TUP and DUE Thesis Works 2018

TUP DUE 2018

MA THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE MS DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES 2018 THESIS WORKS

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

MA

THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE

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 offered

and

projects

throughout

the

university.

Since its inception, this program on

has

urban

focused practices

entangled in and subject of urbanization processes, urban systems and the ecology of cities as well as

in

their

to

social,

relationship spatial

and

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

The Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies program radically reframes the study of and design approaches to cities.

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

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

MS

DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES

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 of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies continue to critically reframe urban questions, contest inequality and uneven development, call for new paradigms through praxis, and collectively commit to instigate urban change.

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

FRAMING BLACKNESS

Observations and a reflexive framework for studying race and urban surveillance through photography

Paul Beasley page 10

THE POWER RESISTANCE NATURE IN JEM COHEN’S FILMS

Observing, documenting, critiquing, as critical urban practices

Yandong Li page 18

TUP

MA

COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACES & THE IMPERMANENCE OF COMMUNITY

Following the development and temporality of sociospatial design in the sharing economy

Maria Chung page 12

CONTAINING A LOGISTICAL PARADISE Uneven infrastructure space in Colon, Panama Guillermo León Gómez page 20

TRACING CRITICAL EMPOWERMENT An exploration of urban protest mechanisms in recent women-lead movements Yana Dimitrova page 14

EMERGENCE OF THE HARLEQUIN A critical approach to the post 9/11 New York City security apparatus Glenn Dungan

EXPORTING ACCOUNTABILITY

BEHIND THE U The Trojan Horse in Manhattan’s Lower East Side Jessica Serrante

Injustice in New York City’s waste flows and the promise of community-led composting

page 16

Tim Nottage page 22

page 24

THE AIRPORT’S ARMS Reading governing strategies on the body Madhuri Shukla

DWELLING BY DESIGN Anchoring the Andrew Freedman Home Burgess Brown & Burak Sancakdar

page 26

page 28

* JOINT THESIS DUE + TUP

STIMULATING THE CITIZEN COMMOTION A meshwork of urban narratives Maha Aslam & Zara Farooq

IMPROVISED PUBLIC // PLANNED SPACE Insurgent practices and possible futures of the modernist city Eduarda Aun

INDUSTRIOUS INTERMEDIARIES

PLUG INTO ALL

Displacement, community wealth building, and industrial rehabilitation in San Antonio, TX

Jason Azar

Collectively navigating the political ecology of water use, access and infrastructural management along the red line

Angelica Jackson

page 34

page 36

page 38

page 40

FINDING A COMMON LANGUAGE IN OUR LOCAL FINANCIAL TOOLS Economic resiliency as housing interventions Lyric Kelkar page 42

COLOR CONNECTS Painting healthy spaces together Caroline Macfarlane

UNDERSTANDING SETTLEMENT TIES - THROUGH THE LENS OF CHENNAI, INDIA

TOWARDS FOOD SOVEREIGNTY Critical agroecology & cooperative farming Emily Sloss

The forces that organize and govern space in a city

Sarath Ramanan page 44

page 46

page 48

IN SIGHT, OUT OF MIND A critical investigation of Golden State imaginaries Andrew Strong

BIGGER THAN JUST MUSIC Hip Hop as an urban lens on post-civil rights politics Selamawit Yemeru

page 50

page 52

DUE

MS

Visualization of thesis themes and keywords of TUP 2018 cohort. Made by Jazon Azar.

8 TUP

INTRODUCTION

by Evren Uzer, PhD

TUP

Assistant Professor of Urban Planning

MA Theories of Urban Practice (TUP) program frames design as a vehicle and a catalyst to formulate new urban practices, public instruments, and planning approaches to address today’s urban challenges. TUP students’ works contribute to our understanding of critical urban practice, and go beyond the disciplinary silos of conventional urbanism and urban planning education, by embracing a transdisciplinary understanding of urban research, and propose alternative interpretations and methodologies.

MA Theories of Urban Practice 2018 students conducted in depth research and reframed emerging and existing urban conditions to critically address the issues of: • Urban practices, infrastructures, and institutions that produce inequality and social, racial, and environmental injustice, and methods to trace these complex ecologies; • Reflexive and transdisciplinary methodologies that expand our understanding of urban systems and situations; • Alternative systems and agents, based on existing institutions, collaborations or emergent partnerships that would serve toward a just urban environment.

In “Behind the U: The Trojan Horse in Manhattan’s Lower East Side”, Jessica Serrante reveals potential consequences of competition-driven large infrastructure projects, and their process with a particular focus on climate resilience and the Big U project in Lower East Side, NYC through the lens of communities that are impacted.

In “Exporting Accountability: Injustice in New York City’s waste flows and the promise of community-led composting”, Timothy Nottage provides a clear presentation of the organic waste stream of NYC, and its highly privatized cost driven structure with the lens of environmental justice. Questioning accountability, while proposing a locally distributed system for a just and clean waste processing based on existing similar efforts in NYC.

In “Collaborative Workspaces and The Impermanence Of Community: Following the development and semporality of sociospatial design in the sharing economy”, Maria Chung unfolds the fastly growing industry of coworking spaces. Through the case study of WeWork, she provides a reading of the impact of these spaces in the urban realm, and permeance of community.

In “Emergence of the Harlequin: A critical approach to the post 9/11 New York City security apparatus”, Glenn Dungan documents how post 9/11 security apparatus has spatially and strategically expanded in NYC, and how some urban imaginaries emerged through tactical domain as counter propositions within art and activism.

In “Framing Blackness: Observations and a reflexive framework for studying race and urban surveillance through photography”, Paul Beasley presents a historical continuity of oppression of black bodies and NYPD’s Omnipresence program in Harlem, NYC. He proposes a reflexive methodological framework that situates itself in the intersection of urban studies, visual studies, and photography.

In “The Power Resistance Nature in Jem Cohen’s Films Observing - Documenting Critiquing as critical urban practices”, Yandong Li, locates his thesis between media studies and urban studies, and proposes observing, documenting, and critiquing as critical urban practices through a reading the work of NY based documentary filmmaker, Jem Cohen.

In “Tracing critical empowerment: An exploration of urban protest mechanisms in recent women-led movements”, Yana Dimitrova explores a timely topic through the protest infrastructure of recent women-led protests in US, where she questions inclusion and exclusion mechanisms in protest.

In “The Airport’s Arms: Reading governing strategies on the body”, Madhuri Shukla provides and in-depth and theoretically nested reading of airports’ governing strategies, and reflects on their links toward the urban realm through a state of exception strategy.

In “Containing a Logistical Paradise: Uneven infrastructure space in Colon, Panama”, Guillermo León Gómez’s research focuses on the extraction, exploitation, and segregation in Colon, Panama through a critical reading that spans from transnational to local infrastructure spaces, and inequality that impacts Colon’s residents.

In Dwelling by Design: Anchoring the Andrew Freedman Home”, Burgess Brown and Burak Sancakdar, through their joint MA TUP and MS DUE thesis, provide both a theoretical understanding of anchoring institutions as potential community spaces that would contribute sowing the seeds for future resistance to displacement and also provide a framework for a practice-led collaboration within Andrew Freedman Home in South Bronx.

The TUP 2018 cohort collaborated and exchanged ideas with their peers, helped develop and enriched each others work, and widely benefited from faculty within The New School. In the Fall semester they worked with Jilly Traganou and Malkit Shoshan, and in Spring 2018, the students narrowed down their research interests into focused inquiries with valuable contributions of secondary advisors and mentors from The New School community. We are indebted to Jilly Traganou, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Benoit Challand, David Brody, Mindy Fullilove, William Morrish, and Joseph Heathcott, for their valuable contributions to these works. Without them, these works wouldn’t be as rich and comprehensive.

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

TUP 9

FRAMING BLACKNESS

OBSERVATIONS AND A REFLEXIVE FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING RACE AND URBAN SURVEILLANCE THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY

by Paul Beasley

10 TUP

Photography Methodology Surveillance Black Urban History Semiotics Urban Imaginaries

In 2014 at the commencement of his mayoralty of the city of New York, Bill de Blasio rolled out a comprehensive plan aimed at ameliorating the “distress concentrated in a few neighborhoods”. While the action plan was aimed at neighborhoods with low graduation, employment, and a prevalence of negative health outcomes, its initiatives were specifically targeted at NYCHA public housing properties and the immediate areas around them, largely black and Latino. One of the major initiatives that came from the Mayor’s Action Plan was the installation of high-intensity floodlights and lighting upgrades on areas around NYCHA properties, such as playgrounds and parking lots in an effort to reduce civilian-officer interactions.

In his press conference announcing the plan, Mayor de Blasio touted that residents would “see more officers out there”, that there would “be more omnipresence”, and as such would “increase the sense of security for our residents.” Since the end of the pilot study, the city has not removed the floodlights from the 15 NYCHA properties.

The use of high-intensity floodlights as a tactic of surveillance and social control has been slowly spreading across the city, despite a growing amount of concern among residents about excessive surveillance. Particularly, due to the long history of urban surveillance of black Americans, and the deleterious health externalities of high-intensity lights, most recently discussed in a guidance adopted by the American Medical Association. The primary claim

of this thesis is that the Omnipresence initiative constitutes the latest in a historical continuity of structural, symbolic, and spatial violence against black bodies and communities. Without a sustained effort to move toward a visual understanding of the city, that acknowledges the intimate relationship of the lives and culture of people of African descent to the making of the city, this violence will continue to disrupt black communities unabated.

The primary point of engagement with the city is through the act of seeing and making meaning through observing. Studying the city on an iconic and semiological level can offer knowledge and bring forth narratives other traditions cannot. This thesis details the creative, theoretical, and pragmatic challenges of producing three photographic visual essays on the Omnipresence program in Harlem. Titled (Il)luminations, (Trans) positions, and (Con)text, they are aimed at both documenting and expressing the ways that surveillance technologies, blackness, and urban space are tied together, and can be critiqued using a visual language. Reflecting on the methodological and theoretical challenges of researching blackness in the city through a photographic technique, this thesis proposes what I call a ‘reflexive framework’. A series of maxims that may assist in approaching a progressive photographic practice that can be used toward revealing the ways that racialized imaginations appear in the visual environment of cities

and their infrastructure. I identify five maxims that outline the benefits and limitations of five disciplinary and methodological perspectives I attempt to fuse in my research: 1) Sociotechnical histories of surveillance technologies “NETWORK”, 2) Historical spatial arrangements and designs for surveillance “FIELD”, 3) The design and ideologies behind urban lighting “OBJECT”, 4) The production of images “MEDIUM), and 5) the field of ‘visual sociology’ or a visual social science “FUNCTION”. These maxims aim to highlight the best of these fields and their limitations, and bring them into a productive, pragmatic dialogue.

New epistemologies and methodologies need to be forged in order for urbanists whose work is primarily the making and analysis of images to engage with blackness, a social construct largely ignored in mainstream discourse on architecture and urbanism. The epistemological, methodological, and disciplinary disjunctures between photography and the making of images, critical urban practice, and social science has not provided a clear, unified path for excavating the ways blackness and urban ecologies co-produce each other and have placed strictures on the livelihoods and agency of black bodies. This thesis is an attempt at outlining the progress needed for a more ‘visual urban practice’ to flourish.

TUP 11

COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACES AND THE IMPERMANENCE OF COMMUNITY FOLLOWING THE DEVELOPMENT AND TEMPORALITY OF SOCIOSPATIAL DESIGN IN THE SHARING ECONOMY

by Maria Chung

12 TUP

Collaborative Workspace WeWork Labor Paradigm Sharing Economy New York City

Source: Mapbox

This thesis shows how the development of collaborative workspaces is changing, creating, and profiting in the shared economy.

This research includes field studies from WeWork, Regus and conversely, hackerspaces for purposes of a comparative analysis of the two alternatives. Currently, the shared economy has been thriving in NYC—a city that prides itself on never sleeping—selling itself through products and services that are readily available around the clock. Thus, New Yorkers have become inundated with advertisements, mobile apps, and social media, which are directed towards a promotion and celebration of constant work.

Collaborative workspaces, such as WeWork, provide a space for these emerging ideas of innovation and entrepreneurialism to exist without conventionality—meaning there is no ‘typical’ workday. This thesis examines the impermanence of community and the temporality of these workspaces in relation to the thinking and designing of social and spatial realms, especially in what we perceive as ‘new’ in the sharing economy. These spaces are masked by new technology, and novel working environments, while labor conditions and affordability remain inequitable and challenging.

Looking at the development and changing neighborhoods in NYC, this thesis illuminates physical, fiscal, and demographic changes of areas like Harlem that have become home to many well-known companies like Google, Uber, and WeWork. Arguably, the sociospatial changes in these areas have led to a ripple effect in the surrounding neighborhoods bringing in a rather homogenous demographic who can afford

to live in these nouveau-riche areas. There are numerous factors to consider here in relation to the physical landscape changes vis-à-vis high rise luxury rental buildings.

Political landscapes are changing as well, though this is not quite as obvious. Among such political changes taking place internally, are re-zoning laws and tax abatement laws benefiting buyers, developers, and sellers who are turning profits while already in privileged positions.

Through site analysis in the field and on the ground of these startups, extensive examination is given to the precariousness of labor conditions that coincide and how it remains both static and simultaneously in constant motion. The objective is to untangle what is overwhelmingly ambiguous and misconceived as ‘shared’ in this economy. The irony that is deep rooted in the sharing economy is precisely this notion of something being divided jointly or allocated, all the while being transactional—a service performed with a cost association.

As the title of this research lends itself, the rise of these collaborative workspaces has led to what I would argue to be an impermanence of community. The ability of these leasing companies to obtain long-term leases and thus, extend its brand both physically and socially has transformed the antiquated notion of a drab workspace.

No longer are the days of corporate or ‘business-casual’ attire, unpalatable coffee, or isolation in front of a computer in a cubicle. Much of these changes are in part the vision of the $20 billion dollar company seen sprouting up throughout the city both

locally and globally known as WeWork.

Founded by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey in 2008—the former was raised in an Israeli kibbutz while the latter was raised in a women-led commune in Oregon. WeWork has become one of the most influential office leasing companies worldwide, which has expanded their branding and membership to encompass what is now WeLive—a co-living/co-working apartment residence — WeGrow—a school program for early childhood entrepreneurs — and Rise by We — a gym and fitness membership. Currently, in New York City alone, WeWork has a physical footprint of approximately 3.2M square feet. Oddly and perhaps, not so coincidentally, the only location above 59th Street is on West 126th Street , which is mere blocks from the heart of Harlem’s commercial district.

At present, cities like New York City are the drivers of “creative” work. WeWork is perhaps, the carrier providing a foundation or a space to manifest these “creatives” to do what they do best: create. In addition to the aesthetics and materiality of development and workspaces, work standards and practices need to be sustainable as well.

As such, the research presented challenges complacency with the way things are to provoke conceptual shifts, promote ‘Kaizen’ or best practices by opening up the discussion to those who are not employed by or leasing from WeWork. This begins with participatory involvement from people who live in the neighborhoods, who hold intrinsic value and contribute to the vitality of the local neighborhood and its culture. This ends impermanence of community.

TUP 13

TRACING CRITICAL EMPOWERMENT

AN EXPLORATION OF URBAN PROTEST MECHANISMS IN RECENT WOMEN-LEAD MOVEMENTS

by Yana Dimitrova

Source: NY Times

14 TUP

Protest Empowerment Women’s March Women’s Strike Marxist Feminism Protest Design Migrant Women Workers

Source: NY Times

Since the US presidential election of 2016, numerous protests, in various scales, have organized across national and international urban centers. Some have shaped in a spontaneous manner (as daily rallies in front of the Trump Towers in New York City), while others have remained meticulously and institutionally organized. All across the spectrum, there is an increase of political activism among formerly not politically involved individuals. The day after the presidential inauguration—January 21st, 2017—the Women’s March formed as the largest organized protest movement in U.S. history. Following its powerful momentum, organized forms of protests occupying the urban realm have significantly escalated.

Among these demonstrations, the formation of women-led coalitions are exponentially prevalent. All of the numerous protests of the past year have different platforms, structural scaffolds, financial support, political agendas, and organizing methodologies. I’ve examined three intersecting protest structures of women-led movements within the 2017-2018 period: the Women’s March, the Women’s Strike, and the Anarcha-Feminist group.

Through the analysis of their political agendas, institutionalization (or lack there of), and spatial modalities, I have compiled a sample pedagogical model for future urban collective action, placing the migrant woman worker at the center.

While experiencing the plentitude of critical voices in their varied forms, I question what makes an effective form of nonviolent resistance addressing the women’s question, particularly for the communities often considered politically voiceless. In this quest, I deliberately focus on the Women’s March as an all-encompassing infrastructure, and a model utilizing strategies of inclusion and exclusion, comprised of multiple coalitions

Source: See Red Women’s Workshop

and contradictions—both structurally and spatially. Although the leadership of the march has made efforts to build an intersectional protest platform, there is still a lot to hope to move in the direction of inclusionary protest domain. How does a migrant woman worker feel compelled to speak up?

How can she feel safe and empowered to express her agency, and defend her political place in a protest movement?

The core investigation of the thesis is conducted through several key theoretical domains: spatial frameworks of protest, structural scaffolding of organized action, and emotional capacities of social movements. I am deliberately using the terms “social reproduction” as employed by Silvia Federici, and “Feminism for the 99%” coined by Cinzia Arruzza and Nancy Frazer.

Through their scholarly work, attention is brought to radical Marxist feminist theory, highlighting migrant working class women and their particular position within the field of feminist studies—all central to the investigation of this topic. Chiara Bottici’s articulation of the necessary Anarcha-Feminist manifesto is key for the Anarcha-Feminist group, linking the relationship of “plurality” to a political system of domination and oppression. Stellan Vinthagen’s work focused on civic resistance and nonviolent action is considered throughout the text, and particularly useful in the final chapters.

Similarly, the work of Randal Collins and James Jasper describing the importance of emotions within protest movements, are intertwined across the paper in the search of what makes for a feeling of empowerment.

The research methodology is built on frames of dualities: inclusion vs. exclusion, empowerment vs. alienation, campaigns

vs. anti campaigns, interior vs. exterior.

Conducting observation, participant, and stakeholder interviews, while direct involvement in various activist and protest formations during the period of one year have been key methods for this research. These groups include Women’s Strike International NYC working groups, Anarcha-Feminist and Metropolitan Anarchist Coalitions, Women’s Liberation Movement working groups among others. Some of the stakeholders interviewed include graphic designers for the Women’s Liberation Movement, co-organizers of the International Women’s Strike U.S. among anonymous union leaders and migrant workers living in New York.

Through the development of network maps of the selected case studies, I have articulated the funding, support coalitions, sister marches, and additional included and excluded initiatives. Another important methodology for this research is based on structured dialogues and active engagement through critical pedagogy, and collective participatory activities with my students.

The rapid growth of these movements presents the need and hope for collective empowerment, which serve to be inspiring, mobilizing, and transformative. A sense of empowerment while participating in a protest can vary based on the foundation strategies of a protest, the employed branding strategies and visual and design formats. Structurally, recent institutionalized protest movements need to develop more effective inclusive strategies of coalition building. NYC undergraduate students have an important stake in recent protests, thus a critical pedagogical framework stemming from a multi-layered investigation of these movements is key, shaping the protest of the future.

TUP 15

EMERGENCE OF THE HARLEQUIN

A CRITICAL APPROACH TO THE POST 9/11 NEW YORK CITY SECURITY APPARATUS

by Glenn Dungan

16 TUP

Securitization Power Dynamics Social Control Resistance New York City

Source: Magid, Jill. “System Azure Security Ornamentation.” Jillmagid.com, 2002.

This thesis engages with the security apparatus of post 9/11 New York City and examines the dynamics of power and how mechanisms of social control influences the urban imaginary. Framing the research within a dialectic of strategic “top-down” and tactical “bottom-up” domains, the security apparatus then becomes an instrument of power to control the inhabitants of the city by means of oppression, division, exclusion, or pacification. The psychological, sociological, and geographical interventions of control brought forth by those in power creates a platform of tactical practice to resist the normalization of a secured and policed mechanized city. This thesis aims to examine the practices of resistance brought forth by the post 9/11 New York City security apparatus and what identities emerge from the friction of strategic and tactical domains.

The initiative to fortify New York City first began in 1993 when a homemade bomb struck the World Trade Center from an underground parking garage. Since then, the initiative of securitization to fortify the city blossomed and then expanded exponentially during and after the 2001 September 11th terrorist attacks. Post 9/11, the values of securitization and safety have become desynchronized, turning the acts of securitization into a vehicle for social control and power. Coupled with the acceleration of digital and surveillance technologies as well as new paradigms for policing and design,

the citywide endeavors to securitize the city has grown to become a “security apparatus-as-instrument”. This phenomenon has since woven numerous psycho-social threads into the New York City fabric, forcing exclusions and oppression to identities that those in power perceive as deviant, disruptive, or challenging to the hegemonic status-quo. The significance of the Right to the City has never been more paramount as the strategic value of securitization creates dissonance between tactical values of safety.

It is through this friction of values that new urban imaginaries emerge to resist the dominating hegemony of the Revanchist City.

Employing research methods such as media and policy analysis, primary sources, personal photography and interviews, this research aims to illuminate the manifestations of the security apparatus and its intervention into our relationships with urban space, our neighbors, and institutions of power which shape our reality and urban practice.

The first chapter examines the theoretical ideologies of power dynamics and historical examples of the security apparatus to understand the sociological arcs of the militarized Revanchist City. The second chapter discusses the security apparatus-as-instrument and examines the strategies of those in power to exhibit mechanisms of control through targeting of the physical, mental, and social relationships with and within the city by means of hostile design, policing, and surveillance. The third chapter discusses

emergent forms of resistance by defining three categories of tactical practice: adaptation, contestation, and conflict. Through varying degrees of opposition, these identities function as models or practice of defense against the security regiment and signify an almost unconscious resistance to preserve the urban imaginary. Finally, the conclusion discusses potential futures of the urban imaginary which arise from the encompassing and ubiquitous nature of the post 9/11 security apparatus and the practices of tactical resistance which emerge from this phenomenon.

This research intersects security and urban studies and progresses dialogue on securitization within New York City post 9/11.

Considering the multiple strategies of the security apparatus through design, policing, and surveillance, this thesis provides a unique contribution by categorizing not just the strategic domains of control but also the counter-tactics which resist them.

Examining the security apparatus-as-instrument from a critical perspective can be used to understand the power dynamics oscillating between the strategies of the “topdown” and the tactics of the “bottom-up”.

Functionally, this thesis aims to elucidate the hidden mechanisms of control which influences our daily reality and how our urban practice is impacted by the hegemonic values of securitization.

TUP 17

THE POWER RESISTANCE NATURE IN JEM COHEN’S FILMS OBSERVING - DOCUMENTING CRITIQUING - AS CRITICAL URBAN PRACTICES

by Yandong Li

18 TUP

Power Resistance Jem Cohen Films New York Streets Theorizing

Michede Certeau states in his book The Practice of Everyday Life that ordinary people exercise this resistance through appropriating imag-es, products, and space to their own interests within the framework laid out by the elite. Filmmaking is one product that filmmakers use against the power domi-nance. In my research, I theorize Cohen into Cohenism, and then explore the limits of Cohenism. I employ an interdisciplinary approach to study urban through multi-dis-ciplines; namely, film studies, aesthetics, and sociology.

Methodologically, I employ literature review, analysis of past interviews conducted with Jem Cohen, analyzing his films and conducting an interview with Jem Cohen himself. I start with breaking down Cohen’s nine films into their main thematics in relation to urban issues. Then I reconstruct and categorize Cohen’s films into urban themes, including homogenization, corporatization, marginalized groups and space, erasure and collective memories, and protesting.

And then Cohen’s approach and artistic choices are transformed into Cohenism, which consists four parts: urban concerns, artistic choices, activist, and production. I argue these components are leading us to understand observing, documenting and critiquing as critical urban practices.

Lefebvre suggests that the city requires a radical interdisciplinary methodology for

its analysis. Specialized discipline often only leads to a certain aspect of understanding of city. Cities, especially New York City, are often in Cohen’s cinematic gaze. According to Cohen cities, “are always on, more or less, and they’re also places where notions of democracy or the lack of it is readily tested in very visible, public ways”. Cohen’s films are more than a portrait of homogenized and commercialized space, but aim to make the marginalized human groups visible, and pay respect to them. In this thesis, I interpret homogenized and commodified space, private and public space, and class conflicts through his films, photography, and in person interview with Jem Cohen, exploring the power structure that shapes NYC streets. Cohen offers a methodology to study urban in his films. As a researcher, it is my goal to theorize and situate Cohen’s work and theories.

Jem Cohen is heavily influenced by Walter Benjamin’s writings. I make a parallel reading between Cohen’s films and Benjamin’s books such as One-Way Street, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet In The Era Of High Capitalism, The Arcade Project and other essay collections. Also, Cohen inherits his aesthetics from filmmakers such as Chris Marker, Jean Vigo, Dziga Vertov, and photographers of 1940s and 50s New York School of Photography such as Leon Walker Evans and Robert Frank whose work is marked by humanism and photojournalistic techniques.

After the introduction and methodology chapters, my third chapter examines why and how marginalized groups and space have been creating on New York streets.

Cohen employs his camera not only documents, but confronts and grasps the urban issues originating from class conflicts. Also, Cohen has a particular cinematic focus on Chinatown in Manhattan, but his approach could be problematic. My fourth chapter examines the causes of homogenization and corporatization in New York in Cohen’s latest films such as Chain (2004), Museum Hours (2012) and Counting (2015), drawing comparisons from a global scale. My last chapter examines why and how the city is becoming newer everyday. Jem Cohen believes that the Giuliani and Bloomberg administration were both trying to polish the city to attract tourists and new business, and he intentionally remove/avoid the signs from its original economic purpose, and transform the commodified to uncommodified.

Cohen’s films are not simply responding to the perceived urban issues such as homogenization, corporatization, alienation of people and space, and erasure, they also propose an argument that how the city, especially the streets should be represented, and observing, documenting and critiquing are the tools and methods he employs as his urban practices.

TUP 19

CONTAINING A LOGISTICAL PARADISE

UNEVEN INFRASTRUCTURE SPACE IN COLON, PANAMA

by Guillermo Leรณn Gรณmez

Aerial view of Colon, Panama. Source: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

20 TUP

Global Political Economy Neoliberal Urbanism Logistics Infrastructure Port City

Satellite Imagery of Colon and Manzanillo Island.

Source: Google

Gatun Locks, Panama Canal. Photo: Guillermo León Gómez

Panama’s geography has been historically exploited to accommodate and accelerate global flow for global actors. Ever since the complete transfer of the Panama Canal Zone on December 31, 1999, Panama’s government has led an aggressive investment “campaign” to shape the nation as the logistical hub of the Americas. This thesis focuses on Colon, Panama’s first port city on its Caribbean coast. I argue that the production of space, linked between the state and private capital, has segregated and enclosed the residential area of Colon.

Further, the flow of cargo and profit are prioritized over the logistical flow of bodies and resources. Years of government neglected water infrastructure networks and the rise of precarious labor has led to the steady decline of the city of Colon.

ports) rather than social ones (i.e. water and sewage systems). Over the many decades, the residential zone of the city that houses the working-class community has been severely disturbed by the expansion of the free zone.

The intense growth of the trade, logistics, and service sectors of Panama has dramatically transformed labor economies and the built urban environment. Colon’s logistical “assets,” infrastructure that facilitates global trade, continuously expand and severely disrupt the spatial layout of the city. Colon’s infrastructure space is unevenly shaped to support global flows rather the urban logistical systems, produced by the concentration of financing for profit-making infrastructure networks (i.e. highways and

By approaching the city through a variety of conceptual lenses – logistics, infrastructure, and political economy - we can begin to comprehend the inequality. Research for this thesis was conducted using multiple methodologies. Field work and aerial footage supports my claim for spatial segregation, as well as legal documents and interviews that establish the juridical segregation of Colon from the Colon Free Zone. Government documents and policy analysis highlight the transnational scale of the politics of logistics and trade. Legal and regulatory bodies, such as the state and supranational organizations, have helped cement trade globalization through agreements and codes of norm, which further accelerate flow through customs borders and leads to the expansion of global infrastructure networks. Moreover, using government statistics on labor and government spending, it was revealed that neoliberal governance in Panama has led to the social decline of the city; Colon suffers from the highest unemployment and urban poverty rates in the country. Yet

Panama’s GDP annual growth rate was the highest in Latin America in the past five years, with the majority of public spending concentrated in the construction of infrastructure. For workers, extraction of value is witnessed with low wage, in and outside of the Colon Free Zone, and with the supply of a reserve army of labor (unemployed and precarious labor) that increases demand for work. Extraction is also witnessed materially with the degradation of mangroves along the province’s coastline, that previously mitigated flooding, due to port dredging projects.

As the city becomes spatially constricted by the logistical zone, urban conflict and struggles arise. Displacement of residents and privatization of the city to support global trade infrastructure’s expansive tendencies is inevitable, yet activists and community members relentlessly resist. In Panama, the strike and the blockade continue to be useful weapons for labor in order to amputate capital production to leverage power. I consider other forms of resistance across many scales that begin to shape a counterlogistics politics. With a global lens, we can study successful and varying forms of resistance that consider global logistics as a target in the struggle for the right to the city.

TUP 21

EXPORTING ACCOUNTABILITY

INJUSTICE IN NEW YORK CITY’S WASTE FLOWS AND THE PROMISE OF COMMUNITY-LED COMPOSTING

by Tim Nottage

22 TUP

Organic Waste Environmental Justice Circular Economy Mapping New York City

New York City’s recent Zero Waste sustainability initiatives prioritize efforts to divert organic waste from the solid waste stream, yet the present practice of waste management is both unsustainable and deeply inequitable. Through a system designed to export waste outside of the city, New York externalizes the costs of waste onto communities and the ecosystem, with the burden distributed disproportionately along lines of race and class. Commercial and municipal haulers bring waste to transfer stations concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color, who suffer from diesel exhaust, noise, and the injustice of being dumped on by the city at large. From here, waste is exported to towns up to 600 miles away to be landfilled and incinerated, wasting valuable resources and polluting the air, land, and water. Where and how this waste travels is shaped by a legacy of racial zoning and municipal disregard.

While the city calls for a more sustainable and equitable system, it continues to make long term contracts for solid waste export with large waste management companies.

Without addressing this incongruency, systems of exporting waste and collecting and processing organics run the risk of continuing to reproduce this inequity.

My research seeks to honor and highlight the history of low-income communities of color fighting for environmental justice in New York, while championing present

efforts at the intersection of social justice and sustainability. I examine environmental justice campaigns, federal regulations, and city policies that created the present logistical organization and prioritization, as well as the efforts in community gardens, urban farms, and other public spaces that have developed creative methods and technical training programs to collect and process organic waste into compost, which in turn supports soil and neighborhood health. The models emerging – particularly micro-hauling by bicycle and creating local composting initiatives that prioritize youth of color, who are historically excluded from conversations on land-use and environmentalism – promise a way forward with less fossil fuels and pollution in low-income communities, local employment in safe, skilled jobs, and the opportunity for more waste equity between neighborhoods, boroughs, and municipalities. While this model needs to work with municipal, state, and federal regulations to confront an economy of endless growth on a finite planet, eliminate the production of disposable materials, and hold industry accountable for the waste they produce, composting organic waste locally can at the very least heal our poisoned urban soils and support regional agriculture; a necessary step towards a sustainable, equitable city and society. When centering local residents in the planning, siting, and implementation of this system, a distributed infrastructure of organic waste collection and processing that

builds on existing models of hyper local, community-led programs would radically change our city’s relationship to waste and reduce the injustices that externalize costs and risks of waste management onto those with lesser political power and access to resources.

Waste management in New York City today is structured as a material logistics system, the visible component of an industrial economy rooted in extraction and consumption. Yet waste is fundamentally an active and constant process of valuation, an assignment of worth on materials and social relations, illuminating what and who our society deems valuable or undesirable.

Based on a sociospatial analysis of existing conditions and operations, I present research on how a system of externalized costs was structured and perpetuated, and what benefits could result from a waste infrastructure that prioritizes health and equity. As New York City unveils a new plan to create commercial waste collection zones and continues to expand household organic waste collection, this research demonstrates the need and advantages of local systems nested within regional systems, one that retains real value, such as nutrients for soil, worker safety and neighborhood health, and principles of fairness, in each community, and ensures every neighborhood – and New York City as a whole – is accountable for its waste.

TUP 23

BEHIND THE U

THE TROJAN HORSE IN MANHATTAN’S LOWER EAST SIDE

by Jessica Serrante

24 TUP

Climate Change Climate Justice Resilience Coastal Defense Community Resilience Gentrification Lower East Side

In the 5 years since Hurricane Sandy, the New York City region has received over $55 billion in federal recovery funds, implemented the lauded Rebuild By Design competition and placed “coastal defense” and “resilience” among it’s top mayoral priorities. At the same time, New York City is in the midst of a “humanitarian crisis” scale affordable housing shortage and the city’s public housing is falling into increasingly dangerous conditions while the NYC housing authority reckons with a $17 billion capital budget deficit. In Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the impact of this housing crisis is the rapid development of luxury housing and what has been called “the most egregious case of gentrification this city has ever entertained”. These intense circumstances are the context within which a 10 mile multi-use levee called the Big U is slated to be built in Lower Manhattan. This thesis interrogates the ways that this complicated context shapes the likely impact of the Big U on the community in the Lower East Side.

There is an implicit assumption in the way that the Big U is discussed, that “resilience” as it is being created through this project, is inherently good for all New Yorkers. What is missing from this discourse however, is the larger context of the urban fabric of the community that the Big U will be located amidst.

This research set out to uncover the gaps between the climate resilience related agendas of the City of New York and the frontline community in the Lower East Side by looking at a case study of the Big U project. The research method employed for this thesis was Situation Analysis as taught by Dr. Mindy Fullilove, a systematic investigation of the circumstances surrounding the Big U which relied heavily upon the collection and analysis of primary data including 9 stakeholder interviews, field observation and close readings of documents published by stakeholders. The research presented here reveals that there are gaps between these two agendas and that those gaps are created through the conflicting mayoral priorities of housing development and climate resilience, through misleading and faulty communication and through a lack of funding for the Big U project to be built as planned. While the coastal defense that Big U design provides is wanted and needed by much of the Lower East Side community, it is unlikely to provide that protection for the most vulnerable residents. In this research, I reveal that the Big U is a development “Trojan Horse” which will likely contribute to the rampant displacement that is already under way in the neighborhood.

Building upon this case study, I argue that the Rebuild By Design model of design competitions is a new form of disaster capitalism which is using the popularity of “resilience” in order to capitalize upon climate vulnerability and stands to exacerbate the growing global trend of climate apartheid. I also argue that climate justice advocates ought to further question the assumption that coastal defense infrastructure is inherently beneficial for all, as is often the assumption with the Big U. For effective climate justice work to happen, it is not enough for designers to facilitate a participatory design process. During the Big U design process, the designers earnestly partnered with the LES community and earned their trust, but there is not accountability process for that participatory design, which has left some community members feeling like they were taken advantage of.

Participation and partnership with frontline communities and accountability to that process must be central to the entire process of any resilience building intervention for it to be successful in truly building toward resilience and justice.

TUP 25

THE AIRPORT’S ARMS

READING GOVERNING STRATEGIES ON THE BODY

by Madhuri Shukla

26 TUP

Source: Getty Images

Airport Borders Governance Biopolitics Imperialism Exception

Today’s airports model new forms of governance in order to normalize the control mechanisms beyond the confined spaces of the airport. The security regimes inside US airports diffuse national borders, and challenge national identities and constitutional rights. I use three increasingly nested frames of governing strategies as a method of studying airport typology. The three nested theoretical frames, or governing strategies, correspond with the first three chapters: biopolitics, imperialism, and the state of exception. The theoretical frames are used broadly as a lens through which case studies, empirical data, and various global connections, sometimes not directly related to airports, are brought into a shared context. The distinctions of these chapters, and building frames, are organized using Neil Smith’s theorization of scale, which states that popular conceptions of scale, as absolute and distinct, are false, and reflect power dynamics. While each chapter nests inside the previous chapter, this is not intended to indicate a necessarily smaller scalar scope. In each chapter, I use empirical evidence gathered from literature and media research, informal interviews, and participant observation, to identify the three strategies as emerging global tactics of urban governance.

In the first chapter, I argue that the airport is a biopolitical operation, as theorized by

Michel Foucault. Far from being a neutral transportation hub, the airport has become a site in which technologies and practices of governance are deployed in order to manage life. This management of life happens both at the level of the individual--what Foucault called anatomo-politics--and at the level of the population--what Foucault called biopolitics. I show the biopolitical operation of the airport through a discussion of biometric scanners, which facilitate the management of populations, and deportation practices, which have the power to “let live and make die.”

In the second chapter, I argue that the airport is a site which facilitates the diffusion of national borders outward. This is a form of modern imperial governance. With attention to territory and sovereignty, this chapter looks at diffuse airport borders using the concept of border imperialism, as established by Harsha Walia, to highlight their contested nature. I investigate the strategic role of the airport to be used in occupation as described by Eyal Weizman; as well as the occupation of the airport itself through international aid and relief work.

new security regimes are introduced as “temporary,” “necessary,” responses in the interest of (national) security, however these practices are later made permanent features. Examples range from the removal of shoes in airport security, to federal policy shifts such as Executive Order 13769, the pilot project of the Muslim Ban (1.0), that banned entrance to the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

A fourth, and final, chapter materializes and cautions the reach of these governing strategies beyond the airport’s constraints into the larger urban context. Ultimately, the research focuses on the governing strategies used on the body in airports, in order to caution the use of these strategies in the development of new operating procedures outside of the airport. I argue that the ‘state of exception’ strategy extends beyond the scope of ‘passengers,’ to the entire social realm and structures urban processes and forms, with a cautionary focus on the potential problems in the deployment of these strategies in managing two increasingly pressing states of overflow in the US airport: evacuation and protest.

In the third chapter, the “state of exception”, theorized by Giorgio Agamben, is reframed as a strategy deployed in the airport in order to test the compliance of passengers. Case studies illustrate how TUP 27

DWELLING BY DESIGN

ANCHORING THE ANDREW FREEDMAN HOME

by Burgess Brown & Burak Sancakdar Joint MA TUP and MS DUE Thesis

28 TUP

Anchoring Institutions South Bronx Co-design Displacement Dwelling

“The South Bronx Beckons.” That’s according to a 2015 New York Times article declaring the South Bronx as New York’s next hot neighborhood. The area has long held a reputation as a site of abandonment and decay, but over the last decade, developers have begun buying up properties at an astounding rate and residents are flocking to the neighborhood looking for cheaper rent, manageable commutes, and spacious apartments. Port Morris and Mott Haven in particular have experienced steeply rising rents and the impending rezoning of a 92-block stretch of Jerome Avenue will see the the razing of light industrial warehouses and auto shops and the development of new multi storey residential buildings.

This rush of new residents and development has already and will continue to cause the displacement of the existing residents of the South Bronx, 35% of whom live below the poverty line. Policy and activism aimed at resisting displacement is, justifiably, often focused on access affordable housing.

But what, beyond secure individual dwelling places, makes a neighborhood strong?

Displacement uproots communities and rips relationships apart at the seams, destroying the character and strength of neighborhoods in the process.

It is our argument that, to effectively combat displacement, vulnerable neighborhoods, like the South Bronx, need “anchor-

ing institutions.” These are places where roots are reclaimed and strengthened, the public good is debated and defined, and needs of existing residents are met. But how can we, as designers and urbanists, contribute to the formation of anchoring institutions? This thesis makes the case for co-design as a critical aspect of developing anchoring institutions and proposes a methodology to transform an existing community space in the South Bronx, the Andrew Freedman Home, into an anchoring institution for the surrounding neighborhoods.

The Andrew Freedman Home was constructed in the 1920s as an “ex-rich man’s poor house” where the once wealthy who’d lost their fortune could continue to live in luxury free of charge. In the 1980s, the money ran out for Freedman’s “philanthropic” experiment and the mansion was purchased by a grassroots organization called the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizen Council. The mansion now houses a patchwork of organizations and programming ranging from artists residencies to child-care services. However, it lacks a cohesive identity both internally and with its neighbors and 60% of the building remains vacant and decaying.

Through community partnerships and an embedded engagement process over the last year and a half, we have explored the potential latent in this vacancy. We con-

ducted formal interviews with youth from the neighborhood as part of the Young Adult Perspective Project, archival research, spatial analysis, and mapping to developed an understanding of the work already being done by those in the Andrew Freedman Home and what more might be done to meet the needs of South Bronx residents.

Our findings show that the mansion is in a precarious position, in danger of becoming a tool of gentrification rather than a space of resistance to displacement.

In response to these findings, we have worked across two scales to address the uncertain future of the Andrew Freedman Home. First, through analysing case studies of other places that function like anchoring institutions, we have constructed scenarios for how the Andrew Freedman Home can better integrate itself into the fabric of surrounding neighborhoods and function as an anchor for existing community members.

Second, in collaboration with our community partners, we have developed a co-design methodology for young adults in the neighborhood that addresses a critical gap in service within the mansion and functions as a prototype for the realization of a larger anchoring process in the Andrew Freedman Home.

TUP 29

Paul Beasley

Paul is a photographer and urbanist who focuses on the contributions of African Americans in urban history and theory and how imaginations of race informs the design and social networks of cities.

His artistic practice centers on capturing and expressing black life and culture in American cities. His research interests span the fields of design studies, semiotics, visual studies, critical theory, and architectural history. He earned a BS in Design, Merchandising, and Textiles from Western Kentucky University in 2014 and an MA in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University in 2016.

Burgess Brown

Burgess is a journalist, media developer, and urbanist from Macon, Georgia. He has a bachelor’s degree in Media Studies from Mercer University’s Center for Collaborative Journalism. His background is in public radio and engagement focused journalism. Over the last three years, he has helped build the Listening Post Collective and serves as the Community Manager, consulting and developing innovative journalism projects across the country aimed at better addressing the information needs of underserved communities. Burgess has interests in collaborative design, the politics of public space, and the role of information in the public sphere.

Maria Chung

Maria is a native San Franciscan--born and raised, an urbanist, project director, and strategist. She earned a bachelor’s degree in both Politics and Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz where she was a teaching assistant to Undergraduates in the Writing Department and also, was an active member in the Student Union. Since her move to New York City in March of 2011, she has been a monthly Team Leader and Volunteer through New York Cares helping serve +120 senior citizens at the Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center. She has worked professionally on managing a wide array of projects ranging from real estate development to broadway productions while pursuing an MA degree. Post graduation she plans to remain in New York City and work for a company that aims to be socially impactful and equitable both in design and practice. She hopes to be bicoastal one day.

BIOS

Yana Dimitrova

30 TUP

Yana is an artist, educator, and a researcher whose work investigates the intersection between visual arts, community centric practices, and activism as linked to the urban realm. Her research interests span between issues of forced migration and displacement to the use of craft in alternative pedagogy practices. Formally trained in both Bulgaria and the U.S. Yana received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in 2009. Yana has exhibited at various national and international venues. Her most recent exhibits have taken place at The Rockefeler Brothers Fund, The New School’s Aronson Gallery , Walke (Brussels, Belgium), OAZO (Amsterdam), Gallery Twenty-Four (Berlin), Sofia City Museum (Sofia, Bulgaria), NARS Foundation (New York) to name a few.

Glenn Dungan

Glenn was born in a small town outside of Atlantic City, New Jersey. He is an urbanist, social activist, and creative writer. He earned a bachelor’s degree in both Psychology and Sociology from Montclair State University, New Jersey, where he also worked at the LGBTQ Center and co-ran the literary magazine.

Glenn decided to pursue urban design to blend his passion for Psychology and Sociology with his love of cities. Glenn’s interests include securitization, power dynamics, smart cities, suburbanization, and speculative design.

Guillermo León Gómez

Guillermo is a research based artist, curator, and urbanist. His work has focused on globalization, commodity culture, and political economic geography. He co-founded TVGOV, a think tank and political design company re-envisioning territory and its ecological sustainability, recently participating in the 9th Berlin Biennale. He co-founded Port to Port in 2015, a nomadic curatorial research program, that grounds theories of planetary urbanization and contemporary capitalism by focusing on logistical cities. The program has collaborated with local institutions, that include El Centro Cultural de España Panama, SMU Pollock Gallery, and Bluecoat Centre for the Contemporary Arts in Liverpool, to co-produce exhibitions, reading groups, and artist residencies.

Yandong Li

Yandong is a multimedia artist, film scholar and urbanist from Xi’an, China.

He has done multidisciplinary practices in short filmmaking, installation, and urban design workshop. Academically, Yandong’s research lay within the field of cinema and space; specifically - critical theory, aesthetics, Deleuzian cinema, and montage theory. While during his study at MA urban program at Parsons, The New School, Yandong worked at India China Institute at The New School. He received his BA in sociology and geography from Memorial University in Canada.

Tim Nottage

Tim (he/him) is an urbanist and designer with a focus on environmental justice and speculative futures. His background as a scenic designer, theatre artist, and maker informs his interest in material and spatial relations, deep time, storytelling, and embodied forms of knowledge; he brings an interdisciplinary approach to urban ecology and transformative justice. While in New York he has worked with 596 Acres, designing the WE, and the 400 Years of Inequality initiative.

Originally from Oakland, California, he also writes, makes interactive sculpture, and turns compost at a community garden in Brooklyn. Tim holds a BA in Theatre from UC San Diego, where he received the Ron Ranson Award.

Madhuri Shukla

Jessica Serrante

Jessica is an environmental organizer and activist, originally from New Jersey. Her undergraduate degree is in Environmental Studies and Sociology from the University of Vermont. Over the last eight years, she has worked as a community and campaign organizer at Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network on various corporate accountability campaigns.

Her academic and professional interests are in urban climate resilience, environmental justice, popular education, and community organizing.

Madhuri is a conceptual artist and urbanist, whose academic and professional output engage with issues of access and representation. Her undergraduate work at the New College of Florida culminated with a thesis and exhibition examining the racial and ethnic dynamics of Chicago’s streetscape design practices.

After finishing her BA in Urban Studies and Art, Madhuri joined Chicago Public Art Group where, from volunteer to Managing Director, she facilitated public art projects throughout Chicago in the tradition of community mural art. In addition to graduate studies at Parsons, Madhuri has been working with the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery as a Policy Analyst.

TUP 31

Visualization of thesis themes and keywords of DUE 2018 cohort. Made by Jazon Azar.

32 DUE

INTRODUCTION

by David López García

DUE

Ph.D. Candidate in Public and Urban Policy

“The polis, properly speaking, is not the citystate in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.”

Next year, 2019, The New School University will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. The late, Professor in Philosophy, Hannah Arendt, (1967-1978) is a seminal figure in our history setting down key ethical principles that guide our work today.

One principle, is her definition for the term “polis” drawn from her internationally recognized book, The Human Condition (1958).

The words of this brief quote frame many of the issues that our faculty and graduate students explore in their research, projects, and actions as urbanists.

The following summary of 11 thesis projects working within the “polis” of many diverse “human urban conditions”. Produced by 13 graduate students, collectively, they add up to a rich set of design and urban ecologies practices that will empower people to organized as they rise to act and speak together. They occupy the space that lies between, building new relations for an urban infrastructure of “living together” as a set of urban ecologies or polis, upon which they might grow and sustain local coalitions supporting the people’s right to make their city.

“Stimulating the Commotions: A meshwork of urban narratives,” is a collaborative project led by Maha Aslam and Zara Farooq.

They explore their own city of Lahore, Pakistan, unpacking the turmoil driven by the insertion of global development projects upon rich “commotion” of urban life that is a growing an ecology of story-telling seeking to build a foundation against the splintered impact of neo-liberal projects.

“Industrious Intermediaries”, is situated within the fast-paced processes of gentrification impacting existing neighborhoods of San Antonio, Texas. Jason Azar’s work con-

fronts the wedge politics and development projects upon the existing neighborhoods, via the renovation of former industrial facilities drawing upon surrounding local assets and impact investments.

Eduarda Aun in her project, “Improvised Public//Planned Space: Insurgent practices and possible futures of the modernist city”, explores how recent social, economic, and political events has given rise to a new form of citizens reclaiming public spaces for collective action by social movements, community organizations, and cultural producers creating new spaces and new means for collective action. This project provides a comprehensive visual framework for aligning and assembling this urban field of spaces, people, and practices.

Emily Sloss’s thesis, “Towards Food Sovereignty: Critical agroecology and cooperative farming ”, identifies food sovereignty as the ultimate goal for a reformed food system.

This training manual for new farmers challenging the current sustainable agriculture education model and its failure to address the structural inequalities in which our food system is rooted.

Caroline Macfarlane shows us “Color Connects: Painting healthy spaces together.”

Her project aims to create opportunities for individuals experiencing crisis to alter their surroundings using two powerful and relatively inexpensive tools: color and collaboration.

Burak Sancakdar & Burgess Brown’s project, “Dwelling by Design: Anchoring the Andrew Freedman Home”, digs deep into people’s right to dwelling, creating a ‘spiritual unity’ between people and things.

Constructed in 1924, the Andrew Freedman Home takes up a full city block on the Bronx’s Grand Concourse. Many Bronxites have never heard of it or entered its intimidating doors.

Andrew Strong’s thesis project, “In Sight,

William Morrish, PhD Professor of Urban Ecologies

Out of Mind: A critical investigation of Golden State imaginaries”, unfolds the contested background environment of plentiful economic opportunity, optimism, progress, and perfect weather, colliding at the price aggressive, violent, and unfair leaving in its trace an ecology of inequality.

Sarath Balaji Ramanan takes us into the urban forces changing India’s cities and neighborhoods. “Understanding Settlement Ties: Through the lens of Mylapore, India”, takes a two-point view into this question of how existing and immigrant people form ties of “settlement”. The first is, from the view of government housing and neo-liberal development projects that create enclosed housing complexes. The other draws on the lived experiences in the neighborhood of Mylapore.

Selamawit Yemeru’s thesis shouts out, “Bigger Than Just Music: Hip Hop as an urban lens on post-civil rights politics”, is a campaign to unpack Hip Hop’s history of influence and reaction to the urban condition. Challenging public opinion as an outsider, while legitimizing the experiences of Black Americans that threatens and affects society as a whole.

Angelica Jackson’s in locates on the main street of Christ Church, Barbados. “Plug into All: Collectively navigating the political ecology of water ase, access, and infrastructural management along the Red Line”, prioritizes the experiences at the community level and their need for stronger political agency and power in the conversation around water use, access, and infrastructure.

“Finding a Common Language in Our Local Financial Tools”, Lyric Kelkar reveals that the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles is home to some of the strongest resistance to gentrification in LA. This project aims to develop intervention pamphlets that will demystify the concepts of credit, homeownership, collective property ownership, and ITIN loans.

DUE 33

STIMULATING THE CITIZEN COMMOTION

A MESHWORK OF URBAN NARRATIVES

by Maha Aslam Raja & Zara Farooq

34 DUE

Anarkali Citizen Commotion Urban Narrative Co-Producing Identity Ecologies of Connectivity

Year 1947, millions of families cross the border, among clashes and riots, a landscape of diaspora awaits them. The colonizers have left, but their presence is felt more than ever as the people try to piece together the complex set of relationships left behind. Fast forward to October 2015, the construction of Pakistan’s irst metro train project, sponsored by Exim (Export-Import) Bank of China, starts in the city of Lahore. 15.8 out of the 16.8 miles of the track is elevated and has been imposed on to the historic morphology of the city of Lahore. Passing through the oldest parts the of city with the highest population densities, the construction of the train sparks protest and debate over the chosen route, as fear of displacement and destruction of historic and religious sites starts becoming a reality. According to Pakistani news channels covering the Orange Metro Line Train (OLT), 110 families were displaced due to the construction. Maryam Hussain, an activist, working in the neighborhood of Anarka-li, the densest area along the track, would argue that the number of displaced families is around a 100,000.

The colonizer have once again in iltrated the geography of this area, this time the terms of engagement are more rigid and bound by a loan that is designed to default.

Stimulating the Citizen Commotion is a meshwork of proposed interventions that lead to the co-production of a community’s identity, establish their ties, and revitalize their local network of resources. This pro-

ject aims to precipitate their presence in the system of decision making for the creation of an inclusive urban narrative in the city of Lahore; a city known for its rich culture and heritage. The opposing problematic scenario inculcated in the city originates from the global strings that have pulled on the resources of the country and driven out capitalized advantages for their own expansions. This slowly transcends itself into the realities of the national dilemmas of the political confusion induced by very personalized agendas of individuals in the decision making processes that have steered Pakistan’s urban policies into irrelevant tangents. The situational juxtaposition of these elements of change in the history of Lahore have fabricated the urban scape in the heart of the city today. One of such places is the glorious Anarkali Bazaar which paints a very intrinsic picture of history, culture and local knowledge that exists as an effervescing vessel of a constantly moving narrative.

This project is probing into the depths of these contradictory realities using the indicators of social infrastructure and community uplift. The aim of the project is to create a meshwork of connections that co-produces the citizen identity, establishes the local ties of the community and develops a network of resources for Anarkali. The armature of the design strategy is organized in

three phases of interventions: an engaging assemblage of the categorized components extracted from Anarkali, an activation phase of spatializing and co-producing the connectivities within the public realm and a projection of these linkages towards the larger ecology of the city of Lahore.The project identifies the local cultural carriers in the form of activities and spaces that have retained the essence of the bazaar in the face of adversary and attempts to draw connections and parallels between them through the three phase mentioned above.

The process of the project was initiated through a theoretical and a spatial analysis of the current development projects in Lahore focusing on the $1.6 billion CPEC led Orange Metro Line Project.

This unfolded into a convergence of a densely problematic neighborhood, Anarkali, leading into a micro study of its community and the social fractures of the urban narratives. which exposed a pattern of the disruptions induced by the development capital. Using this premise the project attempts to draw connections within these polarities and intersections of the urban ecology of Anarkali and then reiterate the patterns for the city of enablers.

DUE 35

IMPROVISED PUBLIC // PLANNED SPACE

INSURGENT PRACTICES AND POSSIBLE FUTURES OF THE MODERNIST CITY

by Eduarda Aun

36 DUE

Public Space Right to The City Commoning Citizenship Democracy Brasilia

Source: Joana França

Source: Courtesy of Feira Livre

Brazil’s recent political, social and moral crisis has shaken the country’s democracy and affected its citizens’ belief and trust in the decision-making processes that impact their lives and cities. Divided by right and left, rich and poor, white and black, the general feeling of estrangement from decision-making processes in politics and the very crisis of political representation signals, among many things, the exhaustion of traditional institutions of representative democracies.

At the same time, a recent phenomenon happening in many cities around Brazil, and particularly in Brasilia, has given rise to new forms of citizenship. It has been through the reclaiming of public spaces, for social, cultural, economic or environmental purposes that social movements, community organizations and cultural producers have been creating new spaces and new means for action, experimenting with different collective forms of democratic governance and communal decision-making.

rigid landmark preservation and exclusionary development has led to a fragmented, segregated and unequal city. As much as the Brazilian Constitution guarantees the right to the city, and defends the participation of civil society in urban development, these initiatives find many barriers imposed by the unequal access to public goods and knowledge, as well as by the existing regulations, bureaucracy, and the little autonomy that local decision-making grounds have. Due to an inflexible landmark status, the younger generations have little voice and, therefore, power to shape the city after ‘their own heart’s desire’ in a city that prioritizes its form over its people. Consequently, Brasilienses are only allowed to present themselves temporarily, isolated, disconnected and unsupported.

Different initiatives are reinventing politics by reimagining space. By appropriating, transforming and/or reclaiming public spaces for mutual benefit, different actors are engaging in the social practice of commoning, reclaiming their right to the city and redefining citizenship. Borrowed from Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, James Holston, among others, these concepts set a framework for this research and proposal.

Not to say that this doesn’t come without conflicts and challenges. Brasilia, although unique for its historical and urban importance, is marked by the same social, cultural and economic contradictions of the country. Dispersed urbanization, combined with territorial mismanagement, institutional instability, clientelist politics,

In Brasilia, these challenges are accentuated by the contradictions of Modern planning itself. Although originally based in egalitarian and democratic values, it has ended up generating uninhabited public space and a big loss of its social and political function.

Furthermore, the vast open spaces have proven to be very costly to maintain and are often perceived as empty and abandoned.

The perceived neglect of these spaces, by which inhabitants demand maintenance and care from the government, lead to a disclaim of their own responsibility. Although the city has laws that provide for the ‘adoption’ of public spaces, there is no mention to any forms of democratic governance or programming of those spaces. In the meantime, a federal law is waiting to be approved for a national program of public space sponsorship, for which this research and proposal could provide critical insights regarding more inclusive, autonomous and democratic practices.

In this context, this project proposes to leverage the existing practices of reclaiming public space by visualizing, translating, interpreting and representing them in what Teddy Cruz calls ‘tactics of translation’. The participation in this movement in Brasilia over the past years and a focused fieldwork during the course of this year, which included interviews and surveys with the existing initiatives, followed by an extensive analysis of their practices and spaces of action, informed the design proposal.

Under these circumstances, this design proposal is a strategy for the democratic governance of public space. First, it proposes to connect and give the existing practices visibility in order to synergize and coordinate this diverse movement. Second, it intends to translate and share the processes of appropriating public space in order to amplify and replicate the practices through collaborative tools. Third, it builds and circulates collective knowledges through a codesign and engagement process. Fourth, it envisions a public space stewardship program built on and by existing practices, to be adopted by the city, that not only asserts the right to the city, but demands responsibility and reframes the meanings of citizenship. Reimagining public space and its governance is inseparable from reinventing the scope of democratic participation and control over our living context. These strategies are meant to gather voices and envision possible futures for Brasilia, designed by and for its inhabitants. It also encourages people to use public space and start caring for, reflecting on and demanding urban changes.

DUE 37

INDUSTRIOUS INTERMEDIARIES DISPLACEMENT, COMMUNITY WEALTH BUILDING, AND INDUSTRIAL REHABILITATION IN SAN ANTONIO, TX

by Jason Azar

38 DUE

Industrial Rehabilitation Displacement Community Wealth Building Urban Intermediaries San Antonio, TX

Today in San Antonio, Texas the geographic distance between rich and poor is shrinking as former industrial sites, located in neighborhoods identified as being most susceptible to residential displacement, are rehabilitated and converted into high-end mixed use districts that cater to a desired creative-class. These rehabilitated sites are the geographies where the city’s “Decade of Downtown” policies and the investments they incent meet and touch-down within the cities most vulnerable neighborhoods.

These spaces have proven to be highly successful in attracting the growing population of relatively young, affluent, and upwardly mobile professionals into downtown adjacent neighborhoods made up of comparatively low earning and service class communities of color. Transformations to these neighborhoods have resulted in rapid and substantial increases in property values and taxes, displacing and fracturing long-standing communities. The language and self-stated values of these enclave developments emphasize revitalization, proximity to downtown, and embracing a future derived from New Urbanist discourse. Architecturally, these values are manifested through the use of symbolic ornament alluding to the sites’ industrial past. In such developments, as is the case across the world in cities competing on an international scale for investment, the goal is to maximize profitability by carefully packaging total environments encompassing a range of uses aimed at a desired demographic of user.

The first generation of rehabilitation projects was concentrated along hydrologic and transportation arteries, their positioning due to their former industrial activity. These

arteries historically served as dividing lines between peoples, economies, cultures, and histories in San Antonio, but in the wake of the “Decade of Downtown” agenda of job growth and investment in the city center the lines are being redrawn and transformed by the construction of targeted infrastructures and the seeding of major investment. An examination of proposed projects reveals that the riverfront-model of conversion has been divorced from major arteries and is now being applied further into vulnerable neighborhoods. The result of this development agenda, fueled by growing financial and political support of local government, is the piecing together of a network of hermetically sealed enclaves radiating outwards from Downtown. This political and financial support takes form in municipally drawn target zones that provide private development tax incentives and abatements and permitting “fast-lanes”. San Antonio’s Inner City Reinvestment Infill Policy (ICRIP), Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones (TIRZ), and the Center City Housing Incentive Program (CCHIP) are of particular focus.

Current patterns of enclave development are actively displacing existing residents, businesses, and institutions, and are fracturing and transforming the economic, cultural, and social networks that underpin their communities. In exploring the phenomenon of high-end rehabilitation this report works to complement and build on an existing and growing body of literature surrounding downtown development trends in San Antonio and their spread and impact on adjacent neighborhoods. First, I demonstrate how the policies that fuel the

current model of industrial rehabilitation are tied with class and race-based residential displacement, and put these observations in conversation with recent findings on neighborhood residential vulnerability by the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders and the Vecinos de Mission Trails. Second, I put Graham and Marvin’s (2001) concept of secessionary enclaves in dialogue with trends surrounding the redevelopment of industrial sites.

These observations inform recommendations for the municipal establishment of an “urban intermediary” to address directly the one of the primary roots of displacement in San Antonio: large, external, and extractive private investment into vulnerable neighborhoods via the rehabilitation of former industrial facilities.

As an independent body sitting between “Decade of Downtown” governance and communities facing displacement this intermediary’s mission would be to forge new relationships between existing residents, businesses, and institutions at risk of displacement and build community wealth by utilizing the unique geographies and architectural configurations of the sites. The proposed intermediary, which I imagine as the San Antonio Anti-Displacement Commission, would work to achieve these goals by facilitating the transformation of former industrial sites into community-oriented hubs of business, social, and cultural activity. The criteria and tools presented are inspired in part by a study of the Richmond, Virginia Office of Community Wealth Building; a new and particularly noteworthy intermediary working to address poverty at its root.

DUE 39

PLUG INTO ALL

COLLECTIVELY NAVIGATING THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF WATER USE, ACCESS AND INFRASTRUCTURAL MANAGEMENT ALONG THE RED LINE

by Angelica Jackson

40 DUE

Urban Infrastructures Water Governance Capacity Building Civic Engagement Coalition Building

When we think of infrastructure we think of electrical, water, communication and transportation systems or social services and facilities. What we should remember, however, is that people are infrastructure as well. They are needed in order for the built environment to function and for society to operate but they are often seen as invisible in the conversations of the planning the built environment. It is for this reason that this thesis prioritizes the experiences and needs of those on the community level and the need for communities to have stronger political agency and power in the conversations around water use, access and infrastructure.

Focusing on a socio-political approach to addressing water infrastructure crises will not fix architectural structured problems, but in the context of understanding the value of social infrastructure in conjunction with the value of the built environment, this approach should be privileged just as highly as a technical or engineering solution in order to comprehensively address the problem at hand and work towards more sustainable proposals.

The South Coast of Barbados is regarded as an economic hub for the island’s tourism industry (an industry of which Barbados primarily depends on). It is the area where many popular restaurants, shops, vacation homes and beachfront hotels exist. It is also home to residents from varying socio-economic background. The South Coast Sewage Crisis is estimated to have begun with the failure of certain components within the local sewage project, leading to compounding failures throughout the system which then resulted in dramatic impacts in communities along the coast. It was in late 2016 that raw sewage began bubbling up through the manholes and overflowing into the streets, homes, businesses

and ocean resulting in many people along the coast and throughout the island deeming the issue to be at a point of crisis. Although it has been over a year, there have been no long lasting solutions to the problem. The crisis continues to result in physical, physiological and psychological damages for the people who live, work and exist along this line while government outreach remains sparse.

As a foundational part of my research I focused on the route of vulnerability along the south coast of Barbados, which I also refer to as the “Red Line� throughout this thesis, in order to determine the established problem, how it came to be, and how affected various residents along this urban corridor.

My interviews, site visits and general stay on the island allowed me to have more intimate and nuanced understandings of the issue at hand, something that would have not been possible without access on the ground.

Through this research process, I found the South Coast Crisis to be a unique situation.

People from varying socio-economic backgrounds and positions within the community hold the common notion that they were not in acceptable communication with responsible government agencies, they were not receiving proper information and that not enough was being done, in the last two years, to solve the infrastructural problem at hand.

Through my experience I noticed that the people felt frustrated and alienated within their own space. They felt neglected by the very people who they expected to work to the best of their abilities to resolve the issue.

If the people affected are not consulted properly and comprehensively, how can you expect them to stay? If they leave and the area becomes unmanageable past the point of remedying and the people leave, how do you expect the businesses of your most

important economy to survive?

Through this thesis, I seek to unpack and understand the diverse experiences and perceptions of those who are affected by the crisis.

Where do they see themselves within the situation? Where do they see one another? In what ways do their experiences and understanding align and diverge within the context of the current crisis they are affected by? In what ways does answering these questions help create space for collectivity and prepare for people to move forward in a stronger and more unified way?

The design proposal I offer is a multi-strategy initiative with the goals of sharing uniquely held knowledges and co-producing new knowledges, uplifting and valuing the variety of narratives of various community members and connecting affected and engaged individuals to build a strong coalition around the issue. Despite the feeling of having little information, the people within the community hold unique knowledges and understandings of the urban space due to their experiences, skills and networks. What I propose is not a technical solution to an infrastructural issue, rather it is a socio-political approach to address a complex problem, in which I offer a series of tools and recommendations that can be used by the people doing the work on the ground to better organize, educate and connect with one another, finding commonalities and addressing gaps in understanding a shared experience, to then engage with these issues in a more collaborative way and take action as a coalition.

It is my hope that the ideas within this thesis will be implemented within the work being done, with the communities on the ground, regarding the current sewage crisis in Christ Church and will be applied within the larger conversation around water as well.

DUE 41

FINDING A COMMON LANGUAGE IN OUR LOCAL FINANCIAL TOOLS

ECONOMIC RESILIENCY AS HOUSING INTERVENTIONS

by Lyric Kalkar

Source: Rudy Espinoza

42 DUE

Economic Resiliency Alternative Housing Shared Ownership Credit Redlining

The neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles is home to some of the strongest resistance to gentrification in LA. Community organizations at all levels, from grassroots to governmental, occupy space within Boyle Heights but do not see eye to eye on a clear path forward for preserving their neighborhood for those who have put decades of effort into creating the place they call home. However, owning the property in their neighborhood is one tangible way to slow down the imminent mass displacement the residents are likely to see in the next few years. With deep misunderstandings of how property ownership works within the community of Boyle Heights, providing correct information about the process will be a first step in empowering them to build assets and use the system that has kept them down for decades to their advantage. Utilizing communal property ownership models as a lens for framing the information, the intervention pamphlets will demystify the concepts of credit, homeownership, collective property ownership and ITIN loans.

I propose this as a first step in building economic and political agency in the face of a rapidly changing urban landscape that is en route in continuing the neglect of this well-loved neighborhood.

The project is split up into two main sections, the research and analysis of the situation within Boyle Heights, and then the intervention model. The first half, the research and analysis, was done in conjunction with an organization based out of Boyle Heights - Leadership for Urban Renewal Network (LURN). They are a small non-profit policy, advocacy and community development organization that strongly

identifies with enabling and enhancing economic justice within low-income communities of color in Los Angeles. Through this work, a full report was published and disseminated through their channels including a blog post, social media blasts, and a feature on the KCET City Rising series.

The methodology of research for the report involved findings in a literature review, census analysis, a statistically sound survey, a focus group, interviews with experts, and mapping of data sets. I was involved with the literature review, census analysis, focus group and the mapping. The surveys and statistical analysis of them were performed by members of the LURN team. Similarly, the expert interviews focused on in the report were performed by LURN. I conducted interviews more as informational, instead of expert pieces, to build on the narrative.

The second half, or the intervention, explores and materializes small pieces of knowledge that can enable low-income individuals to gain agency, both political and economic, over their neighborhoods. One of the recurring themes in the research, was that trust in systems plays a large role in the lack of property-ownership and feeling of agency over the neighborhood. This sparks a conversation not only about narrative change, but the active pieces needed to begin the process of trusting and cooperating together. The affectionately named “DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles)� pamphlets will be a politicized tool but without politics added to the design in order to create a space around which residents can organize.

Through the distribution, the information will pass through many hands and have opportunity to be updated. The first place of distribution, the Planning and Land Use Summit (PLUS2), is happening in June of 2018. Releasing the housing report, as well as the small series of pamphlets, will be an initial space of conversation where there will be a chance for individuals to engage the content and ask any questions they might have.

Building on the knowledge that is produced and invoked with the information, there is the possibility to update the research and intervention methods. Partnerships with local organizations such as Proyecto Pastoral, a tenants’ rights group based in Boyle Heights, will provide an opportunity to for expansion and reiteration. Ensuring that the residents and regulars who need access to these types of information is key in order for the whole process to work.

Of course, there is still a need for those who are trained to be disseminating the information; the pamphlet on its own will not answer questions, but with the help of a local expert - whether through LURN, one of the partner organizations, or an invested resident - these can start the conversations needed to gain agency within a neighborhood that is currently sitting at a crossroads. ___________________________

1. LURN: http://lurnetwork.org/ 2. KCET City Rising: https://www.kcet.org/shows/ city-rising/boyle-heights-residents-face-significant-obstacles-to-homeownership

DUE 43

COLOR CONNECTS

PAINTING HEALTHY SPACES TOGETHER

by Caroline Macfarlane

44 DUE

Color Crisis Urban Restoration Aesthetic Justice Collective Imagination

Color is fundamental to our experience of the world. Color isn’t just decoration, it’s a biological experience. We read color physically and emotionally; we process these colors in the unconscious brain so quickly, that we feel their impacts before we have the words to describe them. Color plays a critical role in determining our mental, physical and social well-being, thereby making it an integral instrument for creating restorative spaces. However, color’s capacity to improve our health and quality of life has largely been overlooked in the institutions where people are confined to live.

Institutions where people are kept, whether hospitals, homeless shelters or prisons are spaces of crisis. Ironically, their design, often sterile, unfriendly and isolating, is such that proposed rehabilitation programs within them can be made ineffective, even to the point of exacerbating the existing traumas of those within. Crucially, the very people trapped in cycles of poverty and incarceration, forced to navigate an urban ecology of dehumanizing rooms and isolating living conditions, are those who have the least power to modify their environments. My thesis tries to ameliorate this by demonstrating how color can be used as a tool for resistance and collective empowerment in times of crisis.

Color Connects: painting healthy spaces together is a project that aims to create

opportunities for individuals experiencing crisis to alter their surroundings using two powerful and relatively inexpensive tools: color and collaboration. The opportunity to reshape their environment is not just an act of beautification, but also of empowerment, connection and aesthetic justice.

I hope to demonstrate the power of color as a tool for restoring connection to ourselves, to each other and to our surroundings through a series of collage workshops I facilitated with the clients on the non-medical detox unit at Project Renewal’s Third Street Men’s Shelter. These workshops culminated in a collective color intervention within the space. The colors were chosen by the clients. The walls were painted together.

The results; urban alchemy.

When chosen collectively, color can facilitate a reimagining of the function and feel of communal environments. When chosen and painted by the community——color becomes a powerful tool for achieving a sense of control, belonging and pride of place. The process of choosing colors collectively requires debate, negotiation, cooperation and collaboration— essential skills for building meaningful connections to each other and for successful re-entry into public life.

My research methods for this project have been primarily qualitative, ranging from conversations, interviews, workshops, site

visits, observation and in doing. This paper will reveal the journey my quest for color has led me on. These personal experiences and conversations have ground truthed my work and revealed to me that my thesis is not just about separate institutional rooms but about a whole urban ecosystem of dehumanizing spaces painted in “linen white” paint. I will connect my research on trauma to the built environment in order to situate my work within a larger urban context; linking my participatory project to theories ranging from aesthetics to evolutionary biology. Mindy Fullilove’s guidelines for urban restoration, Judith Herman’s theory on trauma and recovery, Janice Lindsay’s book “All about color” and Max Haiven’s essay’s on the crisis of the imagination have been particularly influential to my work. I hope to demonstrate in this publication how color and the act of painting together can be a potent tool for overcoming crisis and mending fractured urban environments by sharing the process, structure and outcomes of my collage workshops and color intervention and in doing so provide others with a framework for urban restoration and a unique example of urban alchemy.

Color Connects: painting healthy spaces together is a collaboration between myself, The Bowery Arts Project, Project Renewal and clients at 3rd Street men’s shelter. The knowledge produced here is collective.

DUE 45

UNDERSTANDING SETTLEMENT TIES - THROUGH THE LENS OF CHENNAI, INDIA THE FORCES THAT ORGANIZE AND GOVERN SPACE IN A CITY

by Sarath Ramanan

46 DUE

Modernity Dispossession Fragmentation Interdependency Solidarity

This project attempts to refute the modernist/neoliberal modes of planning by understanding the values that go into the creation of neighborhoods and communities that have thrived over a considerable period of time. Thereby showing characteristics of dispute as well as solidarity through a process of evolution, while at the same time being resistant to the forces of global capitalism.

Modernist modes of planning often exhibit characteristics of segregation and privatization in order to be able to exercise control and authority over the civic society, and the neoliberal modes of urban functioning.

Only further amplifying these attributes, which are undesirable for a sustainable urban future. My argument would be that these forms of fragmentation, if continued to be practiced, would not only depoliticize public space and the resulting interactions within the society, but would also lead to clashes and revolts in the future if ruptures were to be formed (which are often an inevitable aspect of coexistence). The

people would forget to live alongside others belonging to social identities varying from their own, and will eventually become unable to tolerate the discrepancies that would arise as a result of their differences.

I will be studying the neighborhood of Mylapore in Chennai (India), to understand the complexities inherent to the societies that inhabit the geography. The neighborhood is one of the older parts of the city, and thus I argue that understanding the social fabric of the particular neighborhood would give us insights into how the people have created the social interdependencies that have been integral to establishing levels of understanding and cooperation in order to coexist as a unit, despite being extremely varied in terms of their communal identities.

This project aims at creating a framework of understanding that would allow for people to realize the values and meanings that have been incorporated into ways of social functioning. Values allowed for the peaceful

coexistence of the civic society, as well as creating the opportunities for interactions that identify and address the differences among the people, and thereby allow for the ruptures and disputes due to their differences be strategically discussed and resolved.

Utilizing the existing social systems of religion, caste, and class, this project aims at showing how inclusive and heterogeneous modes of social organization can be achieved, unlike the forces of the free market that tends to segregate people using these very same social institutions.

This project further postulates that social capital is as important as economic capital in being able to plan for the relationships that human settlements need to develop in order to show characteristics of sustainable modes of living. These relationships happen when opportunities for interdependencies are provided for, rather than trying to fit people into frameworks of functioning— which ends up segregating people and creating inequal geographies, which would eventually lead to conflict.

DUE 47

TOWARDS FOOD SOVEREIGNTY CRITICAL AGROECOLOGY & COOPERATIVE FARMING

by Emily Sloss

48 DUE

Critical Pedagogy Capitalist Food System Food Sovereignty Rights-Based Framework Cooperativism

Globally, our food and agriculture systems are deeply unequal, which is demonstrated by the overproduction of food, one third of which goes to waste, while 1 billion people go hungry and another 1 billion are obese.

In the US, every minute one acre of farmland is permanently lost to development while existing farmers are retiring faster than they can be replaced by new farmers who face significant barriers to entry. These statistics are symptomatic of a capitalist food system that exploits the land and labor of the masses for the profit of a few. These symptoms cannot be fixed individually, and instead the whole economic system, in which our food system is deeply embedded, must be reimagined.

The US sustainable agriculture movement advocates for ecological, local food production so that all communities have access to safe, culturally appropriate, and nutritionally adequate diets. These goals are very much in line with the international peasant movement of food sovereignty, which is defined as communities’ right “to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” However, the rightsbased approach of food sovereignty is explicitly opposed to capitalism because of its consolidation of market power, exploitation of labor, and increasingly corporate control of food production resources, while domestic sustainable agriculture movements

often embrace market-based approaches to address the unequal food system, which in turn undercuts goals of culturally appropriate and nutritionally adequate diets.

In recent years, incubator farms have become an important and popular educational component of the sustainable agriculture movement, providing temporary access to affordable farmland and technical training to new farmers. Fieldwork for this project included analysis of North Carolina’s farm incubator programs through site visits, interviews with staff, past and current farmers as well as a curriculum review and evaluation of land-use models of incubator farms across the country. This fieldwork revealed that the majority of incubator programs provide apolitical curricula that promote sole-proprietorship on private property as the singular and ideal business models for graduates, and ignores a rights-based approach to food system change. It became clear that radical approaches to curriculum and land-use models were missing and that farmers must be trained differently if food sovereignty is to be achieved.

Identifying food sovereignty as the ultimate goal for a reformed food system, this training manual for new farmers challenges the current sustainable agriculture education model and its failure to address the structural inequalities in which our food system is rooted. Sustainable agriculture education rightfully rejects the environmentally-de-

structive practices of industrial agriculture, but simultaneously perpetuates the belief that the same economic system responsible for an unjust food system is also the appropriate tool to fix it.

New farmer education is an important entry point to address systemic change because if we imagine a food system that serves the needs of all people and the environment, then we also need agricultural education to be deeply embedded within those values.

This manual outlines a critical pedagogical framework that combines agroecology, popular education, cooperativism, food justice, and food sovereignty in what is referred to as critical agroecology, as well as a land-use model of cooperative farming that challenges private property norms.

This manual is divided into two parts, Roots and Shoots. Roots provides a background primer on the current conditions of our capitalist food system and its historic foundations - the way things are, as well as a critical pedagogical framework and alternative land-use models for a more just food system for all - the way things ought to be. The second part, Shoots, provides a framework for an imagined land-based farmer training program that builds off the incubator farm model, but one that is based in the principles of food sovereignty. It provides sample lesson plans, program design, a land-use model and policy interventions for a radical, as in root, approach to food system change.

DUE 49

IN SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

A CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF GOLDEN STATE IMAGINARIES

by Andrew Strong

Postcard “402:-Native Palms and Orange Grove, Snow-Capped “Old Baldy”, California,”. Source: California Citrus Industry Collection (H.Mss.1079). Special Collections, Honnold Mudd Library, Claremont University Consortium.

50 DUE

Critical Atlas California Imaginaries Classified Land Archives

Clockwise: “Cupertino 1948.” 37°20’24.81”N 122°01’21.02”W. Source: Google Earth.

September 25, 1948. Accessed: April 25, 2018.

“Cupertino 2004.” 37°20’24.81”N 122°01’21.02”W. Source: Google Earth.

December 20, 2004. Accessed: April 25, 2018.

“Cupertino 2017.” 37°20’24.81”N 122°01’21.02”W. Source: Google Earth.

April 15, 2017 Accessed: April 25, 2018.

The Golden State is imagined. It is an idea of rolling, fertile hills and valleys; edenic, majestic terrain; plentiful economic opportunity; optimism; progress; and perfect weather. This idea has been constructed and perpetuated over the state’s history by a series of businessmen, immigrants, activists, teachers, people calling the state home, and people identifying economic opportunity who all saw in California a malleable terrain.

But this malleability has come at prices often aggressive, violent, and unfair leaving in its wake an ecology of inequality. California, along with other states in the American west, has been subdivided, partitioned, and classified resulting in contested spaces in which the dominant ways they are imagined cause harm rather than care for the land, for people, for species, and all of their interdepencies; working well for a few rather than for all.

Today, California is increasingly represented by imagery reflecting natural disaster in the forms of fire and drought alongside its pristine state and national parks, and rising homelessness and poverty alongside exorbitant wealth. It has become apparent that solutions posited in response to these problems are flawed because they are rooted in the structural inequalities of the persistent Golden State imaginaries themselves.

Silicon Valley strongly reflects the contradictions embedded within the Golden

State imaginaries. Strategies and technological solutions arising from this region are posited as global models for an ecology of resilience while at the same time exacerbate growing local inequalities. The language of progress, activism, conservation, and preservation at times masks policies and economic strategies that compromise agency, justice, and fairness for different groups of its human and non-human inhabitants. Propositions to deal with social inequities in land and resource accessibility are limited by the dominant cultural frames in which decision makers perceive them. The stories we tell ourselves about land and place are powerful and deeply ingrained. They can blind us from the realities of these places and they produce the ecologies of the future by their very nature of framing experience, its interpretation, and its following actions.

Borrowing from the real estate and economic language of Silicon Valley, this project identifies four urban imaginaries that frame development and ecological change underlying the imaginary of the Golden State. These are the view, the valley, the entrepreneur, and the algorithm. Together these imaginaries place bodies into constructed systems that don’t necessarily advocate for them or for the kind of world that they want to inhabit. They also persist across history shaping and strengthening

the ecologies they produce. These are only a few of many active imaginaries that should be complicated in order to arrive at better understandings of place and lived experience in California.

This project is divided into three parts. The first explores the theoretical underpinnings of imaginaries and the criticality involved in complicating them. The second discusses the construction of terrain in California through the four urban imaginaries above as prototypes. It does this by outlining the investigative processes of 1. experiencing the terrain and 2. dissecting and redrawing lines, to 3. produce an annotated archive that begins to complicate these imaginaries by producing new ways to collectively read and reproduce space and place. The third proposes a pathway forward to refine methods for collective analysis and production of imaginaries.

Through urban imaginaries, imagination ascribes power. A collective investigation re-asserts alternative narratives and with them, agency. It expands our capacity to recognize and understand shared experience in order to come up with more equitable design proposals, rather than ones constrained by inequitable frameworks.

DUE 51

BIGGER THAN JUST MUSIC HIP HOP AS AN URBAN LENS ON POST-CIVIL RIGHTS POLITICS

by Selamawit Yemeru

52 DUE

Hip Hop Landscape Political Resistance Youth Expression South Bronx Legitimizing Black Experiences

Later this year, Hip Hop will celebrate it’s 45th anniversary. Today, Hip Hop is a billion dollar industry that influences almost all facets of social, political, and economic life from music, art and fashion, to sports, advertising, and beyond. Hip Hop is undeniably one of the most influential urban cultural movements today and has been a topic of public debate by many political figures and thinkers since the 1980s. Hip Hop has largely been critiqued as negatively impacting the youth, and society at large, by glorying violent behavior and rebellious attitudes. While Hip Hop’s narrative can evoke such controversial imagery and attitudes, Hip Hop has also done it’s fair share of contributing to the public discourse around issues facing low-income and minority communities in cities across the nation.

It’s hard to believe that Hip Hop started on the streets of the South Bronx as a form of youth expression and resistance. Today it is something that is largely produced, reproduced and consumed as a cultural force that is void of it’s fundamental philosophies that critically engages with issues such as structural discrimination, social welfare and endemic poverty. Hip Hop was born as a response to the conditions of life in the urban ghetto, and continues to be a glimpse into

the realities of many Black and Latino youth today. Hip Hop is inherently political and is rooted in the power of repositioning and legitimizing the ghetto as an urban space of empowerment and cultural creativity.

Bigger Than Just Music: Hip Hop as an Urban Lens on Post-Civil Rights Politics is a campaign that aims to unpack Hip Hop’s history of influence and reaction to the urban condition. It compels it’s reader to look past the dominant narrative of modern day rap, and embrace Hip Hop’s roots in resistance and political activism. It calls attention to the rooted influences of the Black Freedom struggle and the philosophies of many legendary Black activists and thinkers. It challenges it’s readers to unpack the complexities and nuances between Hip Hop and the urban condition, and takes it’s readers on the journey of Hip Hop’s growth and commercialization. It transports the reader into the Hip Hop landscape of urban ghettos, such as the South Bronx, and situates them in Hip Hop’s world of racial consciousness, identity formation and political resistance.

More importantly, it is a campaign to reposition Hip Hop as a legitimate political critique in the larger discourse of policy and

theory. It does so by using today’s public debate on gun control as an example of an area in public discourse that could benefit from Hip Hop’s critique and narrative on gun violence in urban ghettos across the nation. Not only does this call attention to Hip Hop’s role and significance in challenging public opinion as an outsider, but it also draws upon the timeless struggle of legitimizing the experiences of Black Americans as an issue that threatens and affects society as a whole.

In crafting my campaign, I set out to understand the intersection of Hip Hop and the urban condition through a series of interviews, observational fieldwork, site visits and primary research analyses. While I have a very personal relationship with Hip Hop, learning from influential thinkers that have already theorized about Hip Hop and it’s narrative today, allowed me to position my realities as a young Black adult from the Bronx into a more accessible and grounded perspective on Hip Hop. It is my hope that my campaign can contribute to the growing body of knowledge on Hip Hop and can be a resource to those that recognize that Hip Hop is bigger than just music.

DUE 53

Maha Aslam

Eduarda Aun

Jason Azar

Angelica Jackson

Lyric Kelkar

Caroline Macfarlane

Maha is an urbanist, architect, researcher and a community activist, whose interest lies in designing and researching about public spaces and processes that inculcate social and economic justice values in them. She co-founded Nigraan-e-Lahore with her peers aimed at initiating participatory form of development for marginalized communities after graduating from architecture school in Lahore. During her time at Parsons she has assisted with two courses, Urban Colloquium & Urban Resilience, while developing her thesis, a meshwork of urban narratives that enable a community to revisit its identity and build upon its social ties and resources, as a form of resilience in the face of globalizing economies.

Angelica is an urbanist, artist, researcher and socially conscious designer. Through personal experience and continuous education, she has seen a pressing need to address the current inequities impacting many low-income communities (especially communities of color both nationally and around the world), and the need to revolutionize design strategies to better include and service communities that are underrepresented in urban planning processes. Angelica believes that just planning practices & truly sustainable design incorporates multifaceted approaches and considers the livelihood, well-being and participation of all.

54 DUE

Eduarda is an architect and urban designer from Brasília, Brazil, whose passion lies in public spaces, urban pedagogy and design for social innovation.

Co-founder of Coletivo MOB (Movimente e Ocupe o seu Bairro), a civic engagement organization for urban and social transformation, she has designed different strategies to inspire and empower citizens of Brasilia, creating urban citizenship in a hands-on approach to the city. After working with local planning agencies and cultural and social movements in Brasília, she came to New York to pursue her MS in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons and is currently working at the NYC Department of Transportation.

Lyric is an urbanist, researcher and designer based out of Los Angeles and New York City. Her professional background has seen the likes of law, engineering, public works consulting and policy advocacy. Currently she is focusing on policy analysis and systems change within the urban context, specifically around affordable and alternative housing options. Her outlook on the built environment - and the role of planners, architects and other professions involving social-spatial relations - has been shaped by these experiences; because of it, she is actively working towards a more equitable progression of our landscapes.

Jason Azar is a designer and researcher based in Austin, TX and New York City.

His expertise is in the fields of community-based planning and urban design, wayfinding and environmental graphic design, cartography, data visualization, and architectural and urban history.

Experiences from Western and Central Texas and Southern Arizona have shaped Jason’s interest in downtown revitalization, the evolution of urban landscape, and the history and future of suburbs. Prior to Parsons, Jason received bachelors degrees in Urban Studies and Art History at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. Jason is originally from El Paso, Texas and now calls Austin, Texas home.

Caroline is an artist, curator and urbanist from Toronto, Canada. After receiving an MA in art history from the University of Toronto, she worked as Community Coordinator and co-director of the OCAD U Student Gallery. Caroline has developed a passion for transforming the built environment through colour and collaboration and sees art as a powerful tool for social change. She has designed and facilitated art programming for SickKids hospital and CAMH (Toronto), Third Street Men’s Shelter (NYC) as well as developed her own city wide public art projects.

Sarath Ramanan

With a background in Architecture, Sarath has been involved in/witness to various developmental projects in the cities of Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, in India. The pace at which the country is developing and the state’s proposal to develop a 100 ‘smart cities’ all over the country seemed to him as a scheme that needed to be defined and critiqued in the near future, which is highly speculative at the moment. This lead him into pursuing education in order to be able to identify issues of development other than that of the built form, to address the growing needs of urban agglomerations. His desire for an understanding of urban polity and ecology, and the role of strategic design in impacting livelihoods and the desirability of urban environments is what brings him to the Design and Urban Ecologies program at Parsons.

Andrew Strong

Andrew is an artist and educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. Recent projects include co-developing an artist residency program in Indiana and working with high school students to explore permaculture and land use histories. He received his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and Studio Art from Whitman College.

Burak Sancakdar

Emily Sloss

Selamawit Yemeru

Zara Farooq

Burak is a transdisciplinary designer with a background in architecture, tactical urban design and community engagement. His international work experience in cities such as Istanbul, Lisbon, Venice, Brussels and Suruc, a town on the Turkish-Syrian border, has shaped Burak’s skills in collaborative design strategies and allowed him to develop a multifaceted understanding of urban ecologies.

Currently, Burak is collaborating with non-profit organizations and previously incarcerated young adults for alternative after school programming in the South Bronx. Burak’s work has been published and exhibited in La Biennale di Venezia, Archdaily, Bronx Arts Space, Center for New York City Affairs, Architect Magazine among others.

Selam is an urbanist and social justice advocate from the Bronx, NY. After receiving her BS in Environmental Studies from the University of Richmond, she served as a Conservation Corps fellow with NYC’s Department of Parks & Recreation, conserving valuable parkland for low-income and minority communities in the Bronx. Selam has developed a passion for exploring the intersection of equitable design and community resiliency. Post graduation she plans to continue pursuing her passions, as the Third Avenue Business Improvement District’s Neighborhood 360° Fellow, where she will work to support and strengthen small business’ along the Third Avenue corridor in the Bronx.

Emily is an urbanist, agricultural educator and farmer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy from Duke University where she founded and managed the Duke Campus Farm, a sustainable production and educational farm. Most recently she worked for a community land trust managing the city of New Haven’s 50 community gardens before pursuing an MS in Design and Urban Ecologies. Post graduation she plans to return to North Carolina to resume farming and work towards a more equitable food system.

Zara is an architect from Pakistan who came to the Parsons School of Design on the Fulbright Scholarship award. Deriving her inspirations from her undergrad thesis of deciphering the impacts of urban developments resonating from Islamabad on the neighboring villages and their subsequent exploitations, Zara came to New York with the resolution to trace these complex socio-political issues in today’s time. At Parsons she wants to take this alienation of today’s urban class divide and reflect on the implications of such a process in Pakistan and the rest of the urban ecological system.

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THESIS WORKS 2018

MA Theories of Urban Practice & MS Design and Urban Ecologies Design Eduarda Aun Cover & Illustrations Jason Azar Edition Alie Kilts Parsons School of Design, The New School 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 https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/ma-theories-urban-research/ MS Design and Urban Ecologies https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/ms-design-urban-ecology/

ŠCopyright 2018 by Parsons School of Design, The New School

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