TUP and DUE Thesis Works 2019

2019 THESIS WORKS

MA THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE

MS DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES

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, communitybased groups, civic associations, and advocacy organizations, as well as the nonprofit and the private sector in pursuance of co-producing 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.

This program focuses 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 is 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.

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 studio-based 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

disregard

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,

collectively

commit

to

urban change.

and

instigate

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

CONTENT

SOCIO- SPATIAL IMAGINARIES

Urban Transformation and Caste System in India Prerna Balhara page 12

PROPOSING MICRO-UNIT HOUSING IN NEW YORK CITY

As an Affordable Space and Living Environment Vittorio Borghesi Ghidella page 14

CRYPTOECONOMIC GEOGRAPHIES AND CONTESTATION IN PUERTO RICO

Questioning the Emancipatory Potential of Blockchain in Urbanization and Economic Development Jillian Crandall page 16

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

HUMAN

CAPITAL

EXTRACTIVE ECONOMY

UNLEARNING NATURE Anna Yulsman

QATARIZED

Curriculum Design for a Qatari Knowledge Society Maha Khalid Al-Khater

page 26 page 32

OCCUPYING THE MESO-SPACE

Toward Local Agency Over Energy in Amsterdam Daniel Bieckmann page 34

YOUR STORY, OUR HISTORY Encouraging Human Connection Through Documentary Film Practice Isaac Green Diebboll page 44

SPACES OF (

)

Visualizing The Invisible Routes of the Mind and The Physical Embodied Experience of Agency Alie Kilts page 46

RE-VISIONING THE URBAN TEST BED

Emergent Infrastructures for Movement and Action in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Sarah Kontos page 48

TUP THESIS

DUE THESIS

BEYOND POLDEREN

Exposing the Voids of Environmental Justice in the Netherlands Claudia Rot page 58

REIMAGINING THE BIGZ FOR BELGRADE’S URBAN ECONOMIES A Business Plan for a Creative Hub Rosella Soravia page 60

ENJEUX 2024

(Re)framing the Stakes of the 2024 Paris Olympics Manon Vergerio page 62

THE BUSKER’S STAGE An Examination of the Urban Practices of Street Performers in the New York City Subway Jasmine Hong

ALIENATION BY DESIGN

Global Logistics, Transnational Retailers and Human Labor in the Fast Fashion Industry Kathryn Muller

page 18

page 20

TOWARD COLLECTIVE CONTINUANCE

THE CAPTIVE CITY

Exploring Identity in Calgary, Alberta Kevin Michael Capuno page 36

Grassroots Strategy to Counter The Corporatization of Urban Development and Planning in Toronto, Canada Gillian Chisholm page 38

SOCIAL ADAPTABILITY OF SHANGHAI’S FLOATING POPULATION Equalization of Basic Public Services in Gumei Community Dongyao Li page 50

CLIMATE OF CHANGE

Envisioning Climate Justice from D.C.’s Front Lines Abby Zan page 64

DEVELOPMENT OR DISPARITY? THE CASE OF TRANSFORMING LAHORE, PAKISTAN Towards a Deliberative Urban Imaginary Khadija Munir page 52

ANTI-INTELLIGENCE

A Marxist Critique of The Smart City Kevin Rogan page 22

BORDERLINE SYNDROME

Urbanization of the State of Exception During and after the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary Gabor Janos Suranyi page 24

THE BIOPOLITICS OF HOMELESSNESS Building Data Infrastructures to Challenge Harmful Narratives, Spatial Practices, & Policies in New York City Gemma Duffee

EMERGING CURITIBA The Living Archive of Transformative Practices and Insurgent Actions Shaping The Urban Julianna Galvao page 42

page 40

FEMINIST URBANISM Gabriela López Dena page 54

THE GRAPHIC NOVEL A Medium for Self-Help Practices and Social Movements in Baltimore Grace Paik page 56

TUP THESIS

DUE THESIS

MA

THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE

Working with thesis students is among the most challenging and rewarding experiences of teaching. In the setting of a master thesis class, such as the one I taught in spring 2019, students lead by creating the agenda, inviting faculty to think along with them in conditions of remarkable rigor. And this is both because of the inevitability of the submission deadline at the end of the term and the urgency of the chosen subject matter. In the specific context of urban education at The New School, students understand urbanity as a terrain of conflictual forces.

In their second year, they have acquired critical tools that help them gain a sense of the fluctuating pulse of the city and discern what is new and needs attention, often before it has attracted scholarly interest. But students also point to what needs revisiting, reminding us, the faculty, what we have left unresolved, either in our curricula or in our academic work.

This year’s Theories of Urban Practice thesis projects examine some of the most important issues of the current state of urbanity: smart city developments emerging at various parts of the globe, micro-unit complexes proposed as affordable housing solutions, and the refugee crisis.

They also include emerging or expansive phenomena that might not have an obvious relation with the city, such as crypto-economics and fast fashion, while the third category of projects reminds us what scholarship has lost track of—the deadlock of environmental discourse within capitalism, caste urbanization in India, and urban practices from below, such as busking.

Grounded on the Quayside project in Toronto, Kevin Rogan’s thesis “Anti-Intelligence” adopts a historical materialist analysis of the smart city based on Marxist scholarship and critical studies of techno-politics. The thesis interrogates the validity of various established conceptions in today’s discourse, such as the evolution of capitalism into epochs, and the tangential conception of post-industrialism.

Kevin questions these ideas by re-centering “the historical category of labor” and arguing for its continuing primacy. He also reveals the ideological fallacy behind the

INTRODUCTION

by Jilly Traganou Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism

emerging belief in techno-governance based on data collection and algorithmic processing.

Vittorio Borghesi Ghidella’s thesis “Evaluating Micro-Unit Housing in New York City” looks at the micro-units’ recurrence as a proposal of affordability. Confronted with a lack of scholarship on the subject, Vittorio chooses to investigate the subject both empirically and by comprehensively analyzing the current media discourse, namely the way micro-units are addressed by their opponents and their advocates, including developers, policy makers, architects, and activists. Without dismissing them, Vittorio points to the micro-units’ numerous challenges, considering their role in the current predatory real estate markets, and proposes recommendations that would help in achieving affordability for a wider demographic.

Gabor Janos Suranyi’s thesis “Borderline Syndrome” argues that the way European politicians handled the 2015 “immigration crisis,” besides its harmful effects to the refugees, also had grave consequences for the European citizens. The thesis shows how Hungary’s right-wing government used the crisis as an opportunity to shift towards a more authoritarian rule and install a “state of exception” which became normalized even after the expelling of the refugees from the national territory. Gabor reveals how the “existential threat” to the nation’s identity was materialized through artifacts and spatial articulations, both at the borders and in the interior of the country, while he also examines counter-campaigns by transnational solidarity movements that challenge the mainstream discourse.

Jillian Crandall’s thesis “Cryptoeconomic Geographies of Puerto Rico” uses feminist geography to critique the effects of blockchain technology to urbanization. Jillian demystifies the emancipatory anti-capitalist promises of blockchain to reveal that it is, in fact, reinforcing capitalist norms and gender divisions. The research is grounded in Puerto Rico, a region with a history of serial-colonization, that at the post-hurricane Maria era is facing a new type of colonialism through the invasion

of the cryptocurrency industry. The thesis foregrounds women-led emancipatory efforts in Puerto Rico, at the antipode of the male-dominated transactionary cryptocurrency publics, based on cooperative values to support collective well-being.

Kathryn Muller’s thesis “Alienation by Design” intersects urbanism with fashion studies to investigate “fast fashion” from a spatial perspective. By focusing on three phases of the industry—logistics, labor, and consumption—the thesis sheds light on the ethical and legal concerns that emerge from the labor and urban conditions generated by fast fashion. It also shows that such conditions exist not only in the developing world but also in US territory. Focusing on Los Angeles, Kathryn shows how the separation of retail from production and the outsourcing of manufacturing to subcontractors, combined with unprotected migrant female labor, creates physical and legal deficits while leaving global brands unaccountable.

Anna Yulsman’s thesis “Unlearning Nature” questions the dichotomy between the natural and the human-made, also inherent in the rhetoric of the Anthropocene, to scrutinize the way nature is misconstrued within capitalism. The thesis reveals the systemic analogy between various domains of exploitation by capitalist forces beyond nature, such as women, indigenous and other colonized people.

Anna looks at education as the domain where change might be seeded. By analyzing environmental education in various western countries, she finds that normative models perpetuate these divisions, and delineates pedagogical principles that will bring forth an understanding “of ecological crisis in tandem with social inequality.”

While much scholarly and activist work is dedicated to India’s urban slums, Prerna Balhara’s thesis “Socio-Spatial Imaginaries, Urban Transformation and the Caste System in India” illuminates the role of the caste system on Indian urbanization. The thesis focuses on the areas of Dalit, pointing to crucial problems of uneven development, such as housing segregation, lack of infrastructure, and low accessibility to

water and other resources caused by the upper castes’ discrimination against the Dalits, as well as insufficient governmental support. The thesis also examines advocacies of change by scholars, politicians, and activists that range from the abolition of the caste system’s misuse to demands for greater governmental provisions in terms of education and resources.

Jasmine Hong’s thesis “The Busker’s Stage” looks at New York’s subway performances as urban practices that deserve revaluation. Jasmine sees buskers as an antidote to the blasé attitude of the urbanite, while also offering support to disenfranchised urban communities, such as the homeless. The thesis looks at the spatial tactics of the buskers within the broader regulatory framework that was established in 1985 in control of the city’s sonic-scape and street performances.

Jasmine’s thesis also includes a script and a rough cut of a film that aims at giving visibility and empowering New York City’s buskers.

We are thankful to all those who contributed to the development of the students’ thesis work, in various capacities. In the fall semester, students worked with Miodrag Mitrasinovic and Miguel Robles-Duran in their Thesis Preparation and Research Methods classes. In the spring semester, students worked with me in their Thesis class, while they benefited enormously from the supervision and critique of their secondary advisors: Malgorzata Bakalarz, Joseph Heathcott, Shannon Mattern, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Christina Moon, Gabriela Rendon, Miguel Robles-Duran, Everita Silina, and Evren Uzer.

I look forward to seeing these projects develop in new directions, following trajectories that students began tracing in the past months: conference participation, book and journal publications, activist practices, school curricula, and film productions. I wish to congratulate the students for the analytical and critical rigor with which they studied their chosen subjects, their support to each other’s work, and their determination to make a change in the world both as emerging scholars and active citizens.

TUP 11

SOCIO SPATIAL IMAGINARIES

URBAN TRANSFORMATION AND CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA

by Prerna Balhara

12 TUP

Behaviorism, Metropolitan, Inequality, Caste System, Dalits

This thesis examines the relationship between the caste system and urbanization in India and explains how the growth of India is hindered by the division of people based on their religion, coupled with a more complex division of the caste system. A study of the division of castes that gives rise to different localities of people in terms of residential aspect, working conditions, and education is explained within the chapters. The socio-spatial imaginaries explain the beliefs and theories that exist about the caste system in the mindset of people and in their practices that instigate transformations of urban spaces by influence or domination. India may be a democratic republic, but the four basic tenets promised in the Preamble of our Constitution—justice, equality, liberty, and fraternity—are not available to all. Building from the data of India’s caste system practices and theories of urbanism, I have aimed to describe the division of spaces on an urban platform in the cities of India, focusing on the conditions of New Delhi and Mumbai.

The metrics system of the Indian Government has been used to analyze these issues which are: 1) rural to urban migration; 2) population; 3) housing disparities; 4) geospatial analytics; 5) employment and education. The development of a city becomes positive for some and negative for others; the study shows conflicting factors of urbanization that affect the people belonging to low castes and explains the reasons for discrimination by studying the growth of upper caste citizens that promote the idea of caste system by using it as a stepping stone for their upliftment. The caste system has been the bane of Hindu society for centuries.

In terms of impact, it did much greater damage over a more extended period to a greater number of people compared to the slave system of the Western world or

the witch-hunting practices of medieval Europe. My thesis has put into words what most people in India believe (the caste system) but do not understand in regards to the negative impacts it has on the country’s urban growth and the lifestyles of some citizens. The study has measured the increase in discrimination with the growth in urbanization. The critical issues of housing segregation, inequality in education and employment, and misconduct towards the weak are some of the critical issues that have been explained, which are led by the overpowering of the caste system which does not allow for the mindset of people to have a common ground of equality in the society. My thesis has documented the reasons behind the practice of the caste system in India and analyzes the measures that have been taken up by various groups and political parties to eradicate the issue. The study shows the results of past solutions that have not been successful in eradicating the caste system along with what could be proposed as a change to limit the issue.

My thesis suggests ways to bring harmony among people and to not allow the caste system to be a hurdle for the holistic growth of the country. I also provide objectives to abolish misuse of the caste system, the domination of political parties, and the powers of the upper caste.

TUP 13

PROPOSING MICRO-UNIT HOUSING IN NEW YORK CITY

AS AN AFFORDABLE SPACE AND LIVING ENVIRONMENT

by Vittorio Borghesi Ghidella

14 TUP

Micro-units, Real Estate Development, Housing Policy, Affordability, Political Economy of Land Use

Micro-housing units are the latest trend in urban real estate markets, increasingly common to cities marked by high density and property values, and with the underlying infrastructure to support their development. In New York City, this housing model traces its history to single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels of the 1860s-1960s; eventually, policymakers implemented laws limiting and discouraging the construction of SROs and ordering the dismantling of thousands of low-rent units in the city. In their contemporary iteration as micro-units, however, demand stems from a different niche demographic of young, single, and career-oriented urban dwellers that seek a fundamental shift in their living arrangements to match today’s contemporary lifestyles. The purported mismatch between supply and demand in the housing sector is the main argumentation in favor of developing more micro-units. Whereas the concept of the “nuclear family” influenced urban planning and policy in the past century, this is only one type of housing needed in a contemporary city like New York.

This thesis evaluates micro-unit housing as an affordable space and living environment in New York City by asking and answering the following questions: are micro-dwellings an inherently problematic housing typology? What does their emergence tell us about New York’s political economy of real estate and the politics of land use? Who are the individuals creating demand for micro-apartments as opposed to less expensive, shared accommodations? Moreover, how is the discursive landscape surrounding micro-units curated by stakeholders and to what purpose, benefitting whom? The normative assumption underlying this project is that affordable housing is a critical component of human well-being and a fundamental right, and I address these issues through

an inductive framework grounded in case study methodology, fieldwork, discursive analysis, and interviews.

I ultimately propose the nuanced position that micro-unit dwellings are not an inherently problematic housing form, but that they come with many challenges, stemming from their insertion into predatory real estate markets. The first chapter serves as a prelude and to set the scene, beginning the discussion on whether micro-units are an affordable space and if they are an inherently negative characteristic of the New York City housing ecology. My second chapter works as a first-person narrative recounting my experience touring three micro-unit developments, while also evaluating the strategic role of branding, marketing, and public relations in publicizing these units.

The third and fourth chapters work in unison, as I thematically categorized the discourse analysis. The purpose was to discover the dominant views that emerge; the agreements and disagreements, and why expert individuals are advocating and publicly supporting a particular position.

By expert individuals, I refer to the wide variety of professions partaking in this industry, such as city officials and policymakers, real estate developers, architects, interior designers, to academics and scholars in the fields of urbanism, sociology, and finance. My concluding chapter puts forward a set of recommendations and policy implications that would lead to a scenario of affordability in the context of micro-dwellings in New York City, while also citing Hong Kong as a cautionary tale of unregulated micro-housing.

TUP 15

CRYPTOECONOMIC GEOGRAPHIES AND CONTESTATION IN PUERTO RICO

QUESTIONING THE EMANCIPATORY POTENTIAL OF BLOCKCHAIN IN URBANIZATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

by Jillian Crandall 16 TUP

Crypto-Utopia, Colonialism, Technopower, Spatial/Digital Enclaves, Feminist Digital Geographies

This thesis is about how the new techno-capitalist industries oriented around blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are further marginalizing already marginalized groups in Puerto Rico. These crypto-capitalist industries enact spatial and material transformations across the globe, forming new distributed cryptoeconomic geographies with local impacts.

These industries also enact new processes of urbanization in service to blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and its proponents. While new socio-technical relationships with crypto and blockchain are forming all over the globe, the scenario in Puerto Rico has the most extreme contradictions and the most at stake for residents who do not have a stake in cryptocurrency. Specifically, a group of crypto-proponents (primarily male-dominated US expats) is looking to establish a new “crypto-utopia” in San Juan. These “transactionary publics,” as I define them, are groups with certain discourses, ideologies, and rhetorics centered around individual transactions, goals, and gains.

These groups are exploiting Puerto Rico’s laws, land, infrastructure, environment, and its situation of crisis layered upon crisis enacting their own desires in space.

They work through new techno-power structures that allow them to act more autonomously and anonymously via digital technology. However, crypto- and blockchain-oriented groups in Puerto Rico are not only comprised of like-minded expats—native Puerto Ricans are engaging as well, with different intentions. All of these groups are varied, forming relationships with existing institutions, NGOs, non-profits, and governments. Some propose to use blockchain for urban and economic development. Others propose to use blockchain for its “emancipatory potential,” or for “social good.” Rather than looking at blockchain’s “revolutionary potentials,” I suggest we look deeper into its

specific contextual politics and socio-technical relations, to see what social good can really come.

In this thesis, I engage critical urban theory, feminist political economy, feminist digital geographies, and the emerging field of critical blockchain studies. One aim of this thesis is to appeal to academics critically studying blockchains and cryptocurrencies. I argue that generalizations may not hold true in different scenarios and locations, and suggest that much can be learned from empirical studies of how diverse and varied contextual relations are playing out on the ground. Another aim of this thesis is to appeal to blockchain developers, urban decision-makers, and governments looking to engage with blockchain in an equitable way, or as a means to empower marginalized groups.

This thesis challenges the assertion that blockchain technology has “emancipatory potential,” particularly for Puerto Rico.

While the speculative industry around cryptocurrency can, in theory, be separated from the technology of blockchain, at this point in time, blockchain is still a predominantly capitalist industry. Its cryptoeconomic logics have embedded politics and assumptions about individual human behavior and computational intervention. Additionally, its technical architecture is built on top of already-existing digital infrastructures (the internet) that may entrench existing inequalities. I argue that what “emancipatory” means, and its capacity to be emancipatory, is politically, socially, economically, and culturally context dependent. This is particularly relevant for Puerto Rico, which has been subject to serial-colonization, first Spanish, then (and now) the United States, and perhaps new crypto-colonialism.

The fundamental aim of this thesis is to raise awareness of the exploitative scenario in Puerto Rico. In contestation with the actions of crypto-colonialism and “transactionary publics,” I foreground actionable emancipatory urban practice and alternate economic strategies in Puerto Rico – within and/or without blockchain, crypto, or digital technology. In solidarity, I feature a number of communal, collaborative, cooperative practices, including native Puerto Rican women-led organizations, community-oriented publics, and explicitly anti-colonial economic projects in Puerto Rico, each interested in generating and supporting a local economy, improving community health and collective well-being. I conclude with additional resources, calls to action, and proposed next steps to carry this research forward to affect positive change.

LEFT: Photo from Defend Puerto Rico RIGHT, CLOCKWISE: Fabian Velez Photo from Link Puerto Rico

TUP 17

THE BUSKER’S STAGE

AN EXAMINATION OF THE URBAN PRACTICES OF STREET PERFORMERS IN THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY

by Jasmine Hong

18 TUP

Buskers, New York City Subway, Entertainment, Criminalization, Public Space

Buskers, commonly defined as street performers who perform in public spaces for donations, are overlooked for bringing value to the urbanite. In this thesis, I examine the urban practice of busking in the New York City Subway as a socio-spatial system in action in order to empower buskers as a community and recognize their contribution to the city. As one of the oldest and largest subway systems in the world with approximately 6 million daily commuters, the New York City Subway carries the “stages” and audiences appealing for buskers to perform on. These improvisational stages appear throughout the subway station on platforms, mezzanines or subway cars. Since busking became legal in 1985, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) prohibits busking that interferes with the subway’s functional operations—banning performances in subway cars and the use of amplification on the subway platform—though some buskers disobey these policies. Unfortunately, the busking community is regularly targeted for quality-of-life offenses that end in arrests, ejections, tickets or fines.

Contrarily, other factors can enrich urban interactions where busking promotes rapport through familiarity, empowers human connection, encourages empathy, heals suffering and brings joy. Additionally, buskers often work in solidarity with other groups that spend a considerable amount of time in public spaces, such as the homeless.

With the rough-cut as a prototype and a script for future film production, I am eager to bring visibility to the busking practice and give insight into the names, stories and stages of these integral figures of New York’s urban landscape.

Through research methods that include ethnographic studies in the New York subway system, observations, conversations and interviews with straphangers and performers, I discover that busking can be an antidote to the metropolitan blasé attitude, therefore encouraging positive urban interactions. Studying amateurs and professionals with a wide range of busking experience, I found there are specific tactics, approaches and conditions that contribute to feelings of safety and trust within the commuting public.

For instance, in a subway car, the close proximity between a dancing busker to a commuter, and their short, single train stop duration of performance might leave commuters emotionally indifferent (with the exception of most tourist reactions).

TUP 19

ALIENATION BY DESIGN

GLOBAL LOGISTICS, TRANSNATIONAL RETAILERS AND HUMAN LABOR IN THE FAST FASHION INDUSTRY

by Kathryn Muller

20 TUP

Fast Fashion, Fashion Production, Global Commodity Chain, Labor, Supply Chain Management, Ecofeminism

On retail racks in over 700 stores worldwide, on any given day, one can purchase a hand-beaded dress from budget retailer Forever 21. One by one, the beads embellish the collars, sleeves or bodices of shirts, dresses, and blouses; two hands, one needle, one thread, countless hours. Fragile, meticulous work that is then packaged, transported by vehicle to a port, loaded onto cargo vessels traveling across oceans to arrive on retail racks, sold for $12.99— start to finish, from design conception to retail rack in 15 days. This thesis is asking how: how is it humanly, geographically, temporally possible that the fast fashion industry has scaled up garment making practices without any significant advancements in the mechanization of sewing to currently produce 80 billion new pieces of clothing each year?

By treating the urban character of the industry’s transformation as the symptomatic entry point, I assess how the fast fashion industry transforms sites of both production and consumption in consequential ways that have yet to be studied from either the field of urbanism or the field of fashion and fashion studies. I begin by addressing how, in sites of consumption, such as the shopping centers of developed nations, local retail markets, and independent sellers are pushed out by transnational corporations that can weather the unstable and rapidly shifting climate of trends of the fashion world. In the past two decades, the apparel industry’s adoption of advanced supply chain management technology has increased the scope and speed of its production across the globe, which I argue sets up for the conditions for which the urban sites at both ends of the commodity chain must be rearranged. From this understanding, I investigate how, in sites of garment production, which predominantly occurs in newly urbanized areas of the Global South,

urban space is transformed for the sake of textile production, garment making, and exportation in an attempt to spatially fix the industry to these areas, which creates contention and social hardship due to the ephemeral and unstable nature of the work. Focusing on three key phases of clothing production—consumption, logistics, and labor— this thesis uses David Harvey’s Spatial Fixation theory, which explains capitalism’s spatial arrangement as a never-ending search for a spatial “fix” to its perpetual crises.

This thesis investigates the global fast fashion production system from the intersection of Urbanism and Fashion Studies in order to illustrate how the industry has come to depend on an ever-expanding degree of separation between the consumer and the producer, and between the garment and the labor, in order for the industry to more successfully transform from a garment industry into an information industry. From the field of Fashion Studies, I complicate my urban theory with an examination of informal economies of labor, centralizing young women in my analysis of garment making histories in the U.S. and abroad. I use a case study of the Los Angeles garment industry to animate Harvey’s theory that capitalism’s spatial arrangement acts as a temporary surge in activity, money, and energy that uproots culture, tradition, and financial organizations and replaces them with complicated networks of labor, infrastructure, and uneven development.

Through interviews, visual and historical research and supply chain analysis, this thesis uncovers the local effects of the unstable and ever-expanding global garment supply chain.

In considering, first and foremost, how a global economic system of production affects people, cultures, and the geographic spaces they occupy, this work is primarily interested in how the making of clothing has come to reshape human behavior, restructure local economies, and transform urban practice. From an urban perspective, the fast fashion industry lacks adequate analysis of its power in shaping newly industrializing areas, its central position in immigrant and labor rights struggles, and the central role of young women as both its market as well as its labor force.

This thesis attempts to fill an urgent need for a cohesive, cross-disciplinary analysis of the fast fashion industry’s use of, and effect on, the urban landscape both locally (Los Angeles) and globally.

TUP 21

ANTI-INTELLIGENCE

A MARXIST CRITIQUE OF THE SMART CITY

by Kevin Rogan

22 TUP

Smart City, Historical Materialism, Crisis, Post-Industrial, Utopia

This thesis undertakes a historical materialist analysis of the smart city. Though the smart city does not yet exist in any real way, the precepts which give rise to it have already been in effect. The smart city is embedded in the capitalist world-system. Of specific interest is the smart city’s relationship with the ideology of industrial & technoscientific progress, which will allow for the re-centering of labor over and above the supposed ephemerality of ‘post-industrial’ contemporary capitalism.

The dream of intelligent life has long been elaborated over decades by urbanists, demagogues, corporations, luminaries, science fiction writers, sociologists, futurists, and technologists; this process has resulted in a slapdash concept which nevertheless presents itself as a seamless and universal utopia of glass and wire. From this point of departure, I set out to track the historical emergence of smart urbanism, and elucidate it not as an object, but as a fragmentary ideological tendency representative of institutionalized ruling class desire. My analysis focuses within spatial, economic, and political contexts, arriving at an understanding of the city as a dialectical tendency, not as a foregone artifact-to-come; as a contradictory abstraction, and not as a simplistic technological intensification of urbanity.

Chapter one establishes the territorial field of the empire of intelligence, or the techno-historical regime of progress and market expansion, from a dialectical standpoint. Chapter two focuses on the spatial and aesthetic arguments in Quayside and within the utopian dream of the smart city more generally, focusing on embedded ideological suppositions, and tracing out the rise of Sidewalk’s post-industrial ‘fluid’ urbanism as a reaction to prior utopian schema. Chapter three applies these findings to an assessment of bourgeois politics in general, identifying within the smart city subject a political program which seeks to compound, extend, and maximalize ruling class power. At this point, the crisis, which Orit Halpern has identified as foundational for the smart city’s origin, is dyadically joined with the concept of the epoch, which I propose functions as a “leveller,” allowing bourgeois theorists and hegemonic proponents to work against capitalism’s economic crises and contradictions. The death of the status quo is declared in order to allow the continuation of its laws of motion within a new epoch of surface differences. The smart city is a valuable conceptual tool in this onslaught. Against this, I recenter the historical category of labor, grounding its primacy against proclamations of its death.

LEFT: Quayside Site, Downtown, Toronto RIGHT, CLOCKWISE: Proposed Quayside Site Plan. Image by Sidewalk Labs Quayside Context Map. Image by Sidewalk Toronto

This thesis begins and ends with a case study of the Quayside project in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, currently undertaken by Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs. Quayside grounds the analysis of the smart city by supplying a figure to the epistemic ground.

TUP 23

2016

2017

2018

1200 Govt Info

Govt Info Jul 27 National Consultation on Illegal Immigration and Terrorism

900 Aug 1 border barrier migration law

600

Oct 2 “Quota Referendum”

Sep 15 mass migration management

Sep 15, 2015 2 + 4 counties

n Campaig

Govt Info May 20 National Consultation Stop Brussels!

Apr 8 general elections

Govt Info

Mar 28 asylum procedure mass migration

Mar 9, 2016 whole country

Sep 5, 2016 extended

Mar 6, 2017 extended

Aug 25 immigration tax consitutional change

Aug 30, 2017 extended

Feb 16, 2018 extended

Sep 3, 2018 extended

500

300

Sep 14, 2015 Serbian border sealed

Oct 15, 2015 Croatian border sealed

Aug 29, 2015 razor wire barrier

Apr 28, 2017 Second fence on Serbian border

BORDERLINE SYNDROME

URBANIZATION OF THE STATE OF EXCEPTION DURING AND AFTER THE ‘REFUGEE CRISIS’ IN HUNGARY

by Gabor Janos Suranyi

24 TUP

state of emergency due to mass migration

average number of asylum applications per day*

2015

sp

state o f

exp a

security speech acts exceptional measures

n theor atio y tiz

While this thesis is situated at the intersection of Agamben’s concept of the State of Exception and the Copenhagen School’s Securitization theory, it uses the Hungarian case to critique and expand these theorists’ analysis. It seeks to enhance their strictly constructivist understanding by highlighting not only the importance of the historical and socio-political context but also spatial and material elements which remain largely absent from the existing discourse. The research examines how the broken promises of the unhampered spread of capitalism after 1990 and the fear-based narratives of the post 9/11 era assisted nationalist and anti-immigration sentiments to achieve dominance in the political discourse. This thesis attempts to unravel the dialectic of the tangible and the symbolic, the concrete and the abstract. Accordingly, it uses a dual methodology: visual ethnog-

nondiscursive instruments

secu ri

bare life

In the summer of 2015, public squares adjacent to train stations in Budapest, filled with thousands of foreigners, abruptly halted on their journey towards Western Europe. In Hungary, this was one of the first and most striking episodes in the chain of events that would be referred to as the “refugee crisis.” In this thesis, I argue that these events were used by the governing party, Fidesz, to reinstate its political power and accelerate the country’s creeping shift towards a more authoritarian rule. The party sought to frame migration as an existential threat which justified the implementation of emergency measures outside of the earlier political and legal norm. This brought about the state of exception as theorized

by Giorgio Agamben. Though immigration figures dropped in the following months and have since remained low, many of these measures remain in place. Following Agamben’s observation, the exception has become the norm.

sites of exception

securitization ed nd

ex

lens ial at

on pti ce

raphy and discourse analysis. As primary sources, it relies on interviews, visual and text-based media reporting, and political campaign materials as well as official statements, legal and policy texts.

To theorize the role of physical spaces and artifacts, I identify three sites of exception which play an essential role in the processes of threat construction, threat management, and threat perpetuation. The first is the Keleti Railway Station where the government’s decision to deny access to the trains in the late summer of 2015 rendered visible vast crowds of desperate migrants. The well-known neoclassical façade of the station building served as an iconic backdrop to images which flooded the media. This imagery conveyed a narrative of invasion which illustrated the words of political statements and created a sense of urgency. The second site is the border fence constructed at the country’s southern border during and after these events. Out of reach to civilians, aid organizations and the media, the fence became an opaque wall to the outside. While the wall successfully conceals human rights violations committed here against asylum seekers, it emerges as a symbol of protection against the anticipated invasion. With the inner city cleared of unwanted foreigners and the border zone hidden from the public eye, the migration discourse re-materializes in the third site—billboards and other physical advertising surfaces. These artifacts of invasive propaganda serve to perpetuate the system of fear.

Politics of Exception, Securitization of Migration, Nationalism, Authoritarianism, European Refugee Crisis Hungary

incrementally extends itself to exclude oppressed local minorities, political opponents and eventually everybody who fails to conform to the normalized conservative Christian identity. Nevertheless, this thesis urges to resist Agamben’s fatalistic view, which sees the state of exception as the “paradigmatic space of political modernity.” The sites of exception also served as arenas for resistance, where the oppressed on either side of the fence reclaim their agency. The civil solidarity movement at the Keleti train station, the demonstrations of migrants and locals in cities and at the border, the coordinated creative resistance against propaganda campaigns and crowd-sourced counter-campaigns all demonstrate that the system can be and must be resisted.

The sites of exception serve as anchors in the discursive construction of war-evoking narratives and the definition of the racialized, gendered, culturally and religiously incompatible figure of the essential migrant. With the political elite seeking to reformulate who belongs to “us” and who to “them,” the system of exception

TUP 25

UNLEARNING NATURE

by Anna Yulsman

26 TUP

Capitalocene, Nature, Critique, Critical Pedagogy, Transformative Justice

The goal of this thesis is to explore the role of education in framing the way people conceive of nature. Primarily, I argue that western education is producing a human-nature dualism characteristic of the Anthropocene ideology. Beginning with an overview of existing capitalist critiques of the role of “nature” in capital accumulation, this thesis deconstructs “nature” itself for its use in the ideology of exploitative capitalism and argues that we have widely misconceived the way we engage with the environment we live within.

This misconception has led us to misdiagnose ecological crisis. The Anthropogenic framing of climate change poses an ecological crisis as created by and affecting all people, when in fact both its creation and effects are uneven. This is the sort of ideology which allows us to hide the fact that wealthy industrialized countries have built their success off the creation of climate change and the consequences hit poor nations instead of the culprits.

In reality, climate change is an environmental injustice which is not caused by all people, but by the wealthy who reside in colonizing nations. Because the positivist solutions of normative sustainable development in western nations are void of this critique, their prescriptions fail to disrupt the crisis from a systemic perspective. Instead, these solutions do more in support of capital rather than ecological processes—both human and non-human.

These practices reproduce social inequality on a global scale, all the while drowning out the robust and well-informed voices of the affected.

Through a western environmental education curriculum analysis, this thesis recognizes the relationship between normative education models and said conceptions of nature. Countries which are praised for their friendly sustainable practice

are teaching about the environment in isolation from its social and political underpinnings. Climate change is presented as a crisis which emerged through the proliferation of increased human population, and the effect a general “we” have had on nature. Lastly, solutions taught grow out of the sustainable development ideology which marries sustainability and economic growth. These curriculums are void of an analysis of the ecological crisis occurring in tandem with social inequality. In order to unpack such powerful conceptions and therefore transform the way we engage with one another and our surroundings, this thesis recognizes a need for a critical approach to pedagogy on a large scale and educational curriculum on a smaller one. This transformation begins with a critique of the fractured and inherently flawed foundation upon which western nations have built their professed progress. This transformation must then involve pulling peripheral perspectives which are informed by lived experience to the center of conversations about how to shape a way forward.

views as well as the New York Collective of Radical Educators Listserv, Principles of Environmental Justice and Principles of GeoCommunism. My original contribution is a primary and secondary curriculum analysis which is global in scale as well as a framework for an anti-capitalist ecological curriculum.

Through inspiration from the environmental justice movement, ecofeminism, indigenous knowledges and geo-communism, this thesis ends propositionally by creating parameters for a new curriculum. Rather than prescribing the details of the curriculum specifically, these parameters act as general principles which specific localities may be able to follow in order to shape and place specific curriculums based off of a more nuanced understanding of the context in which they operate.

Methodologically, this thesis includes a literature review, discourse analysis, curriculum analysis, and informal interviews.

Primary sources include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change latest Assessment Report, curriculum, inter-

TUP 27

BIOS TUP

28 TUP

Prerna Balhara

Vittorio Borghesi Ghidella

was born in New Delhi, India and studied architecture before she applied to the M.A. Theories of Urban Practice program.

She chose this program to expand her interest and knowledge in the field of Spatial transformation and Urbanism. She currently lives in Brooklyn and enjoys the artistic vibe of the neighborhood. To professionalize her education, she is interning at a firm named Hongkun USA within the design and innovation department. Her interests toward learning are to be able to gain comprehension towards a global urban front that helps improve the metropolitan conditions of the cities of India.

was born in Turin, Italy, and raised in Cannes, France. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Management with Chinese Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Prior to joining the Theories of Urban Practice program at Parsons, Vittorio worked for a collaboration between a Fine Arts dealership and a real estate development company in London, combining his passions for urbanism and contemporary art. His current research focuses on the development of micro-unit dwellings in New York City as an affordable housing form and living environment.

Kevin Rogan

Gabor Janos Suranyi

is a former architect and current urbanist, artist, and researcher undertaking a Marxist investigation of labor, technology, economic crisis, and the philosophy of space, specifically as it relates to the concept of the smart city and post-industrial society.

His research centers on developing an understanding of the political economy within the context of the contemporary, technologically mediated urban condition.

He has given talks in the Netherlands and Macau, and his work will be featured in the 2019 Venice Biennale.

is a recovering architect, a semi-professional linguist, an urbanist-in-the-making and a lifelong learner. He holds an MS in Architecture and Engineering from Budapest University of Technology and Economics. As a linguist, he worked on creative and technical translations, and as an architect, he participated in infrastructure, healthcare and housing projects while serving as a housing advocate.

Combining his interests in languages and space making, he seeks to understand the relationship between processes of the discursive space and the physical space. His current research focuses on the material aspects of political and societal transformations in Hungary.

Jillian Crandall

Jasmine Hong

Kathryn Muller

is a Registered Architect and researcher investigating digital/physical infrastructures and their socio-technical relationships. She has worked on the design and construction of several civic projects in the New York City metropolitan region, and in Puerto Rico. Jillian holds a B.Arch from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She has guest-lectured and contributed to publications at Columbia, Pratt, RPI, MIT, and The New School. Jillian is a member of the American Institute of Architects, where she has organized public programs with the AIANY Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, and the Puerto Rico Taskforce.

Jillian is currently researching cryptoeconomic geographies and inequalities.

With a 360° perspective on creating holistic brand experiences, Jasmine helps businesses build their brand through design.

Some of her clients include WeWork, Interbrand, McGarryBowen, The Met Breuer and more. Parsons School of Design has been fundamental in shaping Jasmine’s perspective, passions and growth as a creative thinker and individual. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication design and is currently pursuing a master’s degree studying interior and urban design. Learn more about her latest passion project at demystify.design and feel free to reach out to her at jasminehong@ newschool.edu.

is an artist and writer whose interest in the politics of the fashion industry drew her to NYC, where she researches fast fashion production in Los Angeles. She is passionate about raising awareness and accountability in the fashion world surrounding the laborers who make the majority of the world’s clothing. Kathryn received her Bachelor of Arts in English and Geography from UNC Chapel Hill, where she first learned to be suspicious of institutional power structures that occasionally prioritize celebrating the legacy of their white supremacist founders over the safety of their students. Kathryn very rarely writes about herself in the third person.

Anna Yulsman researches conceptions of nature and their relationship to capitalism as a part of her graduate thesis. She is interested in education as both a reproductive force of capitalism as well as a possible opportunity for critical pedagogy and dissent. Anna works alongside many others in bringing social justice back into the conversation around environmentalism and climate change, and re-configuring practice to address environmental injustices. Prior to attending graduate school at The New School, Anna received her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Sociology from New York University. Her passions include film editing and cartography as well as dance.

TUP 29

MS

DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES From Paris to Lahore, New York City to Curitiba, Qatar to Toronto, Baltimore to Shanghai, Calgary to Newark, Belgrade to Pittsburgh and Washington D.C. to Amsterdam, the 2019 graduates from the Masters of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies (DUE) program have developed highly relevant and actionable projects that respond to many of the critical conditions that these urban regions face in the early 21st century and beyond. The students worked for more than a year researching, making community connections, developing workshops, conducting ethnographic and spatial fieldwork, but most importantly advocating together with local activists for realizing a more socially just and environmentally responsible urban future.

Direct connection, direct action and direct participation to an existing urban problematic have been the top requirements for any graduate thesis in DUE. This generation continued to set an example on how a graduate thesis project can affect reality and pursue socio-spatial progress in a contemporary context characterized by extreme economic inequality, hatred for the other and a seemingly unstoppable environmental crisis. Every project of this generation is a statement in active imagination and a belief in the future only if one fights for its transformation and is able to co-design coming scenarios to address the urgent conditions for change.

Grouped around self-defined directions while rejecting to be constrained by them, the students worked on Reframing Extractivism; Building Collective Agency; on critical issues of Space, Place and Displacement; as well as Infrastructure Systems, Networks and Flows. These directions loosely encompass the many inclass discussions and group dynamics that happened outside of class which activated the curiosity that drove this generation to re-purpose their lives as they confidently

30 DUE

move forward with new sources of knowledge and new sensibilities to practice professionally in the urban realm.

In Reframing Extractivism, Daniel Bieckmann focused his research on the corporate vs. citizens power imbalance in energy and environmental policy decisions in the Netherlands. He designed a highly sophisticated citizens platform that centralizes information on all energy initiatives in Amsterdam and allows grassroots groups to understand, come together and advocate for more people-centric energy policy with direct, positive urban transformations. Kevin Capuno developed his thesis in relation to his hometown, Calgary, Canada. He designed an ambitious city-supported cultural urban program to challenge the erasure of the oppressive cultural status quo based on extractivism and the destruction of the heritage of First Nations, but most importantly, to help the city reframe its identity. Gillian Chisholm focused on the new forms of urban land extractivism pioneered by the tech industry’s involvement in urban planning and development under their view of smart cities. Working with local activist initiatives, Gillian chose to design an urban campaign against Google’s Sidewalk Labs plans to privatize a large part of Toronto’s waterfront. Claudia Rot discovered that the concept of environmental justice did not have a direct translation into the Dutch language and directed her research on the absence of a social justice framework in environmental policy in The Netherlands. Claudia saw the need to design the organizational form of the Dutch Environmental Justice Alliance, a first of its kind. Her aim is to be able to form a national coalition strong enough to introduce Environmental Justice principles into policy. Abby Zan adopted the theoretical lenses of critical resilience, feminism, and climate justice to research the pro-capitalist environmental policy trends in Washington D.C., specifically within the neighborhood of Anacostia. Working with

INTRODUCTION

by Miguel Robles-Durán Associate Professor of Urbanism

and Cristina Handal

Teaching Assistant and PhD Candidate in Urban Policy

many local organizations, Abby addressed the neglect of grassroots groups and environmental activists by designing a citizen platform and visioning process that is able to unite and empower the many neighborhood voices that want to integrate the people’s voices on climate justice.

In Building Collective Agency, Isaac Green Diebboll honed his film-making skills to design a non-profit high school story-telling program that brings the struggles of urban survivors to classrooms, catalyzing urgent discussions on topics such as forced displacement, addiction, gentrification and sense of territorial belonging. Employing short personal video-documentaries and workshops, Isaac designed a new way of engaging in urban dialogue with younger generations. Julianna Galvao, concerned with the loss of memory of the many social urban initiatives that since the 1990’s emerged in her city, Curitiba, Brazil, decided to design a living archive of urban movements and their activist manifestations in the city. For this, Julianna had to map years of activism and work with many local social groups to generate an interactive platform that will exist as the main depository of the knowledge generated by citizens as they have claimed their Right to the City. Alie Kilts worked throughout the year to map and understand the collective agency of women as they have dealt with harassment in the streets of NYC. In the face of this oppressive danger, Alie designed a media project based on a podcast series that facilitates discussion forums and has the potential of serving as a movement platform and outlet for the many who want to actively end heteronormativity in the city. Grace Paik, inspired by the hundreds of urban self-help practices that enrich the poverty-stricken landscapes of Baltimore, designed a series of illustrated vignettes that profile, augment and bring into a broader community discussion of how to preserve and empower self-help practices in the neighborhood.

In Space, Place and Displacement, Gemma Duffee worked against the dominant narratives of homelessness produced by the city’s neglect of the structural causes of homelessness and the broader neoliberal and biopolitical processes that produce space and infrastructure that further marginalize. She designed a homeless data project to build the counter-infrastructures that will shift the narratives of homelessness in NYC. Maha Al-Khater researched the introverted practices that characterize daily life in Doha, Qatar. Maha has identified the impact that insular academic programs have on the regeneration of these practices and designed a new curricular platform for graphic design students that integrates critical urban issues around community relations, national identity, and politics. Dong Yao Li identified the difficulties and inequalities that the floating population in Shanghai face, and concerned with their social and physical adaptability, she designed a virtual guide to support how they access public services. Manon Vergerio used the power of film as a popular education tool and created the documentary web-series “Enjeux 2024” that highlights the threats of the upcoming Olympics in the Parisian banlieue through the eyes of local residents and activists who will be most directly affected, making visible and tangible the negative impacts that this and other Olympics bring.

In Infrastructure Systems, Networks and Flows, Rosella Soravia, in searching to provide a safe space for the creative community of musicians and artists in Belgrade, designed a new business model to collaborate with developers on new buildings to ensure that underrepresented groups of artists are protected. Rosella partnered with a newly redeveloped and historically significant building to arrange physical spaces for artists and a creative hub.

Sarah Kontos interrogates challenges and assumptions of urban growth in post-in-

dustrial cities. Through her investigation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a “smart city” and the physical and social consequences of modern progress, Sarah proposes a radical reconsideration of what infrastructure is and who it works for, what growth means, and what is defined as ‘smartness’, in order to reimagine the street as a site of the commons in the digital age.

We want to thank the many people who supported the work of the students during their year-long thesis project. In the fall semester, students were guided by William Morrish in their thesis research phase.

During the year, the students worked with each of the members of the Urban Council, including Miodrag Mitrasinovic, William Morrish, Gabriela Rendon and Evren Uzer, as well as with members of our distinguished faculty body, alumni and community advisors, including Rob Robinson, Jilly Traganou, Malgorzata Bakalarz, Joseph Heathcott, Shannon Mattern, Masoom Moitra and Gamar Markarian.

We have been honored to be able to work with this group of talented urbanists and are certain that the world will become better as soon as they are out practicing and actively looking to improve our urban world. We want to congratulate the graduating cohort of 2019 for their humanity, social responsibility, environmental action, critical thinking, and non-conformity, but most importantly for giving us a sense of hope that a better future is possible.

DUE 31

QATARI GRAPHIC DESIGNERS QATARIZED CURRIQULUM

course/project-based learning

<>

contextual based-learning/outcomes

IMPACT

generational personal, professional

GRAPHIC DESIGN

message, meaning, medium

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

LOCAL

agents, researchers, collaborators x commercial / service level x

GLOBAL

flexible, situational, interdisciplinary, adaptable, transitional, interprative, systemic

QATARIZED

CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR A QATARI KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

by Maha Khalid Al-Khater

32 DUE

Knowledge Economy, Petro-urbanization, Graphic Design, Education, Curriculum

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

HUMAN

CAPITAL

EXTRACTIVE ECONOMY

Qatarizing curriculum is a strategy to nationalize an approach towards building a knowledge-based society. This society is situated in Qatar, which is a country developing at a rapid pace due to the vast wealth generated from its oil and gas economy. Qatar’s development and its future projection is an example of instant urbanism where it’s natural resources have been extracted and used by the ruling monarchy to drive the country’s growth and diversification. This developmental period is the manifestation of petro-urbanism, economically driven by visions for the future in the country’s capital city, Doha. With its national vision, the government aims to diversify the economy from the energy sector by investing in non-energy sectors. One of its key sectors is education, and many initiatives have been implemented by the Qatar Foundation (QF), which is a non-profit organization which works in education, research, and community development. Located in Education City, QF has established nine international branch campuses which offer different degrees across various disciplines. Amongst them is Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar (VCUQ), which opened in 1998 and is the first campus to offer programs in art and design.

and systems of the urban environment.

Being the only university that has the highest percentage of Qatari enrollment and the highest female majority, VCUQ is a unique campus which serves this group in society. This curriculum is designed as a platform to guide various outcomes, beginning with the students’ journey in their academic field and ending with their role in, and input towards, their society. Within an academic level, this curriculum is also a strategy to push Qataris into research and education fields in order to help position them in areas of teaching and knowledge production.

This thesis utilizes the methods of archiving, resource mapping, and informal interviews to structure the parameters for designing the curriculum. Part of the research methodology is devoted to examining the 2030 national vision and its four pillars: economic, social, human, and environmental development.

As the country is transitioning to a knowledge-based economy, STEM-related fields have been prioritized in this national vision, neglecting fields related to art and design. This thesis builds its approach through this discipline with a curriculum to emphasize Graphic Design as a field which can be expanded to aid knowledge production and transmission.

Since Graphic Design is a field that deals with the communication and visualization of ideas, messages, and data, this area of expertise is the foundation to begin fostering a contextualized ecology bridging students within the dynamics

DUE 33

OCCUPYING THE MESO-SPACE

TOWARD LOCAL AGENCY OVER ENERGY IN AMSTERDAM

by Daniel Bieckmann

34 DUE

Energy Democracy, Amsterdam Energy Transition, Local Agency, Multi-stakeholder Network, Digital Platform

Cities worldwide are faced with the challenge of moving towards more sustainable energy systems. At the same time, a global municipalism movement is growing that aims to build residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; power and stimulate local agency over resources. Due to energyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s widespread presence in society, energy transitions provide a strong potential for challenging existing power structures and for moving towards new systems of collaboration and decision-making. The municipality of Amsterdam, the Netherlands--under the governance of a recently elected progressive, left municipal government--is set to join the energy transition movement.

Local politicians have stated the intention to become a global leader in energy, which requires a rapid transformation of what is currently a carbon-intensive energy system. To assure that the Amsterdam energy transition is a just one, and to avoid the lock-in of existing power structures into the newly forming energy system, this thesis presents design mechanisms to capture the momentum of the energy transition of Amsterdam and stimulate residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; agency over energy.

This design proposal is rooted in an extensive evaluation of the Amsterdam energy system, its key actors and relations, and places of potential for the desired systemic change. Main findings include a strong potential for extensive grassroots energy initiatives in the city with transformative organizational structures and values of horizontality; extensive democratic participation; and creative financial models.

This provides a strong entry-point for a change towards an energy system rooted in local agency. However, there is a lack of overview, collaboration, and coordination.

A multi-stakeholder network is needed to address large-scale challenges that extend beyond individual residents, to collectively decide upon more extensive policies and

regulations, and to engage in processes of shared learning. Thus, to bring together the potential of the energy transition and the desire for systemic change, it is necessary to move beyond a top-down/ bottom-up dichotomy. Instead, we need to strengthen the in-between meso-space of collaboration, advancing the energy movement from the middle-out through new mechanisms of exercising grassroots agency with diverse actors.

Therefore, this thesis proposes the Amsterdam Energy Collective: an interactive digital platform that provides a centralized overview of energy initiatives in Amsterdam, concrete and location-specific energy goals, and that builds the concrete action potential of residents through relations with other local actors. The Amsterdam Energy Collective (AEC) creates an overview of the potential multi-stakeholder network through three working mechanisms: (1) a geographic overview of initiatives; (2) a system of tags that indicate concrete energy goals, the location of organizing, and the phase of projects or initiatives are in; and (3) personalized user-accounts with a set of personally relevant tags to allow for a more advanced user experience. To stimulate concrete action and progress towards a design-based democracy, users can easily generate new tags to indicate sub-goals, which allows for resident-led agenda setting and prioritization of goals. In addition, users can co-create new initiatives and collaboratively identify concrete action steps to advance the project. These operators are specifically selected local actors in the energy movement that engage varied communities (including corporate, grassroots, and municipal actors) throughout the city and bring them together in a shared meso-space of design-based democracy and energy innovation on the platform.

Through the existing and diverse networks

of the community organizations, a larger system of collaboration around energy can be created, drawing upon different skills, needs, and strategies to reach a just energy transition rooted in local agency.

Altogether, the Amsterdam Energy Collective provides insight into what is happening where, what the concrete goals are, and provides potential to reflect on which goals or challenges are limitedly addressed. In addition, concrete co-creation mechanisms and offline programming centered around values of inclusion and participation will set the Amsterdam Energy transition on a long-term trajectory with potential for coordination, collaboration, monitoring of concrete goals, and shared learning.

DUE 35

TOWARD COLLECTIVE CONTINUANCE EXPLORING IDENTITY IN CALGARY, ALBERTA

by Kevin Michael Capuno

36 DUE

Collective Continuance, Identity, Settler Colonialism, Truth & Reconciliation, Extractivism

The scope of the exploration is grounded in Treaty 7, a living document that acknowledges the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, Canada. This land is situated adjacent to where the Bow River meets the Elbow River, what the traditional Blackfoot peoples call Moh’kins’stis. To Calgary’s indigenous people, the story of Moh’kins’stis says that before there was the place we call Calgary, the First Peoples were stewards of the land. At the confluence of two rivers are the origin points of both the Blackfoot Tradition and the City of Calgary as we know it. Historically, Fort Brisebois was established at this convergence point, which served as a trading post. Western Boosterism gave way to a burgeoning economy, often at the peril of the Treaty 7 populations. Given the recent moves toward Truth and Reconciliation amongst Canada and its Indigenous peoples, how do legacies of residential schooling, unkept promises, and collective memories of violent assimilation manifest themselves in the urban environment?

How do we conceive our role as treaty people in the time of Truth & Reconciliation? Lastly, how do we coordinate actions for collective continuance in order to provoke new expressions of civic identity?

The methodology for this project is multi-faceted in order to bring a range of historical contexts, perspectives, and voices into the understanding of collective civic identity. The initial portion of the research invokes new understandings of geography to map out the current climate and prospective actors and to renew relationships to land. As one entry point of inquiry, I will be specifically looking at the Calgary Stampede—an annual ten-day festival held on grounds adjacent to the Elbow River. I conclude that although the Calgary Stampede is emblematic of Calgarian identity, yet it does not confront the

settler colonial attitudes that this tradition perpetuates. Additionally, responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Calls to Action serve as a litmus test of the different sectors and will be used to explore several reconciliatory practices and approaches to complex conversations.

Three key considerations are discussed and serve as the foundation of the literature review: (1) Settler Colonialism is not an event, but a structure; (2) Extractive industries generate ecological disruption, not vital infrastructures; and (3) Reconciliation is not a process, but a practice. The theory of collective continuance combines these concepts to suggest a value that is similar to social resilience in its relationship to self-determination. In addition, archival research, case studies, mapping/GIS exercises, and workshops were also conducted. From November 2018 - February 2019, I conducted 16 interviews with Calgarians who, in their own work and practice, consider the contestation of Western Heritage engaged in frameworks and policies that are influenced by the TRC Calls to Action.

A set of interventions resulting from the research phase inform the design proposal of this thesis project. Along with interview and workshop participants, we envision an annual festival of civic engagement that empowers Calgarian youth to observe, identify, and describe their environment, while also making meaningful impacts within communities. Three key spaces were conceptualized from participants: spaces of expression, spaces of learning, and civic spaces. The set of interventions fall at the intersection of these spaces.

DUE 37

THE CAPTIVE CITY

GRASSROOTS STRATEGY TO COUNTER THE CORPORATIZATION OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING IN TORONTO, CANADA

by Gillian Chisholm

38 DUE

QUAYSIDE

Toronto, Canada has an extensive waterfront along its southern perimeter, spanning approximately 46 kilometers.

Unfortunately, there has been a lack of strong planning for access to public spaces and neighborhoods at the waterfront for years. In an attempt to address this disconnection, the municipal, provincial, and federal governments banded together in 2001 to create and fund a quasi-governmental agency named Waterfront Toronto with the goal to revitalize the city’s central waterfront for all Torontonians. For years, the company has successfully created new and inclusive spaces for citizens to enjoy; however, their framework for inclusion has been excluded from the company’s most recent waterfront project named Quayside. In October of 2017, Waterfront Toronto announced a new partnership with Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and a sister company to Google, to develop the 12-acre Quayside neighborhood. This project has been marketed as a “from the internet up” smart city neighborhood, focusing on the implementation of innovative new technologies for those who will be able to live there.

This partnership, and the subsequent planning for the site, has been faced with ongoing controversy as citizens and city councilors have become frustrated with the lack of appropriate public consultation on various factors associated with neighborhood needs, and with the lack of transparency toward Sidewalk Lab’s plan for privacy, surveillance, and ethical data accumulation by way of the technologies that will be embedded into the framework of the neighborhood.

Through an in depth investigation of this project, my thesis works to reveal hidden aspects and goals of the Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs partnership.

From this research I forecast the implica-

tions of this project on Toronto’s future and outline how Sidewalk Lab’s process of planning for Quayside is paving a new model for development in cities which diverges from the traditional neoliberal frameworks we see today and into an even more captive and extractive structure, which I coin as the “captive city”.

Extractive Development, Campaign, Toronto, Smart City, Housing Affordability

Finally, throughout this initiative, I will continue to develop the “captive city” theory to highlight how this new structure of planning is not isolated to Quayside; it can be used to recognize the captive and extractive practices within similarly structured projects that other cities will encounter moving forward.

These outcomes are displayed through the development of a new campaign named “Our Right to Quayside,” which aims to organize Torontonians against the project, disseminate the information I have developed through the research for this thesis, and call to halt the progression of this project until proper due diligence has been done to address the affordability, privacy, and governance concerns that Torontonians are currently raising.

“Our Right to Quayside” will have three phases, starting with the development of campaign thematics and materials which are showcased in this thesis. The second is the launch of the campaign and future workshops that will be facilitated with my partner at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) in Toronto.

The workshops will establish the values that we want to see Waterfront Toronto embed into Quayside moving forward; will help determine the level and amount of affordable homes we feel is necessary for the project to have; and will plan ways that we can collectively get Waterfront Toronto to listen and pay attention to us as concerned citizens. The third phase is to formally integrate “Our Right to Quayside” into another larger campaign named #BlockSidewalk through my partnership at ACTO. This larger campaign is currently focusing on data, privacy, and surveillance issues. Because our campaign focuses vary, the integration of campaigns would complement and strengthen our collective fight.

DUE 39

THE BIOPOLITICS OF HOMELESSNESS

BUILDING DATA INFRASTRUCTURES TO CHALLENGE HARMFUL NARRATIVES, SPATIAL PRACTICES, & POLICIES IN NEW YORK CITY

by Gemma Duffee

40 DUE

Homelessness, Displacement, Embodied Infrastructures, Collaborative Design, Data

New York City currently faces a “homeless crisis” that is both produced and maintained by neoliberal processes of urbanization. While the lack of affordable housing is understood as a root cause of homelessness, little policy is in place to make housing genuinely accessible or affordable to low-income people. Renewed interest in neighborhoods that have historically been disinvested in by the city and the re-appropriation of public space through public-private partnerships also contributes to growing rates of homelessness as low-income people become displaced from neighborhoods with increasing property values. Street homeless populations are further marginalized by this through design, regulations, programming, and policing of these spaces which formerly provided safety, community, and refuge.

Through spatial development, policing, and policy, New York perpetuates a cycle of double-displacement, where people first become displaced from housing and are then denied access to the public realm through dispossession, incarceration, and forced relocation.

As the city attempts to address growing rates of homelessness, infrastructures for homeless data collection have emerged to inform policy and to allocate funding and resources to shelters and services operated by contracted non-profit organizations.

Through processes of third-party data collection and reliance on 311 reporting to locate and respond to street homelessness at the city scale, homeless people have become implicated in systems of data collection that are both physically and epistemologically harmful. These systems of data collection rely on visibility in order to be counted, which is contentious for homeless people who struggle to control the terms of their visibility in the public realm as they experience threats to safety and diminished rights to privacy

and rest necessary for social reproduction. Homeless people also lack control over the narratives these data produce, as statistics deem people “service resistant” while neglecting the lived and embodied experiences of services and shelters, such as untimely transitions to housing, poor nutritional diet, and physically dangerous conditions which are deleterious to physical and mental health. As the city’s data come to influence policy, they fuel the rise of shelters and perpetuate spatial displacement through policing and development strategies that seek to “revitalize” areas where homeless people are reported. I argue that these data neglect the structural causes of homelessness and erase the biopolitical consequences homelessness has for people who experience it.

riences with housing, shelters, policing, transportation, public space, and health. In bringing homeless organizations together with researchers, policymakers, and data analysis, the platform will provide space to look at the gaps and inadequacies of existing homeless statistics and redefine what homeless data is, how it is collected and protected, and the ways it can be analyzed and applied at the policy level.

This project gives homeless people control over their own data narratives while examining how homeless experiences of oppression might be collectivized through data to reshape the landscape of homeless research, knowledge production, and advocacy at the policy level in New York and other US cities.

Based on insights gained from direct collaboration with Picture the Homeless (PTH), a homeless-led housing and social justice organization based in East Harlem, my design proposal is for a homeless-owned and managed data platform that challenges dominant narratives of homelessness through counter-data collection and representation. Building on previous advocacy projects of organizations like PTH, the project expands upon the idea that homeless people already collect and maintain their own data through experiential and embodied knowledge, and know what data is most pressing for advocacy. Through collaborative workshops, I started a pilot data project at PTH where members learned to operationalize and critique existing data for advocacy on their “Free to Pee” campaign to expand access to public toilets in New York City. Through ongoing collaboration, the platform offers opportunities for new processes of homeless data collection to address other issues members find relevant, as it pertains to expe-

DUE 41

EMERGING CURITIBA

THE LIVING ARCHIVE OF TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICES AND INSURGENT ACTIONS SHAPING THE URBAN

by Julianna Galvao

42 DUE

Transformative Urban Practices, Curitiba, Right to the City, Citizen Engagement, Popular Initiatives

Curitiba has a long history of popular initiatives and citizen engagement related to its social and spatial production, where the right to the city has been rooted in its residents since the early urban transformations. For this reason, much of the city’s infrastructure and spaces are the result of citizens’ transformative practices and initiatives, which day after day made claims for their rights in the face of unbridled urban development processes.

This thesis aims to discuss the interplay among transformative urban actions and actors that are shaping the urban scenario, exploring the city’s socio-spatial production through citizen participation, social movements, and popular initiatives in order to understand who and what shapes the city, using the Lefebvrian “Right to the City” concept as the primary reference. The investigation started by looking at the urban transformation of Curitiba in the mid-’70s, with the implementation of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system as background, and how the consequences and outcomes of it are reflecting and shaping the urban scene nowadays. In order to identify who and what is shaping the city’s scenario, mixed methods of research were applied.

Secondary research with an extensive literature review was developed in order to define and refine some fundamental concepts related to the right to the city, right to citizenship, participatory processes, and communicative and dialogical theory.

Mapping methods were used as an important tool to spatialize insurgent actions and the actors who were identified during the research process, as well as to trace connections and interplays. Field research, questionnaires, and in-person interviews were also applied, where the focus was to recognize the mapped actions, analyze

their implementation and development, as well as begin to articulate, connect, and fortify ties among the actors involved.

With this large amount of data collected, the main question was how to synergize the identified movements, actions, initiatives, and organizations through a supportive social network to perpetuate the long history of social advocacy and great popular achievements, increasing awareness and strengthening connections as a result. In other words, an impactful exercise of recognition, empowerment, and preparing actors for future urban challenges.

As a city is made up of its citizens and their social interactions; it is fundamental to recognize and highlight the importance of local knowledge, voices, and citizenship within the urban production. Therefore, social movements, community-led initiatives, collectives, citizens practices, and actions that are engaged in changing the urban scene and claiming rights will be an integral and fundamental part of The Living Archive; a platform that aims to recognize social resistance and great popular achievements in order to prepare the actors for forthcoming urban challenges.

For this to become a reality, the idea of documenting the transformative urban actions and practices arose as The Living Archive—a platform for data (re)collection to be used as a catalyst for social change.

Citizens who fight for their rights deserve to be recognized in order to generate visibility and legitimacy to their practices, illustrating proposals and solutions developed to solve urban challenges through collaborative and insurgent processes.

The Living Archive is an archival project in constant construction, extremely dependent on the articulation of the actors involved, in search of aspirations for the city’s urban future and solutions to challenges. Each proposal goes through a process of co-creation in order to arrive at the implementation of transformative urban practices. These practices and actions will be documented together with data collection that encompasses oral stories, maps, network schemes, interviews, and pictures, where the social and spatial production that is taking place in shaping the urban scene will be presented.

DUE 43

YOUR STORY, OUR HISTORY

ENCOURAGING HUMAN CONNECTION THROUGH DOCUMENTARY FILM PRACTICE

by Isaac Green Diebboll

44 DUE

Collective Agency, Documentary Film, Intergenerational Learning, Urban Rural, Archive

“The Arc Film Library” is dedicated to preserving and sharing generational wisdom and human expression from different cultures around the world through media that offers an exploration of what it means to be human. The library is implemented through ENGN (“engine”) Civic Creative Center 501(c)3.

The library specifically archives and distributes stories from survivors who have faced generational struggles with dehumanization, discrimination, urban destruction and displacement.

The library is created in response to local communities around the world who are divided by competing struggles for survival. There is little time or energy to understand how our struggles are related.

America specifically has a divisive history of violence that includes genocide, slavery, and theft—none of which could go unrecognized today as criminal. While there is perhaps no simple or clear recourse to address these 400-year-old crimes, and while the stories of these crimes may be well known and even taught in public schools and textbooks, the individual stories of victims go untold and are ultimately erased. However, the descendants of these survivors carry stories of their ancestor’s perseverance and continue their fight today. These stories hold invaluable human lessons for future generations to learn from, for the benefit of all life.

Social and emotional disconnection is at the root of many these struggles, seeding cycles of discrimination, urban destruction, displacement, and dehumanization.

This kind of disconnection fuels fears of neighbors who are different and furthers isolation, disinvestment, and lack of support for people who are economically and environmentally vulnerable. The Arc Film Library gathers stories of struggle from a

diversity of survivors in order to celebrate their lessons of strength and illuminate the intersections where they connect.

These stories are shared with neighbors, locally and regionally, in urban and rural communities.

Arc films are available online and are screened through educational and cultural programming. Programs serve different contexts, primarily designed to bring stories into classrooms, courtrooms, government meetings, and community spaces.

The films are made to influence decision making and learning processes in order to encourage compassion and respect for human differences. The programs are: A. Facing History: Stories from Survivors, which addresses generational struggles; B. Handed Down: Lessons from the Land, which celebrates generational wisdom; C. Human Being, which addresses issues of dehumanization.

In courtrooms and judges chambers, films are designed to motivate connection with the people being judged and bring humanity to sentences made against convicted persons. In government meetings, films are used to tell stories where policy decisions can benefit from resident insights and experiences that reflect what communities are facing and the policy changes they are fighting for.

The Arc Film Library seeks to achieve this by connecting intergenerationally as well as regionally between urban and rural communities, leveraging the diverse and equalizing atmospheres of public school classrooms and community centers as points of confluence where seemingly disparate and contemporary stories of survival can come together to change the way neighbors learn from one another.

Arc films are developed and programmed in collaboration with community partners and schools to ensure that local knowledge is respected and centered in the programming. In classrooms and community spaces, films are used to establish a foundation for open conversation with students and community members facing complex emotional, physical, and generational struggles. Films are also developed in collaboration with a teacher’s curriculum that is specific to each school, classroom, and community in order to connect global, historical, and political struggles with local, contemporary, and personal ones.

DUE 45

SPACES OF (

)

VISUALIZING THE INVISIBLE ROUTES OF THE MIND AND THE PHYSICAL EMBODIED EXPERIENCE OF AGENCY

by Alie Kilts

46 DUE

The Body, Agency, Space, Feminist Cartography, Podcasting

The 2017 #MeToo movement sparked a national debate on America’s underlying history of sexual violence. Call-out culture swept American entertainment and media, dominating headlines and social media feeds. City governments moved workplace harassment to the top of their priority lists. Time’s Up took the stage at Hollywood awards shows, elevating (certain) women’s voices. It was as if the movement was happening faster than the voices could keep up. As #MeToo gained prominence, critics started questioning not only its intentions, but it’s consequences, too.

As I watched this unfold, all I could think about was the seemingly unbroken silence before this movement. Before this can of worms was unearthed, speaking from my own experiences, none of this was new or surprising. The murmurs already existed; the glances of shared eye contact that said a thousand words occurred daily. This underground network was alive and well. Though the victims of sexual violence may have had individual ways of dealing with it, this language was rarely spoken out loud. These invisible forces were met with invisible actions.

A year and a half later, #MeToo has made more than just waves, not only in America but across the world. But the question still remains, what needs to be done? More specifically, what does #MeToo want to see happen? Since the break of this movement, I’ve been studying the historical context of sexual violence in America, and more specifically, in New York City. Dating back to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, New York has been at the forefront of constitutional rights and protections for women. Governance plays an important role in this movement, but even more important is the underground network I previously mentioned. #MeToo has

always existed; it just didn’t always have a catchy hashtag and the latest technology to elevate its voice. There is no single answer that will lift us out of this systemic oppression, and along those same lines, there is no single movement that will lead this fight.

RIGHT: Tarana Burke, Founder of #MeToo Photo from TIME Magazine

Spaces of is a project designed to address the concerns of #MeToo, as well as the broader implications of what it means to embody agency in space. This project has been carried out in two parts, the first being an avoidance mapping exercise using feminist mapping methodologies.

For Spaces of Avoidance, I conducted 25 interviews with my classmates and peers about the routes along streets they prefer and the routes they avoid. By far, the most intriguing part of this process was the conversation. As the participants drew various lines over their maps, I jotted down the comments they were making. It became quite obvious that though these were spaces traveled through almost daily, few participants had ever actually said these words out loud.

This discovery led me to the second part of this project; Spaces of, a podcast series guided by themes of affect and driven by interviews. The first season covers themes of avoidance, belonging, contradiction, and escape as they pertain to space and place. Despite the perception, podcasting has the capacity to be one of the most visual forms of storytelling. When talking about the embodied experience of agency, data visualization and mapping can only get one so far. This format is the ideal space to hold conversations about what it means to take up space and the invisible forces that contribute to or hinder our sense of agency.

DUE 47

RE-VISIONING THE URBAN TEST BED

EMERGENT INFRASTRUCTURES FOR MOVEMENT AND ACTION IN PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

by Sarah Kontos

48 DUE

Smart City, Mobility, Infrastructure, Solidarity Network, Anti-Efficiency

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a post-industrial city that is in the middle of a transition. Centralized plans to spur growth to restore the city to a formerly economically significant past will affect both the city’s public commons and the ways people travel through space in newly contested ways. To the city, and to those planning its future, growth means two things: an increase in population and an increase in economic capacity. Close readings of Pittsburgh’s public documents and published plans over the last four years to become a “smart city” reveal the priorities of a future city that gives precedence to technology firms above the needs of current residents. Using applied and networked mobility infrastructures as a tool to replicate divisive patterns of the past that prioritized economic growth over community development, the public sector is inviting the expertise of the private sector to shape both transportation standards and managerial models of governance.

The plans allow the city to be seen—and maybe more importantly, marketed—as a test bed for technologically-driven solutions; it will serve to order the city in the image of neoliberal techno-capital.

Changes include installing sensors on the road to facilitate traffic, shifting the managerial infrastructure of how routes and roads are planned and maintained, and creating data repositories to control and analyze vectors of efficient movement.

Existing roads will be modified to facilitate flow between job-centers in an expressly linear fashion, dissecting and separating the dense patches of the neighborhoods they are supposedly connecting. The city’s push to be seen as modern and innovative bypasses community-oriented movement in favor of capital-oriented economic growth. Though the changes proposed are seemingly small-scale solutions to

larger problems, they signal a shift in structure that will alter the material terrain of the city.

This thesis investigates the roadway sites of smart city technology integration in Pittsburgh as a crucial piece of infrastructure whose design and use can actually be leveraged against “smart city” trends to preserve and uplift the last true commons in the city—the street. Taking all of these parts together into one body of research requires an unpacking of assumptions about both technological progress and urban development. I propose a phased series of workshops and directed conversations that leverage existing community knowledge and action to attempt to reorient the priorities of urban development using the very streets onto which techno-capital is extending its grip.

and interactions are scaled up to create an influential social infrastructure of advocates and participants in the public realm.

By beginning to work against dominant trends with workshops and tours, affected communities and advocates can better understand the implications of centrally-planned, tech-integrated ‘growth,’ and become more empowered to formulate direct responses to the city’s plans during this transitional period. With a deeper understanding of the ecology of the city and the overlaps between social and physical infrastructures, my project builds the capacity of current Pittsburgh residents to be proactive in shaping the future of their city.

LEFT: Photo adapted from: Charles “Teenie” Harris. “Protest March.” c. 1960-1968. Carnegie Museum of Art. Fine Arts: Teenie Harris Archive. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Through the creation of a solidarity network of mobility advocates, my project partners and I attempt to co-design ways for policy and infrastructure to recognize the value of embedded knowledge and daily life in a more formal manner, address structural socio-spatial inequalities, and ensure that all voices and modes are equally represented in the city. A series of workshops engage the multiplicities of advocates in the city working in mobility space to work through and understand these trends together and connect mobility issues with other intersecting grassroots fights in Pittsburgh. The members and participants in these workshops are asked to engage in observing the city as networks of flows through the creation of a series of city tours spanning multiple modes of transit, conducted throughout the year. Witnessing physical infrastructure shift and swell as the priorities of power reveal themselves, conversations

DUE 49

SOCIAL ADAPTABILITY OF SHANGHAIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FLOATING POPULATION

EQUALIZATION OF BASIC PUBLIC SERVICES IN GUMEI COMMUNITY

by Dongyao Li

50 DUE

Floating Population, Social Adaptability, Basic Public Services, Equalization, Guide Manual

Shanghai, as one of the cities in China with the most rapid development, attracts a large number of floating populations entering the city each year from all over the country. At the same time, the floating population, as an important part of urban social capital and human capital, will become a means of social survival which will continue to exist for a long time. In addition, it has made great contributions to promoting urban construction and promoting social development. However, the floating population itself is facing many difficulties, which also brings a series of new development issues and challenges to the city and society. As a result, Shanghai will certainly need to take the floating population into account during the process of urban reform and development, which also makes the floating population closely related to the construction and development of the city as well as the social and economic activities including education, medical security and so on.

However, the floating population cannot enjoy the same citizenship rights as the local residents in the city due to the influence of many factors, such as systemic, cultural, and individual. There exist great isolation and even the tendency of marginalization between the floating population and the urban society no matter in terms of social action or social identity, which thus makes the floating population unable to smoothly adapt to the new urban life. With regard to the social adaptability of floating population, it is often not entirely dependent on the floating population itself. Instead, the conditions provided by the immigrant society in the aspects of ideology, cultural atmosphere, and institutional security determine whether or not the floating population can adapt to “mainstream society” and to what extent. Consequently, it requires that the urban management of

the floating population should be upgraded from the level of “management” to the level of “service”, to assist the floating population in adapting to their new work and life as soon as possible after entering the area.

When it comes to the process of social adaptation of the floating population, it is not a simple process of labor migration, but a process of urban adaptation of the group at the political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological levels. After the review of relevant research on the social adaptability of immigrants at home and abroad, as well as using questionnaire survey and interview methods to analyze the current situation of floating population’s integration into the city and the factors that affect its social adaptation, studies have found that the inequality in basic public service is considered the main obstacle to achieving smooth integration into the urban society. In addition, the floating population does not have access to basic public services such as employment, housing, education, and social security that are considered fair to urban residents in terms of opportunities, processes, and outcomes, which has caused the separation between the floating population and the urban residents. Thus, it has made the floating population lack a sense of identity and belonging within the urban society, which is not conducive to the transfer of the labor force and the urbanization of the city.

organizations. This manual describes in detail the personal experiences of a floating population living in the Gumei Community and introduces the effective countermeasures for avoidance through the combination of the daily life of the floating population in the area as well as the various practical problems and puzzles they often face in their work. Finally, it hopes that the manual can put forward some countermeasures and suggestions to relevant government departments from the perspective of changing governance concepts, reforming and perfecting relevant systems, increasing financial input, innovating the mode of supply of public services, and so on to promote a more comprehensive realization of the social adaptation of the floating population.

As for this project, it takes Gumei Community in Shanghai as the research object and develops an easy-to-understand life guide manual specifically for the floating population in the community from the perspective of equalization of basic public services and the use of field interviews, online question-and-answer collection, and advice from professionals in local

DUE 51

DEVELOPMENT OR DISPARITY? THE CASE OF TRANSFORMING LAHORE, PAKISTAN TOWARDS A DELIBERATIVE URBAN IMAGINARY

by Khadija Munir

52 DUE

Deliberative Urban Imaginary, Socio-Spatial Realities, Infrastructure Development Disparity, Reveal, Engage and Co-Create, Urban Transformation Atlas

The regional focus of this research is the country of Pakistan and the agencies which claim to develop its economy through various programs and initiatives.

The attempts at urban renewal, infrastructure development projects and the absence of a coherent urban policy have transformed Lahore into a fragmented city with a contested future. The spatial and temporal dynamics of infrastructure development have instigated continued disparity, displacement, and inequality that is highly distanced from the socio-spatial realities of the citizens. Generally, in Pakistan, the process of urban planning and decision making about communities lacks citizen participation, which is why most of the government development plans are detached from the ground realities. Often, the feasibility studies are conducted superficially and decisions are taken from an administrative perspective rather than from the lived experience of the community members.

Despite constitutional provisions, the system of local governance has not been able to inspire widespread motivation for citizens to raise concerns on unified platforms.

A socio-spatial analysis of the complex interactions between infrastructure networks and urban spaces theorize a better understanding of how and why such mega infrastructure projects fail to deliver.

Using secondary source scholarly works to reflect upon the relationship between colonialism, critical geographies, the imposition of modernity, splintering urbanisms and infrastructure as a “fix” yielded a better understanding of how Infrastructure is used as a way to regulate and fine-tune the flow of people, to get rid of unwanted inhabitants, attract desirable inhabitants, and even tolerate semi-desirable people.

Employing situation, governance, and urban policy analysis, the research uncovers

the actors and patterns responsible for the development projects that yield disparity, inequality and displacement.

In response, the design proposal is based on the notion that people as infrastructure is a highly adaptive, resilient, flexible, collaborative, and innovative form of organization within urban contexts where infrastructure has never been centrally planned or equally distributed. Phase I encompassed in this thesis focuses on revealing, connecting and engaging the existing actors, events and organizations mobilized in Lahore. It uncovers and brings to light all of the past, existing and future development projects in Lahore for the citizens through an additive, interactive and participatory online platform which will serve as a source of collective knowledge and a data repository for the city and will allow the people to interact with and contribute to it. It will aim to fill the gap that civil society and non-profit organizations face. The platform will serve as a collective, continuously updated platform that maps citizen’s reporting of incidents and complaints and collects data available about current or upcoming development projects. This co-creation of knowledge can form the basis of any convenings or town halls and can guide the citizens while mobilizing for their right to the city. It seeks to empower and instigate grassroots mobilization, increase transparency to the infrastructure development projects, and make all of the data available to the public, equipping them with information that they can use to fight for their right to the city.

to the city-making process and make visible the legal pathways they can adopt in case of injustice and displacement due to gentrification and ‘Heritigification.’

Phase III establishes the discourse on urban practice, taking the form of a public urban resource center. Using grants and funding from sources which allows for the values to remain independent and uninfluenced so it can present a non-tarnished version of the citizen’s perspective. It will aim to collect, distribute and co-produce collective knowledge and discourse through participatory mapping, workshops and community meetings.

In the overarching narrative of the design proposal, this project intends to fight the imposed urban imaginary birthed by the foreign and national agents and seeks to replace it with a deliberate one, initiated at the community level.

Phase II and III go beyond the scope of this thesis. Building on the rights and responsibilities information collected on the web platform, it will become a resource mobilization manual which will inform the local citizens of their rights to contribute

DUE 53

FEMINIST URBANISM

by Gabriela Lรณpez Dena

54 DUE

Feminist City, Urban Magazine, Public Programs, Wikipedia, Anti-capitalist Practices,

Neoliberal urbanization produces cities that are increasingly polarized and unequal, in which displacement and lack of opportunities are daily struggles for most urban dwellers. This ever-expanding model promotes the privatization of space and other resources in order to maximize profits for a wealthy minority. In this context, facts like women owning less than 20% of the world´s land despite producing 80% of global food, or women earning 77 cents for every dollar men make although carrying out the equivalent to $10 trillion in unpaid reproductive work annually, are only symptomatic of a global capitalist system that depends on oppression and exploitation. It is perhaps in cities where this patriarchal economic model and its relations are better spatialized.

By conducting interviews, visiting archives, and hosting public events, I found that Material feminists, Marxist feminists, Anarcha feminists, and other radical women have been seeking to create an alternative to relations of domination. They have worked towards the redistribution of resources, the valorization of invisible work, and the development of equitable spaces. Some of the constant threads in their practices seem to be cooperation and collective action. Nevertheless, in the last decades, we have seen an attempt to institutionalize the feminist movement in order to neutralize its subversive potential.

We have also seen an effort to redefine its program to make it compatible with the neoliberal agenda, which has tried to delegitimize all forms of feminism that do not benefit international capital (Federici, 2018).

It does not come as a surprise then, that some of the main narratives currently working at the intersection of “urban planning” and “feminism” revolve mostly around two points. On the one hand, there

is a continuous call for the inclusion of women in positions of power and leadership—be it in design firms, architecture offices, or government divisions. And on the other, we see a demand for better urban infrastructure, such as lit streets, bike lanes, and breastfeeding rooms. The first position ignores that having women in power makes no difference if such authority is used to perpetuate patriarchal institutions that systematically produce and reproduce inequality. The latter viewpoint is mostly concerned with the shape of the city and the amenities it offers, therefore placing the focus on the way the feminist city looks, rather than on the processes through which it is created.

rethink and reshape the ways in which we construct urban space, our relationships with it, and with each other. Each issue explores a topic—Spatial Politics, Production of Space, Domesticity, Society and Class Structure, Economy and Labor, and BodyCity—that serves as a lens to conceptualize the feminist city. The third phase of the project is an exhibition opening in March 2020 at the Aronson Galleries in New York City and it will serve to launch the first issue of the magazine.

Early in my research, I realized the term “feminist urbanism” was virtually nowhere to be found. It was hard to believe that it had not been defined in the English language. Consequently, my thesis has been the exploration of this concept through three different vessels: two public programs, a magazine, and an exhibition. The public programs were the initial phase of the project and took place in New York in 2018. The first one, Feminist Urbanism Edit-a-thon, was conceived as a workshop in partnership with Interference Archive. Its goal was to create a collective definition of feminist urbanism using the archive´s material and to make a Wikipedia entry with this concept. The following public program, Feminist Manifestos, was a collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. It was shaped as a day-long event in which a diverse group of women had read and performed historical and contemporary feminist manifestos at their work locations within the university.

The second part of my thesis project is a magazine titled Feminist Urbanism. It is a six-issue publication that acts as an international platform to integrate feminist socio-spatial and artistic practices that

DUE 55

THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

A MEDIUM FOR SELF-HELP PRACTICES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN BALTIMORE

by Grace Paik

56 DUE

Self-help Practices, Small Group Social Movements, Graphic Novel, Illustration, Visual Ethnography

Baltimore is a city surrounded by notoriety for its stories of poverty and other entangled conditions such as crime, drugs, unemployment, and health inequities. Since 2015, Baltimore has been under further scrutiny for the death of Freddie Gray, a young Black man from West Baltimore, who died while under police custody, and for the events in the city that followed in reaction to his death. However, these narratives are predominantly about the pain and humiliation of Baltimore’s Black community, often retold in the context of a white world, through representations in media and popular culture. There is less visibility of the Black community’s efforts to help themselves and their efforts to defend and redeem a city that is their home.

Institutions and white philanthropy have had a long history of creating solutions for Baltimore’s housing, crime, drug, and food crises, which arose due to the city’s patterns of urbanization. None of these so-called solutions have materialized, but Baltimore’s base communities have recognized and addressed the concerns of their community with self-prescribed, self-help practices.

Baltimore is a microcosm of American urbanism. It is a city of American capitalism, symbolic in how its urbanization spread due to its geological location and natural resources, its growth by industrialization, decline by deindustrialization, and then subsequently its consumption by neoliberalism. It is a city of prominent institutions, such as schools, prisons, newspapers, hospitals, industries, and religious organizations. Also, it is a city of the Black community, established by former slaves then plagued by many forms of institutional racism, like segregation, redlining, and mass incarceration.

There are several theoretical frameworks that further inform the research context.

The first, Social Reproduction Theory,

which discusses all the necessary labor to recreate society from one generation to the next, explains how institutions are also sites of social reproduction, and therefore reproduce oppressive structures. The second, Refusal Framework, which recognizes the academic-industrial complex’s desire to collect narratives of pain from its subjects and positions refusals as a methodology to decolonize social science research, sets intentional limits to knowledge that is analyzed or quantified. Citizen’s assemblies or small groups as social movements are frameworks that explain how base communities are effective social movements because of their non-hierarchical, regenerative structure.

The methodologies implemented include unstructured and semi-structured interviews with Baltimoreans unaffiliated with any Baltimore institution or philanthropy and illustrations of the interview content.

In the research development and analysis phase, Baltimore is further defined as a city of self-help movements. Upon review of the interviews, there are five types of self-help practices: mosques, churches, close-knit Black neighborhoods, small Black-owned businesses, and urban food access. Because of the written and visual imagery gathered in the methods, the design proposal consists of completing one chapter of a graphic novel about selfhelp practices, and a poster series based on images in this chapter. The graphic novel and posters contain hand-drawn, hand-colored illustrations and hand-written narratives with blank pages for participants to create their own images and texts about self-help practices.

of the graphic novel will continue to be developed until completion. The graphic novel and posters will be distributed at churches, mosques, and small businesses in Baltimore.

The methodologies for making this graphic novel will be workshopped together with organizational partnerships that were formed during the design process.

Though it was not demonstrated within the scope of this thesis, making graphic novels can be a collective process and replicable methodology by self-help groups.

Self-initiated illustrations can serve as a format to discuss self-help practices, and graphic novels can be a medium for communities to share practices that have made them resilient while actively critiquing urbanism.

The proposal also describes a desire to transfer the knowledge gained from this thesis to small groups who practice self-help in Baltimore. Upon completion of this thesis, the remaining chapters

DUE 57

BEYOND POLDEREN

EXPOSING THE VOIDS OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN THE NETHERLANDS

by Claudia Rot

58 DUE

Linguistic Void, Environmental Justice, Re-learning, Sustainability, Crowdsource Mapping

Environmental injustice manifests itself when marginalized communities carry the burden of the externalities of environmental problems and climate change. Industrialized countries have the means and the economic carrying capacity to be at the forefront of a systematic change that is necessary to ensure a stable and just living environment for current and future generations.

One of these industrialized countries is the Netherlands. This country of 17 million people is situated on the delta of multiple major European rivers, with approximately 25% of its land lying below sea level. The country has always been under threat by water from multiple directions, which has resulted in a multi-century legacy of water management and infrastructure knowledge. This legacy continues to be one of the most highly appreciated and profitable sea level rise adaptation techniques in the world.

Today, in addition to the risks of climate change and environmental problems, Dutch society faces the political and economic challenge of having to implement policies to abide by the Paris Agreement which the country signed and ratified in December of 2015. Therefore, the Netherlands is at an important crossroads on which it has to decide how to give shape to these policies. The notion of sustainability in the Netherlands is limited to finding technocratic solutions, ignoring the intersectionality of environmental problems, and the societal aspect of sustainability.

This is reflected in the Dutch language, where there exists a linguistic void of environmental justice.

By exploring the historical, societal, and spatial contexts of this void of environmental justice in the Netherlands, I make a case for the need of a Dutch environ-

mental justice language and framework.

These explorations are centered around a paradox in which on one side there exists the international reputation of the Netherlands as an environmentally friendly country, while on the other the country continues to perpetuate fossil fuel capitalism.

In this thesis, I use a variety of theoretical underpinnings to unpack the origins of this paradox. First, I explore the notions of power that are embedded in language by using linguistic relativism and critical discourse analysis. Second, I use the concepts of depoliticization of environmentalism, ecological modernization, and Max Weberâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s critique of the Protestant ethic to expand upon the Dutch notion of sustainability. Third, I use sacrifice zones to frame the history of land reclamation and imperialism in the Netherlands and to put it into the perspective of the contemporary practice of sea level rise adaptation and flood prevention on a global scale. Finally, I critique the Dutch decision-making structure of the poldermodel to expose the fragmentation of existing social and environmental organizations in the Netherlands.

lands by promoting the collection and uploading of data and information to the platform.

This intervention contributes to a broader vision of a re-politicized sustainability practice in the Netherlands that includes recognition of environmental privilege and ensures an equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of sustainability challenges. Each of these approaches emphasizes the inclusion and lifting of the voices of people experiencing environmental justice by recognizing them as the experts on their situation.

The main approach to re-learning is centered around an environmental justice mapping platform that takes a participatory approach and uses crowd-sourced data to show the dichotomies between environmentally privileged and burdened communities. Additionally, the platform will function as a resource hub for the alliance, where people who experience environmental injustice and community organizers who could support them can connect with each other. With the platformâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s launch in the second half of 2019, the alliance can attract more members whilst starting to raise awareness about environmental justice in the Nether-

DUE 59

REIMAGINING THE BIGZ FOR BELGRADEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S URBAN ECONOMIES

A BUSINESS PLAN FOR A CREATIVE HUB

by Rosella Soravia

60 DUE

Underground Creative Sector, Bigz Voices, Abandoned Factory Building, Creative Hub, Belgrade

The Bigz is an abandoned factory building that is occupied as an informal creative hub by artists of Belgrade, Serbia. The president of Serbia is pushing for the building’s development as it should mark Belgrade’s recovery out of its paralysis of historical, economic, and political shock in keeping up with the fast pace of the world’s economy. The initiative for the building’s development is creating fear amongst the creative community who has been illegally inhabiting it for the past two decades. This community is what made the Bigz premises the admirable creative hub it represents today by embodying the artists’ values through music studios, artworks, and graffiti painted walls. This thesis poses that the exceptional spirit of the Bigz will only be kept alive if this community is incorporated into the new Bigz development, during and after the reconstruction process, in order to create visibility for the creative bodies.

To comprehend the complex situation the building finds itself in, the paper starts off with a detailed explanation of the economic situation of Serbia and moves into its political implications. The political stands of current president Aleksander Vucic are considered problematic, as it is said that he is in control of the country’s main media outlets, that he practically faces no political opposition, and is mainly pushing for capital accumulation.

In addition, the essay lays out the different cultural and creative sector industries which are based in Belgrade but have been pushed underground by the economy and are occurring very far from state institution and project financing. With a more precise description of the conspicuous institutions, I demonstrate the immense creative drive that continues to persist in Belgrade, as it is still occupied by musicians, artists, music studios, theater

clubs, and other creative admirations.

These two sectors make up the baseline of the community driving the creative economy of Belgrade. Connecting these two identities is necessary for the Bigz development to thrive at its fullest potential.

A physical space in the new development should be established to support collaboration and create an ever-growing network for the creative community of Serbia. Establishing strong ties between the various gifted parties, to understand the importance of one another and one day benefit from each other, is critical.

The Bigz should evolve into the creative hub of everyday urban life, forming the missing link for the positive development of Belgrade as a relevant agent in cultural, political, and economic spheres. This needs to happen within the context of the larger political pressures and give a voice to the unheard and suppressed artistic voices of Serbia.

Moreover, an extensive explanation of the proposed business model follows. It justifies the intention of founding a subsidiary company that will be in charge of managing the “creative hub” space inside the Bigz, setting out the company’s end ambition to become a B-corporation. This will put a label on the success of the hub by measuring the company’s social and environmental performance.

The essay continues with the core of my project—a recommended business model for a space dedicated to the creative community inside the “new” Bigz as an element of economic opportunity in Serbia. The business model proposes that the lower levels of the BIgz building should be dedicated to existing and new artists in Belgrade while stimulating new collaboration and connections among artists. Through this, the hub aims to create an economically sustainable center for like-minded artists. Proceeding to the bigger picture, I am proposing that this space is collaboratively run by a diverse board of artists with revenue from the real estate company, allowing the cultural center to be economically sustainable and to reveal the innovation of its city.

DUE 61

ENJEUX 2024

(RE)FRAMING THE STAKES OF THE 2024 PARIS OLYMPICS

by Manon Vergerio

62 DUE

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Olympics, Rent Gap, Dispossession, Documentary Film, Popular Education

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A longstanding material and symbolic rupture divides Paris from its surrounding banlieues (suburbs) along class and racial lines. After decades of disinvestment and stigmatization, the banlieues are becoming a new frontier of real estate speculation and gentrification as Paris becomes increasingly unaffordable. With mega-urban development projects such as the Grand Paris Express and the 2024 Olympics on the horizon, deindustrialized suburban land is strategically revalued through top-down State mechanisms in partnership with private actors. In the words of geographer Neil Smith (1979), a profitable “rent gap” is being created, carving out new terrain for capital investment. Eighty percent of Olympic sites will be located in Seine-Saint-Denis, a working-class suburb to the northeast of Paris home to many immigrant communities.

While disguised in rhetoric of sustainability and equity, the 2024 Olympics provide a highly-mediatized opportunity to rebrand Paris and its long-estranged suburbs as a global audience sets its eyes on the territory of Seine-Saint-Denis.

Further, the exceptional legal framework of the Olympics grants the State vast power to fast track unpopular development projects. If any lessons can be learned from previous Olympic iterations such as the 2012 London Games, it is that the Olympics tend to accelerate the dispossession of the poor and solidify the neoliberal mode of spatial production (Kumar, 2012; Boykoff, 2014). In response to these threats, some residents in Seine-SaintDenis have started mobilizing to claim their right to the city. However, current activist efforts around the Grand Paris and the 2024 Olympics tend to be siloed, and there is generally a lack of consciousness amongst the majority of residents of the stakes at play. To many, the 2024 Olympics seem like a distant event, which allows

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the State to quietly make major decisions with minimal resident involvement. How, then, can these future threats be made tangible?

Enjeux 2024 is a documentary film series that highlights the socio-spatial stakes of the 2024 Olympics through the eyes of residents and activists in Seine-Saint-Denis. Rooted in popular education, community organizing, and feminist research methodologies, I developed this project through an iterative fieldwork-driven process in conversation with residents and civic groups. Co-created in collaboration with a documentary filmmaker, Enjeux 2024 will be composed of six episodes released annually in the lead up to the Olympics. The docu-series will be distributed online and through local film screenings in Seine-Saint-Denis to maximize accessibility and create collective spaces for conversation and movement-building.

awareness around how the Olympics have become a tool to retrofit cities through top-down plans. By portraying socio-spatial dynamics from gentrification to the militarization of public space through the contested material terrain of the Olympics, my aspirations are that Enjeux 2024 will generate broader conversations on space, race, the State, citizen power, and the right to the city.

Throughout the Design & Urban Ecologies Masters Thesis, I produced Episode 1 of the series and developed the necessary research and relationships to lay the groundwork for a long-term documentary project. Weaving together stories from residents, architectural shots of the banlieue, footage filmed at public meetings about Olympic sites, archival footage and newspaper clippings about past Olympic events, and an animated map that situates the viewer in space throughout the film, Episode 1 provides key historical, spatial, and political context on the Olympics while centering the voices of three residents in Seine-Saint-Denis.

Ultimately, my purpose is to use film as an infrastructure to circulate resident wisdom, share research insights, and archive the Olympic development process over the next few years. In the immediate term, I hope Enjeux 2024 will increase

DUE 63

CLIMATE OF CHANGE

ENVISIONING CLIMATE JUSTICE FROM D.C.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FRONT LINES

by Abby Zan

64 DUE

Critical Resilience, Climate Justice, Geographies of Care, Visioning, Facilitation

Recent efforts to prepare Washington, D.C. for climate change have not meaningfully engaged residents, nor do they address displacement and other ongoing threats to community survival. The District sits at a crossroads between climate erasure and climate justice--and historically marginalized residents are on the front lines.

velopment in D.C., which cast the neighborhood of Anacostia as both vulnerable and valuable. I examine the undercurrents of fear and care that have shaped Anacostia, with particular attention to urban renewal, environmental racism, and militarization. Ultimately, I situate Anacostia as a frontline of care at the epicenter of D.C.’s climate crossroads.

Two sets of forces are converging in Southeast Washington, D.C. One, a wave of speculation and development, steered by private developers, with substantial aid from the municipal government. The other, an acceleration of attention and resources under the auspices of resilience planning, invigorated by Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities program. Central in these trajectories is the neighborhood of Anacostia: a hub of Black culture and resistance, long resilient in the face of intersecting injustices.

This thesis critiques and situates the existing resilience paradigm in Washington, D.C., theorizes new frameworks for and beyond urban resilience, and places these lines of inquiry into direct conversation with residents in Anacostia. This research led to Climate of Change: a design intervention to counter the current resilience planning process by integrating climate justice into the ongoing work of D.C.’s grassroots change-makers, and planting the seeds of a ground-up visioning process where front line communities assert their demands and set the people’s agenda for resilience in D.C.

D.C.’s resilience planning process is estranged from residents’ complex experiences and path-dependent with harmful histories, including urban renewal and militarization. Predicated on Smart Cityera big data and metrological notions of citizenship, resilience planning erases the heterogeneous experiences, knowledge, and desires of residents living on the front lines. It is also structurally interlinked with profit- and fear-driven disruptions that threaten to tear at Anacostia’s social fabric.

In D.C. and within the growing field of global and urban resilience, what and who defines the boundaries of resilience? Who has the right to be resilient, and to what?

Through secondary source analysis, interviews, and critical mapping while adopting lenses of critical resilience, feminist urbanism, and environmental and climate justice, this research focuses on the collision of resilience planning and de-

ience Story of D.C. should ​be written by its frontline residents. This “story” should originate with the voices of those who have nurtured the social and ecological fabric of the District. In the web of an extractive world economy, in the shadow of a locally-entrenched federal government, these residents have stewarded their communities and should have a say in what makes them resilient (already), what threatens this resilience, and what is needed to increase their capacities to survive and thrive.

Climate of Change consists of a facilitation guide and an online hub for grassroots organizers and educators in Anacostia and other D.C. front line communities.

The facilitation guide includes a printed map-like guide for workshop settings, a set of cards for playful and strategic climate justice visioning, and an accompanying facilitator’s field guide. This design is developed and implemented in close collaboration with ONEDC, the Black Workers Center, and the D.C. Climate Justice Coalition, and will culminate in a public Climate of Change summit in Spring 2020.

In 2016, The 100 Resilient Cities website posted D.C.’s “Resilience Story,” a narrative that set the agenda and priorities for resilience planning in D.C. Through this project, I argue that--and propose a mechanism through which--the Resil-

DUE 65

BIOS

Maha Khalid Al-Khater

Daniel Bieckmann

Coming from a desert country, possibly soon to be an island, I am situating my knowledge within this transitioning state and the different dynamics at play.

Through design(ed) creativity, I use this process to guide my way in life and work.

With a desire for teaching, my work has brought me to focus on education and its impact on knowledge production and society.

is an urban planner with a background in environmental sciences. Throughout his education, he attended universities in various countries, which increased his interest in cities as both a local manifestation of global challenges and developments, as well as possible instruments for cooperative, (inter)national change. His specific interests lie in working towards systemic change for more sustainable, equal and just societies, that are distributive by design through concepts of community wealth building, grassroots agency, and complex system design. His work includes ecological, political and economic interventions, ranging from neighborhood level sustainability plans to inter-urban collaboration projects.

Julianna Galvao

Isaac Green Diebboll

holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urban Design and she considers herself passionate about public spaces, citizens, and social transformations.

Extremely curious about how urban spaces shape citizens’ lives, she chose a course and a city to bring new perspectives and experiences to enhance her skills in the urban field. In this way, during her Masters in Design and Urban Ecologies in Parsons, New York, Julianna intends to deepen her knowledge of socio-spatial relations produced within the city, learning and understanding more about social connections, articulation and collaboration among civil actors, and the urban scene.

Born in New York City, Isaac is a documentary filmmaker and co-founder of educational non-profit ENGN (“engine”) Civic Creative Center. His work focuses on human connection and non-violent communication to support relationships between local and global neighbors through film projects, community organizing and intergenerational curriculum development between schools and local government. Isaac has a BFA in Interdisciplinary sculpture from MICA in Baltimore, Maryland, and serves as part-time faculty at Parsons, The New School. He has also served on various governmental, planning, non-profit, and community boards as well as a volunteer fireman.

DUE

66 DUE

Kevin Michael Capuno

Gillian Chisholm

Gemma Duffee

is a graduate of the University of Calgary, where he received his and BA (Honours) in International Development and BA in Urban Studies. He is foremost a designerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;acknowledging designâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prescriptive role in alleviating pressing social issues. He is curious about the intersection of urban issues and international development.

Kevin aspires to strike a balance between his passion of design methodologies and community engagement, being heavily involved in the realms of GIS/mapping, student advocacy, civic engagement, campus mental health, and youth volunteerism.

enjoys urban policy and research and has appreciated working and studying within that space in both New York and her hometown of Toronto. She has a B.A. in Urban Development and has learned a great deal from her professors and cohort during her time in the M.S. Design and Urban Ecologies program at Parsons. She has become incredibly inspired by tactical, collaborative, and advocacy-centered urbanism and plans to continue to draw on these forms of urban practice as she pursues her career after school.

is a social researcher and urban design strategist mixing qualitative and quantitative research methods through direct community collaboration and design. She is grateful to have received a Masters of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons, but recognizes that people without Masters degrees also know a lot, and should be regarded as such when it comes to making urban design, planning, and policy decisions. She plans to continue to draw upon her education to pursue critical urban practices, and empower herself and others to actively envision and work towards more equitable and spatially just cities.

Alie Kilts

Sarah Kontos

Dongyao Li

was born and raised in Portland, OR. She attended The University of Montana in Missoula where she studied radio/television journalism. After graduating, she moved to Austin, TX where she became an avid cyclist. She started working in transportation advocacy, generating cyclist awareness and combating drinking and driving. After seeing a pattern in her life of advocacy and the pursuit of just cities, she moved to NYC to join DUE. Alie currently works for DOT and the Healthy Materials Lab. Her thesis project, Spaces of, uses feminist mapping techniques and podcasting as a space to visualize the invisible routes of the mind and the physical embodiment of agency.

is a map-maker and designer. Her research focuses on the intersections between physical and social infrastructures in cities, and the ways that historical trends influence how future urban development is conceived of and implemented.

She holds a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh with a double major in Urban Studies and History and is a Class of 2019 graduate of the Parsons M.S. Design and Urban Ecologies program.

is a landscape designer and urbanist from Shanghai, China. For her undergraduate thesis, she focused on the ecological restoration of wasteland. Through this work, she realized the significance of the urban within the field of urban landscape design.

With that in mind, she came to New York City to study Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons. Being located in New York City has been a good opportunity to gain specialized knowledge of urban issues and to learn how to cope with emerging problems during the development of the city.

DUE 67

BIOS DUE

68 DUE

Khadija Munir

Gabriela López Dena

is an architect, urbanist and researcher from Pakistan. As a Fulbright Scholar, her research includes exploring infrastructure as a skeleton of the cities today through the lens of issues such as inequality, displacement, sustainability, and resiliency.

Coming from a country where development is used as an impetus for growth, she has gained skills that assert sensitivity towards infrastructure design, community engagement and advocates the repercussions of unplanned mega projects on the city’s spatial and non-spatial structure.

Moving forward, she will continue her work on the inter-dependencies of development, communities, inequality, political landscapes, and the socio-economic phenomenon that shape them.

is an architect and artist from Mexico City. After receiving her degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana, she founded DENA—a transdisciplinary studio in which she designs and constructs spaces, develops short and feature-length films about the built environment, and collaborates with other artists mostly on large-scale art installations. Gabriela is the 2017-2019 Arts and Social Justice Graduate Student Fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics—a researched-based public forum for art, culture, and politics.

Manon Vergerio

Abby Zan

is an urbanist-turned-activist by way of living in cities experiencing severe housing crises. Prior to joining Parsons, she worked as a tenant organizer and helped develop a childcare worker cooperative in Brooklyn. She firmly believes that directly impacted communities are expert problem-solvers and that her work should follow their lead. Throughout the M.S. in Design & Urban Ecologies program, she deepened her understanding of how global and historical forces shaped everyday urban life and gained new skills in multimedia documentation, from interactive mapping to oral history. Moving forward, she hopes to continue working at the intersection of research, activism, and creative media.

is an urbanist, designer, and facilitator based in Brooklyn, NY pursuing an M.S. in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons.

Previously, Abby worked as the Connectivity Associate at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and as a Project Manager with Sheldon Scott Studios (Washington, DC). She is a co-founder of FYI: For Youth Inquiry, which designs participatory theater experiences to activate the creative potential of school, family, and healthcare systems (Chicago, IL), and has worked extensively as a teaching artist, theatre director, and cultural organizer. Abby received her B.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and is a certified yoga instructor.

Grace Paik

Claudia Rot

Rosella Soravia

is a social scientist, born and raised in the DMV, with a double B.S. in Neurobiology/ Physiology and Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She worked in public health research, where she managed pediatric nutrition and policy studies, and managed an interdisciplinary feeding clinic. She left her pursuit of medical school to attend the DUE program because she believed health inequities could not be addressed with healthcare alone. She was also troubled by the voice and representation in research.

In her design practice, Grace plans to elevate practices for researchers that set intentional limits to scientific inquiry.

is a designer and urban ecology enthusiast from Jisp, the Netherlands. Because of her interdisciplinary education in climate and environmental sciences and urban studies, she values the use of intersectional systems approaches to tackle complex problems. She uses cartography, graphic design, linguistics, and community science as learning tools for environmental justice advocacy.

is an urban planning enthusiast from Vienna, Austria. After her undergraduate studies at the Bartlett in Urban Planning, Design and Management she was certain to continue to pursue a career in this field.

Through various internships over the past years, she has settled on dedicating her values towards the neglected creative communities and uses her design tools to add visibility to her research.

DUE 69

THESIS WORKS 2019

MA Theories of Urban Practice & MS Design and Urban Ecologies Design Jacqueline CastaĂąeda Cover and illustrations Isaac Green Diebboll Edition Callan Hajosy Parsons The New School for 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 Pratice http://sds.parsons.edu/urban/tup/ MS Design and Urban Ecologies http://sds.parsons.edu/urban/due/

ŠCopyright 2019 by Parsons School for Design

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