigorating the anchoring institutions as key stabilizing points and developing clear methods of collaboration between these various constituents 2. Establishing a baseline for communication between these various anchoring institutions and strategic planners to speculate on the integration of the two Through the process of prototyping engagement models, we have explored various methods for effective collaboration and integration of local knowledge assets and regional development plans. In this context, design is a tool for constructing the right framework for inquiry and understanding. Through this process we can begin to catalyze a rhetoric that is accessible and facilitates active citizenship. Understanding Orange’s urban ecologies at different scales and employing participatory design processes propels emergent solutions for building the co-authorship of the future of Orange. It develops a common language so that a diverse constituencies can understand and leverage current resources to build collective visions, common agendas, and a common understanding. Activating existing local support institutions into vibrant spaces will empower the people to learn the tools by which they can together reframe and redirect the future course of their city.
08.
Mapping Values, Building Networks: A Path Towards Cultural Equity in Urban Arts Planning by Raquel de Anda
The last several decades’ focus on Cultural Diversity (i.e. increasing representation within our governing institutions) has yet to generate an equitable distribution of access and resources to the most economically and socially impacted urban communities. For our cities to flourish in ways that mirror the great diversity of their residents, Cultural Equity – a process that enables communities to build their own networks of agency, power and self-determination - needs to be incorporated into our political processes. New York City currently faces a critical opportunity. In the next year the city will be laying the foundation for a Cultural Plan with a central feature being increasing civic participation in the arts, and a goal of creating a more equitable distribution of resources. However, without an emphasis on Cultural Equity the plan is at risk of falling short of its expectations. Without supporting community arts organizations in developing community-centered platforms that actually encourage the distribution of power, we may once again be unable to uncover the real challenges and solutions that will lead to a more vibrant and equitable city. This project focuses on how local community arts organizations can work to support the development and implementation of a comprehensive Cultural Plan, and then be a part of the process of sustaining it. I conducted this investigation through the following set of research approaches: Inquiry - Examining the field of community arts through a lens of value based programming. Mapping - Interviewing leaders in the field and mapping the value systems held by their organizations to highlight key elements that are integral for working in service of Cultural Equity. Distillation - Condensing these elements into five design principles necessary for reclaiming power and inserting community voice into our public and political processes. Praxis - Suggesting ways in which organizations can enhance their practice through collaboration, while also reflecting their work back to City Hall through the language of the Cultural Plan.
My goal was to discern shared values and design principles that are central components of working toward building a more equitable city. It is my hope that this work will contribute to an ongoing dialogue that underscores the essential role played by culture in community development. The tools and insights gleaned from this analysis will serve as a helpful guide for cultural organizations to understand where their strengths and room for growth lies, while also creating a lense through which policy makers can better understand the nuances of cultural equity work and the role of arts in building a more just urban society.
09.
Disrupting Discourse for HOME by Antwan Rucker
Affordable housing, represented as a set of physical, social, and cultural conditions, is a phenomenon that has shifted mainstream thought and imagination away from merely providing access to adequate housing for tenement dwellers, returning WWII soldiers, or becoming an alcove for refugees escaping the oppressive tools of the Jim Crow south. Instead it has become a more divisive tool used to identify, and codify class structure, and aestheticize socioeconomic conditions. The thesis examines the intersection of discourse in conjunction with theoretical and practical applications related to the field of affordable housing. It will trace the complicated paths of disciplines situated in the romanticized vernacular of “home” to the stigmatized categorization of low income housing development. Residing within these streams of thought is sentiment articulated to reconcile isolated and altruistic moments with the concrete objective for providing safe, functional, and livable environments for individuals and families. Sugar Hill Housing development in Harlem, which will serve as primary a case study in the analysis of this typological phenomenon, has engendered a turning point in its programming and funding that could inform alternative methods for affordable housing production going forward. In the thesis, this is positioned as fundamental to building on the framework for designing creative measures that addresses this need, and making the point that affordable housing is one of the reasons cities exist. Through strategic analysis, the thesis highlights the complex and distinctive elements of the various sets of discourses that encourage and limit the production of affordable housing. Mechanisms of zoning, design, government regulation, multimedia optics, and socio-economic policies that are encompassed in this decision making process. Tactics and programs by government agencies and real estate developers are being developed and tested within their respective categories, yet they occur within esoteric and secluded conditions that seek to minimize potential overlap of complementary disciplines. By reorienting the discourse dynamics to address alternative possibilities of affordable housing development, the thesis explores existing theoretical structures and conventional applications that fortify the industry. This industry is one designed to facilitate housing means for populations burdened by associative spatial conditions of income inequality alongside other structural means that prohibit access to social mobility, with the perpetuated notion of
“home” anchoring rhetoric which allows residents to once again become the beneficiary. In examining these processes through research, interviews, formal encounters, and conjecture, I insert willful speculation into the process of housing production in an effort to include immaterial and tactile strategies that promote human development while avoiding exploitative measures of planning tools and spatial assignment governed by the desperate discourses. The first chapter of this thesis examines the segmented dynamics of discourse between disciplines to highlight the extreme disparities between dialogue and production of affordable housing in urban environments while articulating a pragmatic proximity to their objective. The second chapter examines the role of “home” within the context of culture, poverty, and affluence as a form of “place making”, critiquing the context of human production as a living diagram of networks, relationships, and contested space, grounding the need for the sustainability of culture as an output for “imaging” the city. The third chapter synthesizes documented research and observation related to the funding and programming for the Sugar Hill Housing development project, to allow for a deeper reading of this typology, this synthesis is conducted in conjunction with interviews, conferences and relevant literature, and explicitly argues for the set of conditions contained within the project to become the normative condition of, not a case study for, affordable housing. The fourth chapter outlines the structure for the proposal of a design development practice operating within the inbetween space of the discourses affiliated with private, public, and philanthropic development realms. This aims to capitalize upon the allotted resources and limitations that facilitate comprehensive design strategies by diagramming instruments of power, politics, and participatory engagement which can become iterative and discursive design tools.
BIOS Anne Duquennois
is an urban researcher, designer and film maker. She works to bring rigorous and creative research to bridge the technical side of urban planning with human ecology. Combining art, design and social science she has used quantitative and qualitative research to build innovative participatory tools and collaborative processes that engage people with each other and their environment. duqua908@newschool.edu
Antwan Rucker
is a designer with experience in managing corporate, healthcare, and nonprofit design and construction projects. He is infatuated with the built environment as an amalgamation of socio-political and aesthetic contradictions. His work examines the theoretical negotiation of power dynamics and material compromise of urbanity in a performative state. He is curious about everything, a skill developed under Georgia skies.
Aran Baker
is a designer, strategist, and urban practitioner who enjoys working in the situated junctions between multiple disciplines. She has a background in graphic design and art direction, where she became well versed in working across multiple scales and platforms. Aran is also a Civic Design Fellow with IDEO and the Knight Foundation. http://aq.linkedin.com/pub/aran-baker bakea620@newschool.edu
ruckf987@newschool.edu
Dagny Tucker
Dagny is an innovation specialist whose work with non-profit, business and government players has traversed five continentsnavigating complexity to forge deeper and actionable understandings of sustainability and positive peace. Her work pushes the boundaries of how we think about everyday decisions and builds the capacity in others to have real impact on today’s pressing issues. She teaches at Parsons and is co-founder of Thread Count- a design firm working through a systems-lens to enable and strengthen the fabric of society. www.threadcountcreative.com tuckd604@newschool.edu
Luis Macias
Marcea L. Decker
macil264@newschool.edu
http://marcea.de https://www.linkedin.com/in/marceadecker deckm740@newschool.edu
is a Mexican economist and urban strategist. His work combines quantitative and qualitative tools to analyze, decode and design performance-based tactics in multiple scale urban contexts. Luis has worked in the creation of social and economic development programs for different governments and private companies. He loves cold weather, coffee, music and long walks.
is a social designer, feminist geographer, coder, and glitch enthusiast, holding a BS in Geography & GIS from the University of Arizona. Her work examines exclusionary practices in STEM, tech, and digital space through various partnerships and hands-on workshops that focus on shifting these environments toward inclusive collaboration.
Monique Baena-Tan
is a creative thinker, fascinated by maps and cities. Her current work lies in using design strategies to develop tools and engagement models to increase civic engagement and leverage local resources to address community needs. Prior to attending Parsons she completed her BFA in Printmaking and taught English in Japan. www.moniquebt.com www.linkedin.com/in/moniquebt baenm296@newschool.edu
Rehanna Azimi
is a design researcher and urban strategist. Working in Italy, Lebanon and New York City, she investigated the role of new media and autonomous spaces in connecting immigrants who were isolated from community systems. Expanding this work through the lens of urban ecologies shaped her thesis, where she designed processes for institutional collaboration and civic engagement. www.linkedin.com/in/razimi azimr013@newschool.edu
Santiago Giraldo Anduaga is a systems designer, and environmental and social researcher from Bogota, Colombia. With a background in environmental studies, geography, and systems science, Santiago seeks to use sociospatial research and design to empower people and create new dialogues that challenge normative understandings of social, political, and spatial practices. www.linkedin.com/in/santiagog giras878@newschool.edu
Ron Morrison
is a designer, urbanist, and social scientist working in the cracks and fissures. His practice uses art and design to craft tools and strategies for helping people engage with complex systems. He is currently a consultant with Transportation Alternatives and Co-founder of Thread Count- a design firm working through a systems lens to strengthen the fabric of society. rmorrison28@gmail.com
Raquel De Anda
is an independent curator and cultural producer. She began her career as Associate Curator at GalerĂa de la Raza, a contemporary Latino arts organization in San Francisco, CA (2003-2010) and has continued to support the production of socially engaged artwork and practices in both Mexico and the United States. andar122@newschool.edu
Parsons School of Design http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/ School of Design Strategies http://sds.parsons.edu/#highlights Design Dialogues http://sds.parsons.edu/designdialogues/ Design and Urban Ecologies http://sds.parsons.edu/urbanpractice/
Book Design
Gamar Markarian Alexa Jensen
Cover Photo
William Morrish
Š Copyright 2015 by Parsons The New School All rights reserved. Active Disposition: 9 Spaces of Possibility may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Ms design and urban ecologies
School of Design Strategies
MS DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES Thesis presentations 2015
School of Design Strategies