DUE TUP | Thesis Work 2015 by Urban Parsons

SCHOOL OF DESIGN STRATEGIES

THESIS WORK

2015

design and urban ecologies THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE

DESIGN AND URBAN ECOLOGIES THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICES THESIS 2015

Introduction This collection of graduate thesis represent a cross sectional sampling of work produced by students completing their studies in the Master of Arts in Theories of Urban practice and Master of Science in Design & Urban Ecologies in the Spring of 2015. Each thesis project is in fact a praxis, that integrates deep research with extensive interviews and reflective questioning, expanded through discursive writing and visual representation, articulated spatially and rooted in every day situations. Propositions about potential decisions are “ground truthed” through processes of walking and working together with everyday city residents who are “planning to stay”-- seeking ways to remain a value active and contributing, participatory member of their city’s urban society. One way to visualize how these two curriculums and community based research converge is through a set of dimensions of funds of knowledge that when related reveal intersections and disconnections of spaces and activities, through which the design questions of an urban situation can be used to define and shape a just city. The collective work of the Theories of Urban Practice students share what is called here a perspective that embraces the idea of urban praxis as actionable theory, and practice as research-in action. Their aim is to create a shift in the way theory questions history. For example, the critical societal issue of identity and belonging are often erased in the way history is produced. Thus opening the door to the collective creation of effective strategies supporting productive negotiation towards democracy, and tactics that activate citizenship. Through careful analysis, and engaged participation they have shaped urban practices that value and disseminate absent knowledge. Their motivation is to invent, elevate and lead urban practices that are not hegemonic. In other words, they want to emancipate practice.

The graduate work of the Design and Urban Ecologies graduate students dig into interdisciplinary research and through extensive field work to develop a deeper understanding of what it means to design urban ecologies as a way to decipher urban questions and describe the material nature of inclusive urban propositions. Their explorations revealed that to design linked to human natural urban ecology is to detect and develop active forms that ignite civil society disposition and freedom to operate as a valued and generative link within core city process and systems. This work was not done alone. Through many hours working with community partners, faculty and other students from diverse backgrounds, geographies and power positions, they developed counter urban narratives to that of standard urban displacement modes and form codes. Rather they sought to use design and policy to open the local collective intelligence through spatial analysis of a contested urban geography. Thereby identifying and educating themselves about how to set the terms through which they can name and frame the questions to be addressed, as well as values, actions and tasks that needed to be performed to over throw the constraints that have been assigned by others, and to imagine to the unimaginable. Together the graduate students in both programs see their collective research as a starting point rather than simply accepting what they have made as a conclusion. They have a goal of creating significant contribution to the on-continuing production of urban knowledge, to generate new forms of practice and expand and deepen their capacity to design through lens of urban practice, urban ecologies and the right to the city. In summary, the common aspiration engaged by the graduate students, faculty and community partners who have contributed many hours of time and creative energy is toward a collective effort to increase our capacity to confront displacement, injustice and climate alteration. We invite you to explore these thesis projects and to join in this journey. William Morrish and Victoria Marshall

SCHOOL OF DESIGN STRATEGIES Faculty

Jane Pirone’s experience as an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Parsons, The New School for Design, where she served as Director of the Communication Design program serves her exceptionally well in her role as the Dean of SDS. Jane’s research focuses on methods of interdisciplinary and collaborative design practice and on the creation of location/mobile/networkedbased media projects centered around the building of community, while supporting advocacy, activism, and social change – specifically within the urban context. Jane is a founding member of the Datamyne Project (myne.newschool.edu), and the urbanBIKE initiative (urbanbike.parsons.edu). In addition, she is the founder/creative director of Not For Tourists (http://www.notfortourists.com) and the award winning design firm, Happy Mazza Media, which specialized in information and interactive design for clients such as Nickelodeon, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, IBM, and the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Jane received a BFA from the University of Michigan, and an MS in Telecommunications and Information Management from Polytechnic University.

Matthew Robb is associate dean of the School of Design Strategies at Parsons, and assistant professor of Design and Society. From 2009-2013, he served as program director for the BBA in Strategic Design and Management. From 2007-2009, he served as the BBA program’s associate chair. Matt is executive editor of The Journal of Design Strategies, an annual publication that explores emerging trends and strategic opportunities at the nexus of design, business, and society. Recent titles of the Journal include “Transdisciplinary Design” (2012), “Designing for Billions” (2013), and “Alternative Fashion Systems” (2014). Matt’s teaching and research focus on social and political dimensions of design, and on the moral challenges posed by modern capitalism. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research (2005), and a BA in Philosophy from Reed College (1991).

Miodrag Mitrasinovic is an architect, urbanist and author living in Brooklyn, New York. Miodrag is an associate professor of Urbanism and Architecture at Parsons The New School for Design. He is the author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (Ashgate 2006), and co-editor of Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate 2009). Both books received Graham Foundation Grants in 2004 and 2005 respectively. His professional and scholarly work has been published internationally. Miodrag is a member of the international editorial board of Design and Culture (Berg), and has also served in a variety of scholarly, professional and editorial roles. He holds Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Florida at Gainesville [1998], M.Arch from The Berlage Institute, the Netherlands [1994], and Ing. Arch. Diploma from the University of Belgrade, Serbia [1992]. Before joining The New School in 2005, he held teaching and research appointments at the University of Texas at Austin [1998-2005, with tenure], at the University of Florida at Gainesville [1995-96 and 1997-98], and at Kyoto University in Japan [1996-97]. At The New School, Miodrag previously served as Chair of Urban and Transdisciplinary Design (2007-09), and as Dean of the School of Design Strategies and Associate Dean of Parsons The New School for Design (2009-12). His research has focused on both generative capacity and infrastructural dimensions of public space and urban commons, specifically at the intersections of public policy, urban and public design, and processes of privatization of public resources.

Victoria Marshall isa landscape architect and urban designer, who has always objected to the idea of nature as a paradise or place to escape to. “Nature isn’t some faraway place,” she says. “It’s everywhere.” Her work connects ecology with urban design, as does the program, which trains students to strategically and creatively engage with contemporary problems facing cities. Marshall first came to urban design as a student in her native Australia, where she did her undergraduate work in landscape architecture. The program appealed to her desire to employ both technical design skills and creative approaches in her work. She later came to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in landscape architecture and an Urban Design Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall ended up in New York, where she has practiced as both a professional landscape architect and a professor, teaching courses on urban design alongside architects and ecologists. The experience has given her a profound understanding of how different design practices can be employed to find solutions to urban problems. Her teaching also supports her personal practice, in which Marshall and her collaborators transform complex urban settings through innovative approaches to landscape architecture and urban design, ecosystem research, and drawing as a form of participatory activism.

SCHOOL OF DESIGN STRATEGIES Faculty

William Rees Morrish is an architect, urban designer and Professor of Urban Ecologies at Parsons The New School of Design in New York City. Collaborating with a network of interdisciplinary city actors, he has been leading an effort to revaluate urban policy and design practices in order to construct the next generation infrastructure that he calls; “urbanizing ecologies”. They are the city networks creating middle level social, economic and supply systems linking micro to macro level city landscapes. They are produced by up scaling social design and entrepreneurship activities with ecological patch dynamics. In the context of today’s global economic, social, ambient computing and climate changes, “urban ecologies” will define a city’s local geography, an inhabitant’s civil identity, co-existence with society, access to sustainable regional economic and ecological common wealth and define community’s capacity to negotiate its future. This work will be documented in a forthcoming book and website entitled, Urbanizing Ecologies, The 4 Design Systems for making “la Cite”, winter 2014. These ideas have been tested in a wide range of urban projects and located in a number on cities through multi-year applied research programs. The following is sampling of the range of this practice.

Gabriela Perez Rendon is an architect and urban planner and co-founder of Cohabitation Strategies, an international non-profit cooperative for sociospatial research, design and development based in Rotterdam and New York City. Cohabitation Strategies has been involved in different projects in Europe, North and South America bringing different methodologies to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the agents affecting urban areas and providing cross-disciplinary working frameworks to catalyze grassroots led transformations. Rendon’s work combines research and practice at different scales focusing on spatial planning, architectural and urban design. Her recent research and work centers on the politics, practices and constrains of socio-spatial restructuring through citizen participation in low income neighborhoods in America and Western Europe. Previous research and design include housing and urban rehabilitation in the Northwest Mexican border region. Gabriela has an MSc in urbanism from Delft University of Technology and a BS in Architecture from Monterrey Institute of Technology Higher Education. She is carrying doctoral studies in spatial planning and strategy at Delft.

Miguel Robles-Durán witnessed the rapid transformation of San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, after moving to the borderland region when he was nine. The city’s rapid decay made a lasting impression on Robles-Durán and motivated him to study urbanism. Afterwards he left California to study in the Netherlands and received an advanced master’s degree in urbanism from Rotterdam’s Berlage Institute. He went on to earn a PhD in unitary urban theory and the political economy of urbanization, designing his own curriculum in collaboration with Berlage Institute and TU Delft (the Delft University of Technology) while teaching at those two institutions and at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland. In Rotterdam, Robles-Durán cofounded Cohabitation Strategies, an international nonprofit for sociospatial development focusing on urban decline, inequality, and segregation. He recently co-authored and co-edited the book Urban Asymmetries: Studies and Projects on Neoliberal Urbanization. Robles-Durán believes that academic programs should be embedded in real-world scenarios and respond to present and future needs in progressive ways. “The new student generations are disgusted by what’s going on in cities today all over the world: gentrification, real estate speculation, social and spatial injustice, urban development by increasingly fragmented private-public partnerships. All these complex 21st-century issues need to be addressed by new trained professionals.

Evren Uzer is an urban planner and designer working on civic engagement and critical heritage, disaster risk mitigation, participatory housing and interventions in the public space. She has a PhD and BSc in urban and regional planning, and an MSc in urban design, from Istanbul Technical University. Her PhD thesis was on risk mitigation for urban cultural heritage. Evren joins Parsons from Gothenburg University, where she was a postdoctoral research fellow since 2013 in the School of Design and Crafts. Her postdoctoral research at Gothenburg is called “Urban heritage at risk: artistic and activist interventions in heritage issues.” She has taught at Pratt Institute, and her prior teaching also includes lecturer at ITU’s Housing and Earthquake MSc program, senior lecturer at Auckland Technical University, and workshop lecturer at Bergen School of Architecture in Norway. Evren is sole or co-author of two dozen writings, including articles, chapters, monographs, and conference papers on topics ranging from urban design, public space design, green intervention, disaster mitigation, and housing systems. She is also co-founder (2004) and partner of roomservices, an artistic research collaboration for practice-based and experimental design projects, dealing with issues such as DIY urbanism, artistic research, social and entrepreneurial enablement and art practice. Through roomservices, Evren and her partner research and experiment with social and subconstructive design, community participation and risk mitigation, sociograms, collaborative crafts, and more.

Content

01 pg. 10

02 pg. 28

03 pg. 46

04 pg. 62

-P.A.R.CPublic Action Review Collaborative Economy and Governance

By Larissa Begault & Julia Borowicz

AL - AHMADI A graphic novel re-visualizing the historical narrative of a colonial Kuwaiti oil company town

By Rania Dalloul

MAPPING VALUES, BUILDING NETWORKS A Path Towards Cultural Equity in Urban Arts Planning By Raquel de Anda

CONNECTING CORNERS Towards a collaborative food ecology By Anne Duquinnos - Ron Morrison

05 pg. 88

06 pg. 110

07 pg. 130

I.I.I CITIES Cities as a site of imagination, invention, and intervention By Nadia Elokdah

MY FUTURE <---> MY CITY Rethinking Processes of City Revitalization Through Curriculum Connections in Reading, PA

By Nora Elmarzouky

extra.ORDINARY Integrating methodologies for change By Dagny Tucker

A perspective that embraces the idea of urban praxis as actionable theory, and practice as research-in action.

-P.A.R.CPublic Action Review Collaborative Economy and Governance By Larissa Begault & Julia Borowicz

INTRODUCTION This thesis engages in the processes and negotiations that take place in the creation of new landscapes of consumption and production. Landscape here, refers to the spaces produced through the need of surplus capital to be invested in fixed and human assets. Their built form derives from cycles of valorization and devalorization, land speculation and profit maximization and is produced for a new ascendant class identity born out the most recent labor force restructuring.

Situating this within the growing trend of public-private partnerships we are questioning what the mechanisms are for the participatory production of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; space within which participatory and democratic acts are possible. In order to investigate this, we are looking at the Domino Sugar Factory, a large scale luxury redevelopment project. This is a significant site to study because it is one of the current manifestations of the production of such new landscapes being packaged through a number of provisions, namely affordable housing and open space, within neighborhoods with established communities.

DOMINO SUGAR FACTORY PHOTOGRAPH OF RUBBLE Photograph of the Domino Sugar Factory construction site, Larissa Begault, 2015

To what extent do these spaces meet the objectives they promise to communities, typically in need of more green space? How do these benefits weigh against potential costs of development?

the Domino Sugar Factory is a significant site to study because it is one of the current manifestations of the production of such new landscapes being packaged through a number of provisions, namely affordable housing and open space, within neighborhoods with established communities. To what extent do these spaces meet the objectives they promise to communities, typically in need of more green space? How do these benefits weigh against potential costs of development? This thesis questions how the process of production of such landscapes and its outcomes participate in the shaping of citizenship, belonging and representation. Through actionable theory, we are establishing new openings for multiple publics to take part in such space production through a proposal for a legislated body, which we have called Public Action Review Collaborative (PARC). PARC is a participatory model that seeks to expand democratic practices by including representational justice in local politics and overseeing the production and management of public space. Applying the model of agonistic pluralism, which involves relations between adversaries who share common (symbolic or physical) space but seek to organize it in different ways, allows for the recognition that a politics without adversary falsely seeks to reconcile all interests provided that they align with the project at hand and can be part of the ‘people’ or thus a legitimate public

(Mouffe, 2000)*. PARC draws on this conception by enabling productive agonism within space production, recognizing the failure of consensus, and advocating for the necessity of multiple publics, while concurrently seeking change within the existing system. Further, this work examines the forces behind current landscapes of production and consumption that valorize a particular class identity and shape the city accordingly. Particular manifestations of these landscapes are luxury residential and mixed used developments that serve as a key economic strategy for the City of New York. Alongside this phenomenon, we are witnessing a rise in new forms of privately owned public space generated by these luxury developments. These spaces typically participate in the trend of creating a public realm that is depoliticized, homogenized and commodified equating to the sanitization of people, practices and design. This thesis explores the ways in which multiple publics engage in the making of public space and sphere. There is an important dialectic relationship in which a democratic public sphere is necessary for the production of participatory public space while such space is also necessary to continue generating a democratic discourse and expansion of the public sphere. Within this work, we develop a new conception of citizenship at the local level through applying representational justice to a new democratic structure.

* Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso, 2000.

What kind of mechanisms can be developed so that existing civil society can not only be heard but also systemically accounted for? How does a participation process become democratic? Who is represented? In order to explore these interconnected themes, this thesis examines the Domino Sugar Factory redevelopment as a revitalization scheme within a post industrial landscape. Through the aesthetic trend of post-industrial space valorization and the economic and political narrative of progress and modernization, these kinds of projects are further legitimized in the eyes of public. It is our contention that these kinds of spaces, within residential neighborhoods, participate in a broader trend of spaces of amenity for adjacent luxury developments that are generated through public subsidies but not consistently contribute to the general public’s welfare. The formulaic design typically creates predefined uses, tied to the commercial entities that are present on the site. Thus, returning to our initial hypothesis, the spaces created are commodified and depoliticized sites for consumption and passive recreation. Further, their effect is not neutral, but rather, they carry agency in contributing to rising land values, speculation and the ever increasing upscaling of the city.

METHODOLOGY We have developed a new methodology that includes a reflexive theory - practice binary. At the core of this new approach are theoretical analysis, site observation, and site analysis. Of particular interest are the areas of intersection among these three methods, where productive spaces are created for investigation - as new ways of conceptualizing space- and generation - as the fertile ground for the production of such space. Within these new developments, where do the openings exist for a civic engagement that at its core reframes notions of consensual politics? In adopting Mouffe’s conception of agonistic pluralism, we seek to activate mechanisms through which productive agonism can be produced and alternative spaces of difference and multiple belonging realized. In examining the politics of the Domino Sugar Factory and similar development projects, Chantal Mouffe’ Democratic Paradox serves as a key analytical framework. Thus, guiding this thesis is the notion that “within agonistic pluralism the primary task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions from the public sphere in order to render a rational consensus possible, but to mobilize those passions towards democratic designs” (Mouffe 103, 2000)*. We also draw on the work of Iris Marion Young, challenging the philosophical concept and application of ‘community’ to defend what Young calls the ‘politics of difference’ as a potential

* Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso, 2000.

Trends Mayoral Strategies + Platforms

Theoretical Lens

Valorization / Devalorization Cycles in Post Industrial Sites

Mouffe

Democracy + Citizenship Difference

Public - Private Partnerships

Productive Agonism

Displacement

Young

‘Community’ + Civic Engagement

Questioning Redefining the ‘public’ ‘citizen’ + ‘civic’ Fraser Public / Private Partnerships Multiple Belonging Public Space /

Public Sphere

Privatization

Rise of Luxury Housing as Economic Strategy

Inclusion / Exclusion

Gentrification

Expansion of Privately Owned ‘Public’ Space Gentrification

Site Observatio ns Mapping

Interviews

ysis nal A ite

Stakeholer Map REAP Methodology

-Historical documents -Individual interviews -Expert interviews -Participant observation

Ethnosemantics Ethnography and Positionality Linguistic Analysis Scales of Analysis - Site - Domino Sugar factory - Neighborhood - South Williamsburg / Williamsburg / Greenpoint - City - NYC

METHOD DIAGRAM Diagram by Julia Borowicz and Larissa Begault. This diagram represents a method for understanding relationships between a variety of stakeholders and forces within a development site. The components of this new methodology include a reflexive theory - practice binary. At the core of this new approach is theoretical analysis, site observation, and site analysis.

model for urban living in the ‘unoppressive city’. The ideals of unity and single identity within community and individuals determines its members as the norm and excludes the remainder populations as the ‘Other’, therefore denying difference within and between subjects while hierarchizing different groups (Young 1986)*. However, there is also a necessity to accept that communities do exist and are formed for multiple reasons. People do identify more or less with others and their environment and this can serve as a self-supporting mechanism particularly within disenfranchised groups. As a result spaces of exclusion have a necessary place in our urban society. How these are negotiated is where thought and action is required. Can we envisage communities as non-static, as a constant discussion, contestation and compromise of its ‘borders’, both social and physical?

Our key theoretical frameworks, outlined in this diagram, serve as an active tool to engage with our fieldwork and as reflexive devices to assess how theory stands up to current and potential practices.

Looking at broader trends within New York, and specifically Williamsburg as a heightened illustration of economic and social restructuring of a neighborhood, our contention is that within the site there are a number of publics, community groups and organizations with differing, and often conflicting, desires, class anxieties and imaginaries, with varying levels of participation and influence in the process of public space development and it’s future iterations. Thus, our key theoretical frameworks, outlined above, serve as an active tool to engage with our fieldwork and as reflexive devices to assess how theory stands up to current and potential practice. In order to

* Young, Iris Marion. “The Ideals of Community and the Politics of Difference”. Social Theory and Practice 12, no. 1 (1986).

carry out our site observations and ethnographic work in a comprehensive manner, we have applied certain elements of Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Procedures (REAP). As argued by Low et al., this methodology is particularly useful for practitioners seeking to undertake anthropological ethnography work and apply it in rapidly changing environments (Low et al., 2005)**. Further, applied as a methodological tool, it can be used to not only gain an in depth social and cultural understanding of a space, but also as a “value-explicit approach that works to achieve self-determination and to foster the accumulation of power in local communities” (Low et al. 184, 2005)***. Finally, REAP is particularly beneficial for the work undertaken in this thesis, as one of its objectives is to find the ways in which to represent the cultural heritage of various communities, as well the means by which the operating, protecting and conserving of cultural heritage is ensured (Low et al., 2005)****. These observations can be analyzed at multiple scales. As Neil Smith argues “[t]he importance of “jumping scales” lies precisely in this active social and political connectedness of apparently different scales, their deliberate confusion and abrogation” (Smith 66, 1992). In situating our observations in this matrix, we are able to draw relationships between discourses and individual narratives, the application of policies and lived experiences, trends and specific spatial configuration, etc. Finally, the ‘jumping of scales’ offers opportunities for creating tools that have an impact on numerous levels, altering current

** Low, Setha, Dana Taplin and Suzanne Scheld. Rethink Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity. The Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. *** Ibidem. **** Ibidem.

SURPLUS CAPITAL

The result of our public spaces being increasingly turned over to private groups of property owners means that we are granting them the power to exclude people from such spaces which, further, contribute to denying basic rights

Investment Human Assets

Labor Force

Fixed Assets

Urbanization

Knowledge / Science / Technology

Infrastructure

Built Form

Transition from Industrial to Knowledge Economy

Disinvested Industrial Neigborhoods Williamsburg + Vacant Lots

Land Speculation

-Supply is not Correlated with Demamd = Growth for Profit

Potential for Growth

Domino Sugar Factory (DSF)

processes at multiple geographical, social and political scales. TRENDS - PRIVATIZATION OF SPACE AND RESOURCES The private management and control of public parks and spaces, though promoted under the general public’s desire for safety, security and cleanliness, comes at a high price. These depend on various actors positioned outside the democratic framework which we control—business associations, the police establishment, private security companies etc.—signaling the ongoing pacification of the public in local politics.

Since the 1980s, public spaces in urban centers are increasingly run and managed by private associations, private patrons and businesses with vested interest in revitalizing them in line with the current rhetoric of progress and modernization. Part of this agenda involves rules and regulation predicated on private property rights, and inherently, exclusion. The privatization of public space reinforces social inequality by curating where these spaces are situated and who the target public is. With the 1970s urban fiscal crisis and the decline of inner city neighborhood, a growth coalition of

private investors, real estate, higher education institution and commercial interests, concerned with this trajectory, participated in the upscaling and privatization of space. Subsequently, these same actors were involved in forming publicprivate partnerships as a mode of governing public space and resources. As the city continued to face budget cuts, the Parks Department has become increasingly willing to partake in various market-based strategies and lease more and more space to private individuals and corporate sponsors (Zukin, 2010)*. Bryant Park and other open spaces like it represent an ever increasing form of public space creation. These spaces offer various programmes in physically appealing arenas, where one is promised a low risk of unwelcome encounters, capitalizing on what a civilized ideal entails, contributing to a docile public. Even if free access is granted, consumption is an inherent part of the experience in which city dwellers can not only ignore difference or the other, but are increasingly actively able to avoid them (Zukin, 2010)**. The result of our public spaces being increasingly turned over to private groups of property owners means that we are granting them the power to exclude people from such spaces which, further, contribute to denying basic rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly, with no laws to hold the private associations in charge of such spaces accountable. This phenomenon, moreover, can be tied to an increasingly repressive state, neoliberal urban development, and the advancement of

* Zukin, Sharon. Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. ** Ibidem

GROWTH MACHINE -Media -Real Estate -Universities -Arts and Culture

Labor Force Restructuring

Devalorization / Valorization

Accumulation by Dispossession

Class Restructuring

INTER - URBAN COMPETITION

Class Identity Formation + Valorization

Government Policies

-Branding -Marketing Strategies -Indeces

Race +

GOVERNMENT AS ENTREPRENEUR Luxury City Production

Displacement of Citizens as Inhabitants Customers / Consumers

Homogenization

New Landscape for Production + Consumption

Public Space = Space of Consumption

OPEN SPACE DSF Waterfront Plan Havemeyer (Privately-owned ‘Public’ Space) Park

Review Board

Appointed by Developers Two Trees

Public Space as Amenity

Private Interest in Space

Symbolic Capital

Kara Walker Exhibit

2005 Rezoning of Williamsburg Waterfront

Privatization of Public Space

Mixed-Use Developments Incentive Zoning -421a

Complete loss of Democratic Citizenship

NEW YORK SPECIFIC

Developer Tactics

Public -Private Partnerships Fragmentation + Triangulation

-‘Third Way’ As Nonpolitical

2003 Zoning Resolution

Aesthetics of Spaces of Ethnic + Class Difference

Private Interests

e -Incentives l ur To -Tax Breaks + -Privatization -Zoning (Upzoning / Downzoning)

Class

Gentrification

‘Authenticity’ and Displacement

ital c ap

-J-51 -ICAP

BIDs

LDCs

Conservancies

Uneven Development of ‘Public’ Space = Rules and Regulations -Limitations on Public -Inclusion / Exclusion

Private Property as Prerequisite for Management + Ownership

= DEPOLITICIZATION / SECURITIZATION / COMMODIFICATION / HOMOGENIZATION OF PUBLIC SPACE + DIFFERENCE PARC

City Legislated Representational Justice Decision-making Power = Capital Assets

Multiplicity + Difference

Publicly Elected Publicity

Public Maintenance + Programming

SURPLUS CAPITAL Investment Human Assets

Labor Force

Fixed Assets

Urbanization

Knowledge / Science / Technology

Infrastructure

Built Form

Transition from Industrial to Knowledge Economy

Disinvested Industrial Neigborhoods Williamsburg + Vacant Lots

Land Speculation

-Supply is not Correlated with Demamd = Growth for Profit

Potential for Growth

Domino Sugar Factory (DSF)

market ideals for the suppression of organized labor, the unemployed and welfare recipients (Zukin, 2010)*. Privatization under neoliberal urbanism has been characterized by its enclosures. New urban redevelopment projects have destroyed the previous use value and publicness of its surrounding spaces while simultaneously eradicating the city of those that threaten to devalorize its value and potential consumption practices (Mayer, 2013). Such urban redevelopment projects also participate in privatized space production generated through state legislated Incentive Zoning and tax breaks on residential and mixed use developments. These enable the creation of ‘open spaces’ which are produced by developers and, in the case of the Domino Sugar Factory, remain owned and maintained by them. The notion, however, that there is a clear distinction and separation between public and private needs to challenged. The experience of individuals and groups highlights that what is deemed public is in many regards privatized (media outlets, access to the Internet, and many rights of way in the city) and what appear to be private matters (laws governing sexuality and social reproduction, the policing of national borders, and state surveillance of personal activities) are heavily infiltrated by public order (Smith and Low, 2006). The state emerges as the product of specific orderings of power relations, which determine the public that is to be included and that which is

* Ibidem

excluded. This again is not fixed but rather fluid and this precise fluidity is what is at stake with increasing privatization and repression within the arena of public space and sphere. Privacy and publicity are experienced through power relationships in space and should not be considered purely as spatial properties.Materiality and ownership are only one side of what makes a space public, what is also important is the way in which the environment is ordered to enable a type of experience that is public in our conception today (Mitrasinovic, 2006).

The discourse on what is public today is a critical issue that arises out of specific modes of space production and ownerships structures shaping how the public experiences what is meant to be public space. Here the role of PARC becomes particularly generative, as it enables new discourses on varying dimensions of publicness. It begins to open the space for alternative publicities to democratically confront one another in the public realm(s). Heterogeneity provides an alternative source for creating new kinds of practices and discourses around what it means to belong and participate in society. Insurgent citizenship – citizenship that is not bound by the nation state and seeks other forms of legitimacy – is critical to rethinking what social means, and the realm of possibility rooted in heterogeneous lived

GROWTH MACHINE -Media -Real Estate -Universities -Arts and Culture

Labor Force Restructuring

Class Restructuring

Devalorization / Valorization

Accumulation by Challenging Dispossession Dispossession Through Intervening in Space Production

INTER - URBAN COMPETITION

Class Identity Formation + Valorization

Government Policies

-Branding -Marketing Strategies -Indeces

Race +

GOVERNMENT AS ENTREPRENEUR Luxury City Production

Displacement of Citizens as Inhabitants Customers / Consumers

Difference Homogenization

NEW YORK SPECIFIC

Public Space = Space of Consumption

Review Board

Appointed by Developers Two Trees

Democratically Elected

Developer Tactics

2005 Rezoning of Williamsburg Waterfront

Privatization of Public Space

Mixed-Use Developments Incentive Zoning -421a

Complete loss of Democratic Citizenship New Urban Democratic Mechanism for Citizen Participation

Private Interests

Public -Private Partnerships Fragmentation Symbolic New Alliances + Triangulation Capital b/w PPPs Kara Walker Exhibit Subverting New Landscape for Fragmentation Production + Consumption

-‘Third Way’ As Nonpolitical

2003 Zoning Resolution

Aesthetics of Spaces of Ethnic + Class Difference

ital

-Incentives To -Tax Breaks + -Privatization -Zoning (Upzoning / Downzoning)

Class

Gentrification

‘Authenticity’ and Displacement

ap ec l ur

OPEN SPACE DSF Waterfront Plan Havemeyer (Privately-owned ‘Public’ Space) Park

Private Interest Public Space in Space as Amenity Public Space for Alternative Forms of Publicity

-J-51 -ICAP

BIDs

LDCs

Uneven Development of ‘Public’ Space = Rules and Regulations -Limitations on Public -Inclusion / Exclusion

Conservancies PARC

Private Property as Prerequisite for Management + Ownership

= DEPOLITICIZATION / SECURITIZATION / COMMODIFICATION / HOMOGENIZATION OF PUBLIC SPACE + DIFFERENCE PARC

City Legislated Representational Justice Decision-making Power = Capital Assets

Multiplicity + Difference

Publicly Elected Publicity

Public Maintenance + Programming

experience, “which is to say, in the ethnographic present and not in the utopian futures” (Holston, 53 1995)*.

This potentiality opens the space for a productive agonism within the experiential and productive elements inherent in space. The harnessing of such potential, as utilized in PARC, can work towards reclaiming some of the depoliticized practices of privatization and state reconfiguring.

We begin with an exploration of Triangulation, which we have come to see as a primary tool utilized by developers to weaken community opposition through stratifying groups and organizing them in a particular hierarchical ordering. Such a tactic works to solidify existing racial and class cleavages existing in a specific locality. Further, we situate this tactic within a broader spectrum of capital strategies that employ culture and symbolic values to generate long term profit. All of this is tactfully executed under the banner of community benefit and public good, depoliticizing the process of urban development.

THEORETICAL THEMES Having performed in-depth research around the processes and negotiations during the Domino Sugar Factory redevelopment and utilizing our primary methods of analysis, we have drawn out four main theoretical frameworks: Triangulation, Capital Strategies and Social Good, Preservation and Aesthetics and Multiple Belonging and Difference. Situated within broader, local and global trends, the thesis unpacks the larger cycles necessary for the reproduction of new landscapes of consumption and production. Drawings on thematics as varied as race theory, sociology, theories of justice, architectural theory, history studies, and political theory, the analysis spans across various disciplinary boundaries.

* Holston, James. Spaces of insurgent citizenship. In: Planning Theory 13, (1995): 35-51.

Another mode of depoliticizing space production is through giving primacy to aesthetics in design and preservation. The aesthetic representations of the past serve to obstruct the political nature of landscape formation and narratives of progress and modernization. Further, within the neighborhood at large, we see the aestheticization of difference under the promotion of tolerance and authenticity, serving to detach space from its producers. We conclude this chapter with exploring and calling for more expansive conceptions of multiple belonging and difference within the decision making process and space formation. This serves as an optimal segue into our propositional chapter.

RALLY AT CITY HALL PHOTOGRAPH Photograph of Diana Reyna, Council Member District 34 speaking in front of City Hall in favor of CPC’s proposal. Source: © Aaron Short, 2010.

CITY GOVERNMENT

PARC strengthens the democratic process through introducing representational justice in local politics. PARC is a body with binding authority that oversees all the stages of development and operations of public space.

Borough President

Borough Board

City Council

Community Board

OWNER / DEVELOPER OF SITE

Responding to our findings, which reveal highly uneven development processes with ineffective democratic mechanisms for public participation, we are proposing a new participatory model in the form of a legislated body, which we are calling Public Action Review Collaborative (PARC). PARC strengthens the democratic process through introducing representational justice in local politics. PARC is a body with binding authority that oversees all the stages of development and operations of public space.

It challenges the power imbalance in urban development, creating long term structural change to the process of public-private space production. While we are designing for the political structures we are inherently creating political design through drawing on productive agonism and politics that do not assume or strive for consensus. The purpose of such design is to create spaces that reveal and challenge existing power relations by providing openings for dissent and new possibilities for action (Di Salvo, 2010). PARC introduces new means of envisioning space production that is contra to the status quo. Its purpose is to enable contestation around issues of ownership, displacement, conflict, disagreement, access and representation. The role of PARC is thus multifold, first, it exposes the root of such conflicts and unmasks a fake sense

of consensus, second, it provides the essential deliberative spaces for contestation, and third, it grants the legislative power to institutionalize its outcomes. PARC subverts the dominant notion that one requires private capital in order to have agency in the production and management of shared space and resources. This project does not aim to provide a solution but rather is a targeted intervention in a highly unequal system of development that is promoted as a win-win strategy. PARC’s constituents, identified through our research and actionable theory practice, are currently trying to find ways in which to participate in the production of local neighborhood spaces. They currently lack agency to varying degrees based on their resources—time, knowledge, financial ability etc. They face the further impediment of structural and systemic shortcomings of the political structure allowing such processes. PARC’s structure and operationalized mechanisms for supporting equitable deliberative processes, work to address the above differences between publics with varying resources. Bringing together such disparate publics challenges the current narrow notion of whom is granted legitimacy in both discursive and physical space.

Parks and Recreation

1/3

Department of City Planning

PARC

Public Action Review Collaborative

FUNDING STRUCTURE

Steering Committee

Commercial / Industrial / Residential Owners (Representative of developer) = 1 Vote

* Day Labourers/ * Commercial Tenants

* Residents / Tenants

Unions = 1 Vote

Community Organization

= 1 Vote

MULTIPLE PUBLICS REPRESENTED

1. Needs Assesment for PARC Constituents + Members 2. Within Set Criteria for PARCs

PROPOSAL

Council Member

PROJECT PLAN - Budget - Maintenance - Programming - Operations - Physical Recommendations 3.

* Democratic public requires institutionalized mechanisms in place that:

“1. Support self organization of members to achieve collective empowerment and reflective understanding of their position with regards to others and society. 2. Proof that deliberation between decision makers has taken into consideration various group perspectives. 3. the effective recognition and representation of the distinct voices and perspectives of those of its constituent groups that are oppressed or disadvantaged” (Young 184, 1990)

Schedule for Public Meetings + Presentation on Ammendments 4. Steering Committee Vote + First Draft Plan 5. Submit to City Officials to Be Approved LEGISLATIVE AUTHORIZATION

PARC STRUCTURE Diagram by Julia Borowicz and Larissa Begault. Diagram illustrating PARC’s structure and legislative authorization process. PARC is formed of a steering committee of 6 constituent groups. The process of getting a PARC authorized is similar to the BID procedure and necessitates the coming together of civil and civic society in a specific locality.

= 1 Vote

City Officials

= 1 Vote

CONCLUSION In examining the multiscalar forces that shape our new landscapes of consumption and production, we bear witness to economic and political structures that infiltrate numerous sites of our daily lives, from as intimate as the body and home to our public spaces, urban localities and global sites of encounter. It is fundamental to look at the interstices of human action, capital flows, cycles of investment and disinvestment and everyday spaces of deliberation and struggle in order to begin to carve out openings for alternative modes of cohabiting and commoning that are more just and representative. This also means we must radically shift our understandings of where such critical sites for action reside. We need to look to state institutions for the generation of a new modes of exercising our citizenship within new democratic spaces of struggle, contest and productive agonism. This requires a more expansive idea of what state institutions can offer, beyond merely a means for opposing corruption and power, as spaces of difference, social change and representative justice. In proposing PARC we aim to harness the critical potential of institutionalized deliberative space of action. Here we take up our current mayor in his overture to governing â&#x20AC;&#x153;we here in New York City government have many tools at our disposal to make good on that promise [of greater equality], on that responsibility, and we will use themâ&#x20AC;? (De Blasio in NYT, 2014).

Drawing on this workâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s findings, PARC works to counter the stratification of publics along racial and class lines by moving past distributive notions of justice and offering institutionalized mechanisms in which a representational public can participate in the decision making process affecting their environment. In recognizing the real differences between groups and the fallacy of impartiality, PARC mobilizes passions towards a democratic discourse that begins to move us out of our postpolitical condition. With this proposition, there is an opportunity to find value outside capital or symbolic, beyond the superficial aesthetization of difference and the past to create agentic spaces of multiple belonging. - How do we ensure such deliberative spaces encompass difference in the everyday experience of those spaces? - How do we create commitment to such new democratic structures and reframe the current apprehension toward state institutions? - How do we ensure that PARC does not come to be another means by which onus is placed on the individuals for the equitable and just production of shared space? - How do we ensure it is not co opted by insular community interests?

-P.A.R.CPublic Action Review Collaborative Economy and Governance

Larissa Begault

Julia Borowicz

Larissa is an architect and urbanist. She completed her degree in architecture at the Architectural Association in London. Her work in urbanism was initiated in Santiago, Chile where she worked for an emergency housing organization, latin American, African and Asian Social Housing Service (SELAVIP), this was further complemented by participating in an urban research project in Havana, Cuba focussed on a community lead environmental project for economic and social development. She then practiced as a Lead Designer for three years in London, at Feilden Fowles Architects, a studio driven by sustainable design practices, primarily working on educational projects. She recently graduated from the MA Theories of Urban Practice at Parsons The New School For Design where her work focussed on concepts of belonging and alternative notions of citizenship that engender more just, representative and participatory democracy. Her current endeavours aim to develop new methodologies of urban practice challenging systemic exclusion and stratification of the public in urban processes.

Julia Borowicz is an urbanist with experience in community planning and non profit social justice work. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto in Urban Studies, Human Geography and Political Science. She was able to situate her studies and knowledge by working with the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative clinic, an organization that supports women who have experienced violence. She worked to deliver their mandate of remedying the symptoms of violence through counseling, legal, information and referral service, while also addressing these issues through systemic change in the form of community development and policy reform. She also worked as an Editorial Intern at FUSE Magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an urban, arts, culture, politics quarterly, completing a social media platform that looked at FUSEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feminist legacy, particularly critical urban feminist, queer and indigenous solidarity practices. She has recently graduated from the MA Theories of Urban Practice at Parsons, The New School for Design. Upon graduating she has embarked on a new collaboration with Cohabitation Strategies, developing a design manual on sustainable social and environmental strategies for the Restored Spaces Program, run by Philadelphia Mural Arts. Her current work focuses on the development of new methodologies of practice that challenge systemic exclusion and stratification of the public in urban processes.

Opening the door to the collective creation of effective strategies supporting productive negotiation towards democracy, and tactics that activate citizenship.

AL - AHMADI A graphic novel re-visualizing the historical narrative of a colonial Kuwaiti oil company town By Rania Dalloul

I wanted to challenge the colonial framework of historical narrative that dominates the Middle East’s history, and ultimately, the way we speak about it. If there is a point of contention with Arabs writing and rewriting their own history, then yes, it is important. INTRODUCTION The unofficial story of Ahmadi was one I learned through my family’s history. Facing exile from their homes in Palestine, my maternal grandparents, who were a university professor, and a high school principal, sought a home in which to raise their first-born child. After living in England and Jordan, my grandfather was recruited in the early 1960s to Ahmadi, Kuwait — a new company town built to house the employees of Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), a British-American owned entity. The Kuwaiti government invited my grandfather, to take a position in the Ministry of Finance. Kuwait in the 1960s was in the process of gaining independence from the British mandate and undertaking a project of modernization.* My grandparents moved to Ahmadi during a period of Kuwait’s history when Arabs were embraced for their educational backgrounds and professional experience, having lived in other British colonies themselves.

COVER IMAGE “ A Palestinian family settles into North Ahmadi. Only one year prior, it was forbidden by Kuwait’s British authorities for Arabs to dwell amongst the English.”

* Alissa, Reem. “Modernizing Kuwait: Nation-Building and Unplanned Spatial Practices” Berkeley Planning Journal 22(1). University of California, Berkeley, 2009. PG 15.

To what extent do these spaces meet the objectives they promise to communities, typically in need of more green space? How do these benefits weigh against potential costs of development?

They were modern, educated, adaptable, and knew how to communicate and mediate effectively between the English colonizers, and the Kuwaiti locals.* My grandparents and their children assimilated quickly and easily in Ahmadi, and grew to become an important part of the community of Arabs who heavily populated Ahmadi, outnumbering the British and American foreigners, as well as the Kuwaiti locals. After the Kuwait Oil Company nationalized in 1971, my grandfather was transferred out of his office, and his family was moved into a suburb of Kuwait City, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. My encounters with Ahmadi from an early childhood and ongoing experiences shaped the research questions that informed this work. Arabs like my grandparents were left out of the history of Ahmadi, as it was retold to me as a young adult.

I wanted to understand the spatial and narrative processes of exclusion and erasure, through the lens of the one who is erased and not the other way around. My research questions, which began as observations about segregation, architecture, spatial difference, communities, grew into desires to challenge and disrupt historical narratives, steeped in colonial constructions, archival limitations, and minimal representation of multiple voices and lived experiences.

* M.H. Interview by Rania Dalloul. Tape recording. Kuwait City, January 2015.

If alternative narratives are empowered and revealed, their impact can rattle the conventional prisms of historical constructions. **

Decolonizing a history entails the subversion of its master’s tools. As Edward Said reminds us, “ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied.”*** In 2014, the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) celebrated its 75th anniversary, and commissioned an English historian to write an extensive history of both town and company. In the book Ahmadi is classified as a company town, whereas Reem Alissa’s dissertation of Ahmadi’s history argues that in its first decades, Ahmadi was as a colonial company town. The distinction is an important one, and informs the departure herein. Until Kuwait’s independence in 1961, English, American, and European senior employees of KOC coexisted alongside thousands of Indian, Pakistani, and Arab clericalists, technicians, labourers, and their families (junior employees). Between the senior and junior employees, housing policies, civil rights, access to amenities, and issues of belonging, disparaged the latter community. While the book does not make this claim, Reem Alissa certainly does, I choose to build on her argument with a further elaboration into the nuances and nature of this so-called disparagement.

** Hughes, 20. *** Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. PG. 13

WEWERE “The history of Ahmadi was enigmatic and undocumented. My research aims to address the marginalized and undocumented stories of historical narratives”

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK METHODOLOGY Post-colonial theory involves the work of notable thinkers, namely, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha. Their important and influential academic scholarship around culture and identity formation, and resistance in the postcolonial context, has deeply inspired the critical lens in this research process. Edward Said’s Orientalism published in the late 1970s was a seminal feat in academic revitalization of alternative narratives, and a transformative and empowering shift in understanding the struggles and strengths of colonies and former colonies of Western Imperialists. Said argues for this shift in thought, and shaped a way of theorizing the history of Imperialism, as a form of resistance through discourse. He writes that, “For the first time, the history of imperialism and its culture can now be studied as neither monolithic nor reductively compartmentalized, separate, distinct. True, there has been a disturbing eruption of separatist and chauvinist discourse, whether in India, Lebanon, or Yugoslavia, or in Afrocentric, Islamocentric, or Eurocentric proclamations; far from invalidating the struggle to be free from empire, these reductions of cultural discourse actually prove the validity of a fundamental liberationist energy that animates the wish to be independent, to speak freely and without the burden of unfair domination. The only way to understand this energy, however, is historically…”* In his text, Said defines ‘Orientalism’ as, “a style

Said, Culture and Imperialism (Introduction)

of thought,” and emphasizes its complexity, because it at once addresses and concerns itself with art, literature, academia, social sciences and politics.

It’s a study of power, but also, of culture and identity, through the critical points of representation and subordination. Because very little contemporary and critical scholarship has been devoted to the complicated project of the neo-colonial system of power in the Middle East, and the complications of the Arab identity through layers of colonization, displacement and migration, it is important to understand these things, historically. Anthony D. King’s comprehensive analysis of colonial urbanism and development proved to be extremely relevant to the case of Ahmadi, and applicable on many levels. King’s assessment of the colonial town as varying and nuanced, yet consistent in its habits and behaviours, provides a fluid network of ideas, anchored by very specific examples of typologies, and sociological patterns. Anne McClintock’s essay, “The Angels of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-Colonialism,”” provides the refreshing and critical turn that is necessary in such cases especially. Although Post-colonial theory, Subalternism, and Orientalism, are all significant methodologies and theories in structuring the discourse around marginalization, and challenging global power structures of knowledge production, they still fall relatively short of radical change. The reductionism of an after colonial, as if to suggest

MADANIPOUR QUOTE: “Ali Madanipour, Social Exclusion and Space (1998)”

The notion of “excavating alternative narratives,” is meant to emphasize the enshrouded stories of everyday people’s experiences and identities, as they lose relevance and representation in the popular discourse of dominant cultures. Colonial histories submerge the experiences and accounts from the words of the indigenous, or the working class.

a before colonial, creates a hybrid history, in which Colonialism becomes the marker of history, and thus, “returns at the moment of its disappearance.”* Eloquently, she states the problem with orienting theory around temporal axes of colonialism, “ makes it easier not to see, and therefore harder to theorize, the continuities in international imbalances in imperial power.”**

Excavation of lived experiences and the visualization of alternative narratives through graphic novelization, are the most critical elements to both this research process and outcome. In order to visually depict the process and the narrative, I collaborated with my sister, Nada Dalloul, an artist and illustrator living in Kuwait. The purpose of this collaboration was to reconstruct the experiences within the research process. The reason this methodology was chosen, and regarded as significant, is because graphic novels can be a powerful tool in illustrating a narrative in more ways than one: symbolically, lyrically and visually. The notion of “excavating alternative narratives,” is meant to emphasize the enshrouded stories of everyday people’s experiences and identities, as they lose relevance and representation in the popular discourse of dominant cultures. Colonial histories submerge the experiences and accounts from the words of the indigenous, or the working class.

* McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-Colonialism” Social Text, No. 31/32, Third World and Post-Colonial Issues , pp. 84-98. Duke University Press, 1992. PG 86. ** McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-Colonialism” Social Text, No. 31/32, Third World and Post-Colonial Issues , pp. 84-98. Duke University Press, 1992. PG 89.

BACKGROUND The walled city of Kuwait, miles away from Ahmadi with nothing but dirt road to connect them for many years, was a coastal urban port, with its own physical manifestation of traditional values, and global economic interaction. The nomadic and seafaring townspeople of Kuwait were pastoral, and overseas traders, with an active economy suited to their simple lifestyle. Upwards of 35,000 inhabitants, the town had a busy marketplace, and clusters of homes centered around courtyards. The plan to re-urbanize Kuwait, once oil was discovered, was commissioned to British architects Minoprio Spencely and Macfarlane, who would later introduced wider streets fit for automobiles, and more drastically - a suburban grid layout plan which essentially scattered and dispersed a culturally significant typology of communal living. This new master plan saw the eventual demolition of the the historic wall of Kuwait Town, which reasserted its divisive utility for keeping out nomadic tribes, in civically stratifying local societies, and essentially introducing a spatial manifestation of segregation*** ; Ahmadi was no different in this regard. On one hand, Ahmadi’s town plan can be read from left to right, as a three-tiered: North, Mid, and South Ahmadi. I have in my research encountered various names to the area marked as “South Ahmadi” -- from, “Arab Village,” to “East Ahmadi”. These notes will become relevant in my analysis of

*** Al-Nakib, Farah. “Towards an Urban Alternative: Protests and Public Participation.” Built Environment, Vol 40, No. 1 (pp. 101-117).

keep consistent with Reem Alissa’s naming of “Arab Village” but also recognize that my map labels it as the South. North Ahmadi was designated to accommodate the senior staff, a fact that almost every interview participant I had conversed with, made sure to clarify from the start. In KOC, senior status was exclusively comprised of British and American employees, or ‘foreigners’ (as they are referred to colloquially across all of my interviews). Mid Ahmadi was reserved for offices, and housed only junior employees, who were Indians and Pakistanis, sometimes referred to as technicians, or artisans. South Ahmadi, or Arab Village, was generally a campsite with some temporary housing, reserved for the labour staff, which were entirely Arab and some Iranian. Most of the labourers were Kuwaiti according to the interviews.

While the map does not outline these socio-spatial distinctions, it is documented within the meeting minutes sourced at British Petroleum archives, a clause within a policy report, claims in researchers’ work that I’ve read, and a fact stated by every single interview participant, who lived in Ahmadi.

In reading notes from the meetings that took place, I sought to analyze the language around ‘housing’ and ‘segregation’, when discussed by the English authorities amongst themselves. The conditions they addressed were not critical of the disparities between housing units, but rather the social and physical condition of the people themselves being distasteful due to the housing conditions. Indians being, “‘....of an appallingly poor type…. incorrectly dressed…,” and their tent housing alongside Pakistanis, to host “an abundance of filth and the miserable belongings of their occupants, [with] little protection from the heat of summer or the cold winds of winter...In the absence of separate kitchens...the unsavouriness of the assortment of food smells in the tents.”* The semiotics of the housing reports in contrast to the behavioural reports, were apparent when reading about the interrelations between ‘Indian servants’ and ‘Europeans’, or junior and senior staff, respectively. Moments such as, “relations between Indians and Europeans suffer...could be attended to at once…” leading to, “tendency on the part of certain persons to treat the Indian with too much familiarity. An Indian will react to this immediately and will take advantage of it and to the detriment of all concerned….”. The proposed remedial measure against such dangers is a suggested, “lecture on the treatment of Indians [for] persons who have never been in the Middle East or India before”**.

* Taken from report, “Notes on Indian and Pakistani Personnel in Kuwait” 8 December 1949 File 52597/001, BP. (source, Alissa, R, p. 53) ** Alissa, Reem. “Modernizing Kuwait: Nation-Building and Unplanned Spatial Practices” Berkeley Planning Journal 22(1). University of California, Berkeley, 2009. PG54

a later period than these initial years, and so I will Ahmadi’s social demographic according to the first census located within the British Petroleum archives in London, England, reveals just how much of a minority the ‘foreigners’ were. In 1945, 45 ‘Europeans’ ventured to the desert town and brought along with them a total of 90 Indian and Pakistani junior staff, around the period of their regional Independence from the English Imperial Crown. By 1949 the number rose to 1,286 junior staff, or “Clerical Foreman & Technical staff (C.F. &T.)”, and apart from this influx of CF&Ts, there was a following influx in the same year of 4,000 ‘artisans and domestics’ who were mostly from Pakistan, most of whom were not hosted in Ahmadi but given to a camp miles from the town* “At the end of 1949, KOC personnel consisted of the following breakdown; 1,501 senior staff (British, American and a few Europeans) 1,298 junior staff (Indian/Pakistani), 4,789 artisans (Indian/Pakistani); and 6,672 unskilled labor (Kuwaitis, Iranian and other Arabs), bringing the total to 14,260 personnel.”** Only 10% of this population, the senior staff, was given permanent housing.

* **

Ibid, p. 52 Ibid, p. 54

THE ENCLAVE The initial encounter of Ahmadi as ‘enclave’ in this research grew out of a conversation with M.H. on the porosity of cultural values and exchanges between the diverse residents of Ahmadi. In this little town of 20,000, there once lived English, American, European, Indian, Pakistani, Palestinian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Persian, Iraqi, Kuwaiti, and some Omani, residents. The policies enacted were ostensibly and unvaryingly racist, M.H informed me, and did not necessarily apply to their classifications of employee rank, so much as they did to the employee’s race and ethnicity. For example, residence in North Ahmadi was restricted to senior employees at the Kuwait Oil Company. Yet, an Indian doctor could not reside in North Ahmadi, as did an American doctor. The English decided everything, he explained. They owned the land, because of their deal with Kuwait, and did not require any legal or governmental involvement, at these stages.

After many conversations with Arabs, it became apparent that each person in their own way had come from a place with an already established relationship to English colonialism and mperialism.

ONLY ONE CLUB: “Enclaves, or spaces of social significance were enacted spaces of colonialism in Ahmadi, whether due to their cultural production or the explicit and implicit politics of belonging.”

“Most of us came from Palestine, we knew how to speak English, we were used to them,” explained one individual. Another expressed that; “the Kuwaitis were much different than we were. They had no connection to the British before Ahmadi... but we did. We came from all over the Arab countries, their armies and companies were already in Egypt, Lebanon, everywhere…”

It became clear to me that Ahmadi, as a case study, provided a critical and vivid insight into the plethora of identities, nationalized, colonized and decolonized, in spaces of difference and continuous subordination. With Pan-Arabism and Nasserism on the rise in 1956, Ahmadi and KOC faced “a new and disquieting dimension to the political realities within which the oil industry operated.”* The anti-British sentiment was fuelled by Arab solidarity, according to Fryer, and was detrimental to the good relations that the locals had with the British who had treated them with respect and courtesy, as allies. While the popular discourse around the history of Kuwait and England’s ‘special relationship’, maintains this notion, several interviews and recently unearthed opinions and voices have contested that peaceful narrative with contradictory remarks about the intimidation tactics and ill treatment of Kuwaiti labourers, in particular, by the English, and the systemic and aggressive disregard for local customs and traditions**. Even though Arabs who

* Fryer, Jonathan. “Fuelling Kuwait’s Development: The Story of Kuwait Oil Company” KOC, 2013.PG87. ** Workers Union History interview on news channel. Released in April 2015.

were given the opportunity to do so moved to the North, their interactions with the foreigners still remained minimal. As one interviewee explained; “...the societies were certainly fragmented. Foreigners socialized amongst themselves just as we did amongst ourselves. On occasion there were business dinners, which brought us together, or there was a farewell party we would be invited to, but there was not community with the foreigners. They were our next door neighbours, our relationships were very friendly, “Hi, How are you?” and such, but there were no visits or invites, and the same applies to the Indians and Pakistanis who themselves were a closed community. Same thing goes for South Kuwait [where Kuwaitis resided], as well.”***

Although the Arabs were integrated into North Ahmadi, and it was meant to be a process of appeasement by KOC, it seemed there were no social efforts and strides made to foster their cultural integration. I spent some time searching the archival content; as well as inquiring with research participants, around their social activities and functions once they assimilated into the North.

*** R.S. Interview by Rania Dalloul. Tape recording. Kuwait City, January 2015.

EDUCATION: “Education and training were significant examples of the distinction made by the Kuwait Oil Company’s preference and investment in particular cultural groups.”

I asked them what about their lifestyle, if anything, had changed, and what social habits and environments they pursued after the transition occurred. While one woman claimed her husband was the first Arab man to jog in the area, she was also provided one of the most recurring answers I’d received throughout the entire research process; “there was only one club, the Hubara Club”*. A sporting club built in the North to provide leisure facilities like swimming, tennis, squash, a library, a bar, a restaurant, etc. Hubara had a strict policy of only granting membership to the North residents of Ahmadi. Of course this translated into “Westerners only” considering the demographic stipulations of residency in the North. Yet, Hubara would quickly become embraced as the most culturally and socially significant, and valued site of interest, for not only Ahmadi residents of the North, but also, the Arabs in particular once they became North residents themselves. It became a site of distinction, as some interviewees claimed, “it was the only place to be”**.

be drawn with King’s notion of the establishments of resorts in colonial towns, which, “served to extend a system of social stratification and residential differentiation in the metropolitan society, already existing at the level of neighbourhood and town, to a large urban and regional scale.****” KOC’s archives and documented history make no mention whatsoever of the labour unions, and their moments of resistance. Around the same time the unions observed strikes and structures of resistance, KOC would publish reports about the ‘expansion and modernization in KOC,” with photographs of infrastructure as reference. There was an increasing antagonism between the company and its employees, and the KOC would still not comply in hiring more Kuwaitis, as Miriam Joyce observed in her book, “Kuwait 1945-1996: An Anglo American Perspective,” the company executives of KOC were defensive, and reportedly ready to integrate more Kuwaitis, but found it difficult and arduous to cope with the ones already employed.

Hubara, supposedly named for the migratory bird mythically renowned for its aphrodisiac powers***, was ostensibly a club built for leisure. What can be extrapolated from its policies and procedural bounds, is its provision of a gated space and community, within which certain ideals and values were shared and promoted. Here, a similarity can

In 1970 the company would face regional competition, and make a public declaration for internal company reorganization of employees, jobs, and budget redistribution. Several foreigners began to leave, and an increasing amount of Kuwaitis moved in. By 1972 there were: 1,162 Kuwaitis, 1,083 Arabs, 280 Indians and Pakistanis, 222 Britons and 19 Americans. The demographics had completely switched, and also severely decreased.*****

* F.S. Interview by Rania Dalloul. Tape recording. Kuwait City, January 2015. ** Ibid *** Delcan, Walsh. “For Saudis and Pakistanis, a Bird of Contention.” The New York Times, February 7, 2015.

**** King, Anthony D. “Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment” London: Routledge, 1976. PG 160. ***** Joyce, Miriam“Kuwait 1945-1996: An Anglo American Perspective,” PG. 56

ARAB PERIOD: “While Pan-Arabism was a major driver behind Arabs gaining more rights within Ahmadi, it was also an opportunity for the colonial powers to sublimate the educated Arabs and alienate the local Kuwaiti.

By the mid 1970s, one interviewee recalled, “they put up these awful aluminum fences -they covered our homes, and cut between our neighborhoods. They’re still up today…”* She was referring to the shift in Kuwaiti ownership and employees of KOC, who had initiated residential laws that increased privacy for each home. Under the British, she explained, people were not allowed to tamper with the structure of the housing unit -- not redo the facade, nor change the layout, without permission from the company. Within months of new Kuwaiti residents in Ahmadi, people had begun to rent out their garage space as apartment units for non-employees, and pave their lawns in order to expand their homes and garage space. Gardens and front yards slowly became a non-identifier, for those who did not value the history of garden competitions and such. Most of the former residents I met with had mentioned they left Ahmadi around 1975. A good number of them were transferred into the city, or simply given early retirement. Others, they left because they said it lost its charm and no longer felt like home. The Hubara club would become increasingly unused and neglected, while the old South and East ends of Ahmadi, where Kuwaiti labourers once resided, would be demolished.

With a majority Kuwaiti population, and full ownership obtained by 1980, the town had completely transformed from a Western, colonial enclave, to a diversely populated company town, and eventually into a Kuwaiti neighbourhood, celebrated for its British suburban architecture, and historical role as a modernizing agent. The rapid transition of physical structures, ethnicities, public spaces and places of social production, is still an undocumented and underrepresented period of time in Kuwait’s collective memory and histories.

One Kuwaiti woman I interviewed offered to drive through the town with me so she could narrate her memories spatially -- but then she remembered herself, “oh, yes. It’s all gone, they are not there anymore. They tore them down, all our homes, and moved us to the North.”**

* Z.K. Inteview by Rania Dalloul. Tape Recording. Ahmadi, January 2015. ** M.J. Interview by Rania Dalloul. Tape Recording. Kuwait City, 2015.

CAKE: “Housing conditions were a direct manifestation of raciallydriven policies enacted by the English. “Indian Village” and “Arab Village” were examples of the spatial segregation behind designing the town’s map. The amenities, quality of material and amount of land varied greatly according to company rank and race.

AL - AHMADI A graphic novel re-visualizing the historical narrative of a colonial Kuwaiti oil company town

CONCLUSION Alternative historical research is a powerful and subversive approach to decolonizing authorship and appraisal. Graphic visualization, as observed in this thesis, is a strong and effective tool for engagement, and can foster communication to a wide audience, while maintaining a centrality to the voices of the marginalized. The graphic novel’s ability to visually represent, rewrite, and illustrate oral histories, subaltern experiences, testimonies, and spatial memories, renders it a dynamic tool for historical archiving, from the absent, buried, and invisible. This thesis utilizes the graphic novel as foremost, a tool of engagement, in order to reach multiple audiences and disseminate the knowledge. It is also meant to be used as an educational device, even if its methodology is contested and challenged, the discursive space which can arise out of this strategy, will render it all the more dynamic. Through reimagining Ahmadi’s history of colonial urbanism, and the lived experiences of junior employees, this research confronts larger questions of contemporary urban processes in Kuwait. Pervasive issues of citizenship, labourers’ rights, identity, and belonging, are entangled in a complex co-presence of modernization, globalization, and Post-colonialism. A shift in understanding such relationships as non-episodic, but always unraveling, can shape new and necessary tools for future urban practices. *

* This text is an abridged version of a more detailed body of work, modified to fit this publication.

Rania Dalloul Rania Dalloul is Palestinian-Lebanese, born and raised in Kuwait. After receiving her BA in Political Science and Philosophy from Concordia University in Montreal, her research and writing has maintained a consistent focus on marginalized communities and transitory experiences. After an internship with the UN Headquarters in New York City, she found her calling in fieldwork and applied research in Lebanon, working with Palestinian refugee communities. Alongside her growing body of work spanning animal rights activism, humanitarian policy reformation, and cultural preservation, she assisted her friend Sarah Hermez in the founding of Creative Space Beirut, a non-profit free educational program for aspiring designers who lack the necessary means to realize their potential, and worked passionately towards their mission to challenge social boundaries around creative industries. With an emerging career in research, she joined the graduate urban program, Theories of Urban Practice, at Parsons the New School for Design, and produced a graphic novel in collaboration with her sister, Nada Dalloul, for her final thesis work on the excavation of buried narratives around Kuwait’s contentious colonial history. Currently, she is a Project Associate at UHAB (Urban Homesteading Assistance Board), a nonprofit organization working in the advocacy of affordable housing in New York City, and the maintenance of affordable cooperative housing. Alongside housing advocacy, accessible literature, and producing non-fiction graphic novels, Rania is devoted to urban initiatives of inclusion, education, and literary activism. She hopes to work across borders and boundaries to construct narratives, and reconstruct lived environments.

Their motivation is to invent, elevate and lead urban practices that are not hegemonic.

Mapping values, Building networks A Path Towards Cultural Equity in Urban Arts Planning By Raquel de Anda

INTRODUCTION The last several decades’ focus on Cultural Diversity (i.e. increasing representation within our governing institutions) has yet to generate an equitable distribution of access and resources to the most economically and socially impacted urban communities.

For our cities to flourish in ways that mirror the great diversity of their residents, Cultural Equity – a process that enables communities to build their own networks of agency, power and self-determination - needs to be incorporated into our political processes. New York City currently faces a critical opportunity. In the next year the city will be laying the foundation for a Cultural Plan, with a central feature being increasing civic participation in the arts, and a goal of creating a more equitable distribution of resources. However, without an emphasis on Cultural Equity the plan is at risk of falling short of its’ expectations. Without supporting community arts organizations in developing community-centered platforms that actually encourage the redistribution of power, we may once again be unable to uncover the real challenges and solutions that will lead to a more vibrant and equitable city.

URBAN IMAGINARY Photograph by Nadia Elokdah The urban imaginary is a powerful and imminently necessary tool for conceiving of urban transformation and can be simply and succinctly as defined in Appadurai’s words as “collective ideas of what is possible.” (Interview, Appadurai, 2003) 46.

By engaging a practice of co-design and committing to inclusive, pluralistic values, this pilot design begins to redirect the hegemonic discourse away from co-optation and reductionary practices.

This project focuses on how local community arts organizations can work to support the development and implementation of a comprehensive Cultural Plan, and then be a part of the process of sustaining it. I conducted this investigation through the following set of research approaches:

The tools and insights gleaned from this analysis will serve as a helpful guide for cultural organizations to understand where their strengths and room for growth lies, while also creating a lens through which policymakers can better understand the nuances of cultural equity work and the role of arts in building a more just urban society.

Inquiry - Examining the field of community arts through a lens of value-based programming. Mapping - Interviewing leaders in the field and mapping the value systems held by their organizations to highlight key elements that are integral to working in service of Cultural Equity. Distillation - Condensing these elements into design principles necessary for reclaiming power and inserting community voice into our public and political processes. Praxis - Suggesting ways in which organizations can enhance their practice through collaboration, while also reflecting their work back to City Hall through the language of the Cultural Plan.

EQUITY IN A CULTURAL PLAN

My goal was to discern shared values and design principles that are central components of working towards building a more equitable city. It is my hope that this work will contribute to an ongoing dialogue that underscores the essential role played by culture in community development.

In the Summer of 2014 Council Members Jimmy Van Bramer and Stephen Levin introduced legislation that would require New York City to develop its’ first ever Cultural Plan. They asked that the City’s cultural ecology be assessed, that inequities in resource distribution be measured, and that a shared vision for the future of our city’s cultural landscape be developed. Up to this point, building New York City’s cultural landscape has been an implicit process, driven primarily by those with access to political power. This current juncture provides our City with an opportunity to define a vision for a more just and equitable landscape through the arts; one founded in a transparent, explicit process of cross-sector collaboration and community-driven planning. In order to do so, however, a platform for educating and engaging community stands to be developed. Measures are already being put forth to assess resource discrepancies across the city and analyze the state of our civic culture, including neighborhood access to arts and culture, artists’ living conditions, and potentials for incorporating

CultureBlocks was developed by Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, in cooperation with the Reinvestment Fund and the SIAP.

artists into the decision-making tables of our city agencies, from Parks to Sanitation, Education and Corrections. On July 1st, 2017, the Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner, Tom Finkelpearl, will be putting forth a series of recommendations in a Cultural Plan that will endure through future administrations and cultural commissioners.

This is an historic opportunity. However, leading up to that moment requires a rigorous valuation of our City’s cultural ecology, and a commitment to shifting the status quo. The last few decades have primarily focused attention on the issue of Diversity, or increasing the representation of individual from minority groups within our governing institutions. While this is encouraging, it is important to reckon with the reality that throughout our country inadequate and unequal resource distribution has simultaneously continued to grow steadily. Despite trends in our nation that show we are rapidly diversifying our institutions, we are just as rapidly becoming unequal*. Our City currently stands at an important crossroads where a conversation on Equity can initiate a more equitably shift the distribution of power and resources. To this end, developing appropriate metrics and systems for evaluating our current assets are critical. With the support of the NYC Cultural Agenda Fund, the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact in

* Policy Link. “The National Equity Atlas.” Data Summaries. (Retrieved, May 7, 2015).

the Arts Project (SIAP) has been awarded $125,000 to inventory the city’s cultural assets and measure the relationship between quality of life and the city’s cultural ecology; a project that will add to their growing “multi-city study on social well-being, neighborhood transformation, and the arts.”** The research group’s over 20 years of experience in demonstrating the non-economic value produced by the arts, makes them an excellent candidate for studying our city’s cultural ecosystem. However, while they boasts an impressive track record, it is still unclear how our current administration and its’ advisors will work to build upon these studies toward a more equitable cultural landscape.

Recently, SIAP developed Culture Blocks a free, interactive website that provides access to a database of Philadelphia’s creative and cultural resources. The tool includes information sourced from over fifty databases and hosts an interactive map that places Philadelphia’s cultural resources “in context” with other economic, demographic and transportation information. Visitors to the website can simultaneously view various metrics on a visual map, and create a profile of their desired geographic area. They can view which schools offer art programs, which neighborhoods host a high concentration of artists and locate public art projects throughout the city.

** “New York City Cultural Agenda Fund.” New York City Cultural Agenda Fund in The New York Community Trust. http:// www.nycommunitytrust.org/ (Retrieved April, 2014)

While the database provides an excellent source of previously nonexistent spatialized data, it visualizes the city from above, failing to capture the intricacies of how various cultural organizations are implementing programs in their respective communities.

What are the nuances of the varied ethnicities and cultures in each neighborhood beyond the standard block groupings of “White,” “Hispanic,” “African American,” and “Asian”? Furthermore, what of the myriad of cultural spaces and events that aren’t included on the map; the informal block parties and gatherings in church basements? If databases such as CultureBlocks are to be used for future research, planning, decision-making and policy implementation, are we not leaving out a large swath of information in these gaps? While these elements are much more difficult to measure, they are critical for illustrating the multitude of ways in which culture is embodied throughout the City. CultureBlocks was developed by Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, in cooperation with the Reinvestment Fund and the SIAP. While it has yet to be made public what New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs Office, in partnership with the New York City

Cultural Agenda Fund and the SIAP will develop, we can assume a similar database will emerge. Once that information has been visualized, how will our city respond to address the cultural inequalities that have come to characterize our landscape? How will we locate and lift up the missing gaps and overlooked cultural hubs? What will our future priorities be in developing a city in which all can participate and reach their full potential? Creating a roadmap for New York City’s future is a complex and nuanced task. It is a process that requires collecting information, and developing new relationships and shared values. It’s involves supporting both the longstanding cultural organizations that have long acted as repositories of cultural knowledge in their respective communities, as well as the emerging spaces where residents congregate and celebrate culture. Likewise, It’s production involves all the major areas of our society, from race relations, to education, immigration, technology, prison reform and more.

In developing a comprehensive Cultural Plan, both the social and economic benefits of culture must be given equal value, and “Culture” must be seen in a larger, systemic context outside of the segmented sector it has historically been confined within.

A comprehensive cultural policy works to incorporate culture across sectors, defines artists within the context of professional and fair labor practices, and works to protect long term residents from the devastation of gentrification and displacement caused from market-driven cultural developmental programs. Caron Atlas, director of Art and Democracy and founder of Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts states: Cultural policy is connected to such issues as economic stratification, racial segregation, immigration, education, and community development, to name a few. A progressive cultural policy should both be about protecting what is of value that is in danger of being lost (such as public ownership of airwaves or traditional cultures) and about engaging new opportunities (such as place-based cultural economies or rebuilding after Sandy). Changing demographics, gentrifying communities, and income inequality are just a few of the broader forces that inform cultural policy.”* Our City is in need of a progressive Cultural Plan that puts forth an equitable vision of policymaking

* Atlas, Caron. “Arts and Culture for a Just and Equitable City.” Artsanddemocracy.org. The Graduate Center (Retrieved, March, 2015)

COMMUNITY BASED ORGANIZATIONS AS BUILDING BLOCKS with communities and neighborhoods at the center; one that integrates actors across our city’s power spectrum in order to retain and strengthen our city’s diverse assets. In developing a Comprehensive Cultural Plan, we must not only consider how it intersects with other areas of our city’s developmental growth, such as housing, immigration and education, but also consider ways of designing platforms of participation for engaging and expanding from the neighborhood up. Local community cultural centers are ideally located to help spearhead this process.

Cultural Plans act as mirrors for a community, reflecting the vision, goals and aspirations of those who participate in their making. They also serve as a call to action for city agencies, cultural institutions, businesses, community based organizations and residents. When implemented through a process of Cultural Equity, they amplify a community’s cultural assets and serve as windows into the vast potential of its’ future. In order for communities to mobilize themselves as part of an advocacy initiative, they must have a critical understanding of relevant issues that impede their growth and be able to build alliances with other groups seeking to influence the design of their city’s future. Through a process of cultural organizing, community-based cultural organizations can play a key role in this process. Community-based cultural organizations are favorably located to foster the self-determination of their neighbors and the incorporation of their ideas into a city-wide plan. These institutions operate at the frontlines of local leadership development and have a unique understanding of local knowledge systems - key elements for developing community’s assets from the neighborhood up. Because these organizations often do their work with scarcer resources than larger cultural institutions, it is essential that their efforts be financially supported by City Hall. A municipal system that recognizes these

organizations’ benefit to civic life – and that is willing to take a risk in funding these practices – is one that understands the benefit of building long term social and economic infrastructures.

As both a measure of an organization’s strengths and as a translation of the Cultural Plan goals into a language of cultural equity, the praxis I offer below is a space where organizations can begin to see where they fit within the City’s cultural agenda. The praxis seeks to illustrate how cultural organizations can build a base to leverage a stronger voice in this defining moment and consider the value based practices that can help them get there - both as individual organizations and through collaboration across a network.

My research revealed a list of values-based practices that I believe constitute a robust praxis of Cultural Equity.

RESEARCH

The values are the following:

In order to better understand a practice of Cultural Equity I began by interviewing a series of individuals from the field.

• Artist Centered - Understanding that Artists have a unique and valuable insight into their communities. They are integral to furthering community well-being. • Decentralized Power - Building power, but with a commitment to challenging traditional, hierarchical power systems; promoting shared leadership and decision making. • Policy Focus - Involving community members in the civic and cultural affairs that affect their lives; a focus on teaching and promoting participation in political processes through the arts. • Place-Based - Building from the neighborhood up; recognizing the importance of participating in the making of long-term, sustainable neighborhoods. • Community-Centered - Communities have the solutions needed to build a more just society. It is necessary to on their self-determination and agency. • Honoring Tradition - Highlighting the importance of identity specific histories in the production of diverse and equitable cities. • Visioning and Imagination - Acknowledging the transformative potential embedded in imagining. • Listening - Listening as a process of learning; one that allows us to challenge preconceptions, reconsider and refine our ways of knowing. • Collaboration - Creating bridges between people and groups to connect ideas, cultures and assets; creating more expansive networks.

Groups included hyper-local organizations both within and outside of New York (The Laundromat Project, and Roadside Theatre), city-wide groups (Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts) city museums (Queens Museum and Museo del Barrio), and national organizations (Culture Strike, US Department of Arts and Culture). I also researched other value based organizations in New York City with practices grounded in cultural equity, such as Urban Bushwomen, The Caribbean Cultural Center and the Asian American Art Center. Additionally, I held numerous meeting with funders including Alternate Roots, The Opportunity Agenda and the NY Community Trust to better understand the broader landscape of financial support for this type of work. My research revealed a list of values-based practices that I believe constitute a robust praxis of Cultural Equity. While not every organization embodied each of these values, each of these values emerged multiple times in both writing and in conversation. Taken together, they serve as touch points for understanding how Cultural Equity is enacted in practice.

• Truth and Beauty - Aspiring to the best of what humanity has to offer beyond the pragmatic and mundane; Honesty, connection, shared ideals, utopianism. • Human Rights - Promoting the right to access, create and participate in the many forms of culture. • Social Justice - A commitment toward a more socially just society. Using organizational resources in service of this aim. • Storytelling - Storytelling is a form of expression, pedagogy to be used for building bridges and breaking down barriers. • Education - Embracing the potential of art to aid in both popular and formal educational practices.

While each value can stand alone, connections can easily be drawn throughout. Every element is enriched and strengthened by the addition of another, and many times, groups included two or more elements in their articulation of one value system. For example, the Laundromat Project’s value of Active Listeners and Learners at once underscores the importance the organization places on listening, and the articulation of that value as an educational practice:

These design principles inform a way of working in the world founded on Cultural Equity. They articulate ways in which organizations can work with their neighbors toward processes of self-determination that build upon pre-existing assets and embody a commitment to place.

Active Listeners and Learners We do our best work when we listen to understand and learn, not just to hear or recite. Furthermore, learning, like creativity, requires a willingness to experiment, reconsider, and refine. These two skills are cornerstones for creating positive, transformative change. To provide an overview of how these values intersect with the organizational landscape, I “scored” some of these organizations in the grid below. The design principles are as follows: • People Centered Approach - We do our best when engaged with others. Celebrating the Individual and the many traditions we bring with us; a focus on individual transformation through creative process. • Place Based Approach - Our neighborhoods are important. Programs that embody a commitment to place; Understanding place as a dynamic, lived experience that is activated by a variety of cultural experiences. • Learning Exchanges - Transformation emerges from learning. Strong programs are created when they are focused on various forms of Knowledge creation, such as story sharing circles and skill sharing workshops embedded in deep listening, challenging assumptions and cross pollinating ideas. • Equitable Partnerships - Healthy collaboration and partnership can build more resilient networks. Relationships rooted in

reciprocity, reflection, feedback, and critique work toward this aim of building power. • Local Leadership Development - Investing in local leaders benefits the capacity of our entire community. It promotes neighborhood stewardship, and long term growth. • Revealing Power - Transparent processes create clarity and understanding. An importance placed on building networks and alternatives to hierarchical power systems, while educating community members on their role in shaping civic processes, can promote more connected communities. These design principles inform a way of working in the world founded on Cultural Equity. They articulate ways in which organizations can work with their neighbors toward processes of selfdetermination that build upon pre-existing assets and embody a commitment to place. They value learning exchanges, partnerships and local leadership. They acknowledge the necessity of building power through strengthening face-toface, institutional and social networks, at once giving voice to individuals directly affected by systemic oppression, and empowering those communities to directly participate in the shaping of policy initiatives that influence their surroundings. They are inherently democratic and participatory and in many ways connect to the vision put forth by the Cultural Plan Legislation Text.

Mapping values, Building networks A Path Towards Cultural Equity in Urban Arts Planning By Raquel de Anda

As a final step I have examined these principles against the Cultural Plan Legislation Text, to see how they intersect with the city’s long-term plan. Articulating these connections will allows organizations to connect their programs to a long term cultural agenda. They are inherently democratic and participatory and in many ways connect to the vision put forth by the Cultural Plan Legislation Text. As a final step I have examined these principles against the Cultural Plan Legislation Text, to see how they intersect with the city’s long-term plan. Articulating these connections will allows organizations to connect their programs to a long term cultural agenda. CONCLUSION Since the first cultural plans were put forth by the National Endowment for the Arts in the 1970’s cities across the country have joined the movement. However, there is a prevailing fear that these plans - motivated by economic and developmental factors - will further promote uneven urban growth. Simply stating that a city-wide plan will be based on broad definitions of culture with goals compiled through community consultation is not enough. Our institutions must intentionally work to transform systemic inequalities and create a more equitable distribution of resources. Doing so, requires developing creative platforms and public input tools that support critical dialogue and engagement from a diverse set of actors. It

requires considering the long-term, sustainable growth of a community beyond this current moment. It requires considering Cultural Equity, a process rooted in the sharing of resources and leveraging of power; a process that enables communities to build their own networks of agency, power and self-determination. As New York City considers the development of its’ Cultural Plan it is essential to validate to long term work done by community-based arts spaces throughout our city. In order to ensure equitable community development new research, metrics and evaluation need to be considered, with the aim of developing policy thinking and recommendations that will support the flourishing and sustainability of New York’s unique cultural ecology. How is our city valuing the work of community based organizations in both preserving existing cultures and ensuring their survival into the future? How are residents being included in the processes that direct the future growth of our city? As New York City develops its’ Cultural Plan, metrics rooted in values of Cultural Equity - such as the one presented above - that promote the selfdetermination, agency and power of local agency are critical for ensuring the vitality and growth of a city we all deserve to live in.

Raquel de Anda Raquel de Anda is an independent curator and cultural producer based in Brooklyn, NY. De Anda began her career as Associate Curator at Galería de la Raza, a contemporary Latino arts organization in San Francisco, CA (2003-2010) and has continued to support the production of socially engaged artwork in both Mexico and the United States. She holds an MS in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons, School of Design, with a focus on integrating cultural equity in the field of arts and culture. Recent exhibitions include The Ripple Effect: Currents of Socially Engaged Art (Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C.), Art in Odd Places intervention festival (NYC), and overseeing creative production for the historic People’s Climate March (NYC), with hundreds of artists and 400,000 people participating. She is working on a forthcoming exhibition at Project Row Houses (Houston, TX). Raquel is contributor to LatinArt.com and Arts in a Changing America and a 2014 member of the Laundromat Project’s Artist and Community Council. She is an active member of the PCA Collective (People’s Climate Arts), a group of artists and activists that produce art for social movements. The collective was recently awarded the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship to continue their work in New York City.

Their explorations revealed that to design linked to human natural urban ecology is to detect and develop active forms that ignite civil society disposition and freedom to operate as a valued and generative link within core city process and systems.

Connecting Corners Towards a collaborative food ecology By Anne Duquinnos - Ron Morrison

INTRODUCTION This is a project investigating collaborative infrastructures for brokering new food services in the Central Harlem area. Intractable to the challenge of infrastructure is the relationship between the particular and the universal. So many challenges of our contemporary urban systems lie in this gulf between the two.

Struggling to operate within these dichotomies of the urban as large and universal, or small and highly differentiated, we move to retune current systems towards collaboration creating engagement points between systems and individuals. Through our collective work we define collaborative infrastructure as the building of flexible entry points to align disparate values that sustain daily life. Starting at the corner, our project engages bodega owners, community food workers, property owners, and neighbors in the creation of a collaborative system for brokering new food services in the Central Harlem area. It is our assertion that through exploring the collaborative potential of infrastructure we, as urban citizens, become more able to fully grow as ourselves and with others.

he structure of our praxis is based on Ron and Anneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mutual understanding of forming collaboration to share knowledges across differences.

By valuing pre-existing resources the project aims to derive stronger, better adapted networks to demand, manage and sustain a better local food system.

We see this as an opportunity to explore two interrelated questions; how can present infrastructures become realigned through collaboration to yield new systems for managing resources, and how can circulating knowledge reduce the risk associated with such resources? By framing these questions through infrastructure, we continually wrestle with the longevity of such a system, growing beyond an innovation to being accepted as commonplace. Over the following chapters we offer an analysis of the project landscape, actors, research methods, and touch points reconsidering topics of scale, social ties, redundancy, knowledge, adaptation, and collaboration. Through the building of this infrastructure we simultaneously work to produce a fluency of its forms and functions. It is in this way that infrastructure becomes a vantage point through which to view your connection to others as well as the larger ecology. By learning to see the ties that bind as infrastructure, we begin to see ways to rearrange their pieces, alter their form, and inject new functions. We place ourselves within the system and in turn shape it’s ability to adapt to new users, partnerships, and services.

METHODOLOGY: CONFRONTING THE LOGICS OF SCALE As we understand scale to operationalize at three primary levels, the macro, meso, and micro; each is afforded a different value and assumed knowledge. The macro scale is thought to articulate the whole of something, the wide sweeping aggregation of different parts to construct a composite. It is from the macro that we often ascribe an immense validity when determining the truth or essence of something. GDP at the scale of the nation is thought to be the rightful measure of the economic health rather than the median family income of its citizens. This same logic applies to the ways in which foundations and experts evaluate urban based projects, embodied by a project’s ability to “scale up” rather than to operate “at scale”(Smith)*. This ability to address the macro scale, while defined by the exactness of figures and data, maintains its own social logic; that bigger is better and the more we are able to collect and compile the clearer our vision about the essence of something becomes. While the trappings of the macro scale come clearer into view, this is not meant to render it invalid, much to the contrary it is to understand scale as a lens from which to understand something in a particular way, expressing a particular knowledge. Further, it suggests that scale is also not free from different forms of social value and accompanying protocols to determine its use. In a similar yet contrarian position, the micro scale is also imbued with its own social logic.

* Smith, Neil. “Contours of a Spatialized Politics: Homeless Vehicles and the Production of Geographical Scale”. Social Text, No. 33 (1992), pp. 54-81.Published by: Duke University Press. Accessed: 03/06/2010 10:51

The micro scale elicits notions of the small and particular, the subjective. Often we consider the micro to hold a self containing authenticity as in that which we can see, touch, or experience (i.e. I know the economy is bad because I can’t find a job). It is at the micro level that we consider the tactile and intimate nature of knowledge. At the micro scale we first learn to consider ourselves and later our relation to others. However, the micro scale is not without its own trappings. Romanticized notions of community and localism at the micro scale at their worst have left us with highly differentiated enclaves, patchworks of vying interests without the means to bundle, bridge, or engage with the edge (Joseph)*. At best, the almost involuntary manner in which the notion of the communal is conjured allows for the inclusion of members into a network or social organization but often obscures the protocols and scripts upon which the organization is founded. This allows for passage into, but not the author ship to retune, redefine, or shift the disposition of the organization. This can best be seen through the insularity and protective nature that non-profits and “grassroots” organizations often take on. Focusing intensely on the specifics of issue based advocacy work, tied to a constantly dwindling pool of financial and material resources, this intense focus on the micro scale facilitated through the vernacular of the local and the communal have failed to create and sustain the mechanisms for alleviating complex urban problems which have advanced to

* Joseph, Miranda. Against the Romance of Community. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2002. Print.

the level of being multi scalar in their effects. Our methods for seeing and understanding our contemporary urban challenges are overly saturated by these two scalar lens for crafting and sharing knowledge. At the macro scale, we entertain solutions based on the aggregation of quantitative data, that concretize problems to reductionist discrete benchmarks, left to be tackled by a strategic plan. At the micro scale, resources and potential for cross organizational support is thwarted either by heterotropic distinction or concentrated competition. The social logic graphed onto and born from these scales is essential to understand as it frames not only our understanding of the “solution” but also of the “problem”. For this reason our research methodology was designed to investigate the political ecology of food access in Central Harlem from the macro to the micro scale. At the macro scale we review the NYC Planning Department’s, Fresh Zones Initiative, analyzing its underpinning logics, assumptions, and programmatic features. At the micro scale we reviewed the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Health Bodega Initiative and further grounded our research conducting walking surveys, site sketches, interactive design probes, and semi structured interviews with key stakeholders. The following documents our findings of both the potential and limitations each scale offers, ultimately informing our strategy for a meso scalar platform to mitigate the community based management of a vibrant food infrastructure in Central Harlem.

Our research sought to identify entry points to balance the large and the small scale dynamics of complex urban systems

INVESTIGATING THE MACRO SCALE: THEMATIC CONTEXT Our research began as an investigation into the language that prompted the project proposed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA). We were presented the with the opportunity create a design prototype to address the concentration of diet related diseases in the Central Harlem neighborhood. The language included terms like “food deserts”, “lack of access” and other phrases commonly used to address the macro scale of urban food systems. Despite our familiarity with the terms, we researched their origins to deepen and complicate our understandings and expose the underlying dynamics embedded in particular language of policy. Tracing these origins revealed the jumps in logic used to extract a generalized concept from a specific set of conditions.The following sections encompass the large concepts that frame the policy approaches taken by New York City over the last decade.

to access to healthy food environments is a more recent trend that builds off evidence that connects morbidity to poor nutritional habits and lack of exercise (“Causes and Consequences: What Causes Overweight and Obesity?”). It articulates a shift in paradigm that connects low quality of life caused by morbidity to the environment of its occurrence. This transcends the argument from beyond individual behavior to a focus on the conditions faced by the individual ( Adams, Ulrich and Coleman)**.

The Food Desert The term “food desert” is said to have originated from a conversation with “ a resident of a publicsector housing scheme in the west of Scotland in the early 1990s’ (Cummins and MacIntyre 436)*. The resident used the word food desert to describe his lack of access to fresh and nutritious foods. Since, the term has been widely used by policy makers to commonly describe an area where people experience a number of physical or economic barriers to accessing healthy foods. The research in

Steven Cummins and Sally Macintyre, prominent scholars and researchers in public health, warn that issues like food deserts are “eagerly espoused by central and local governments, public health, and the public” and that “primary research can easily be overinterpreted to suit the needs of individuals or groups,without close reference to the original source material” (Cummins and Macintyre, 437)***. Simply put, they argue not for the abatement of research on the question of food access but for a closer emphasis and criticality on

* Cummins, Steven, and Sally Macintyre. “’Food Deserts’: Evidence and Assumption in Health Policy Making.” British Medical Journal 325.7361, 2002: 436-38. JSTOR . Web. 13 May 2015.

While strides in social science research expose a deep interconnection between behavior and environment, the problem of generalizing observations becomes even more prominent. Is observing the same outcomes reason enough to use research from a particular area to support policy change in another?

** Adams, Anthony Troy, Monika Ulrich, and Amanda Coleman. “Food Deserts.”Journal of Applied Social Science 4.2, 2010 : 58-62. JSTOR. Web. 13 May 2015. *** Cummins, Steven, and Sally Macintyre. “’Food Deserts’: Evidence and Assumption in Health Policy Making.” British Medical Journal 325.7361, 2002: 436-38. JSTOR . Web. 13 May 2015.

Towards a collaborative food ecology

the grounded theory and embedded context of research prior to the extrication of knowledge. They warn about the use of scientific research in policy making and that the food desert “became a convenient shorthand for a complex problem” (438). Culture of Poverty While the policy based approach of expanding grocery retail has created skepticism as to its efficacy in changing behavior, the underpinning logic that access is a key determinant for addressing disparities in nutrition and public health is also contested (Bitler and Haider). Particularly in dense urban areas, data concerning education, race, and employment were most strongly associated with areas of poor access to quality food. This dual focus on bringing in grocery store development and identifying multiple variables of poverty has saturated policy and programmatic responses to “food deserts”. While this focus on socioeconomic conditions is essential, it is often reduced to didactic educational programming on nutrition both at the federal level (MyPlate, Team Nutrition, SNAP Ed, Let’s Move) as well as native New York State and City based programs (Moooove to 1% Milk, Move to Fresh Vegetables, Just Say Yes to Fruits and Vegetables, Eat Well Play Hard). The central premise for these programs seems to operate along the logic that individuals in lower socioeconomic areas lack proper education and therefore the deployment of nutrition classes and cook classes will fill the gap and alter behavior towards better diets.

While there is much support substantiating sign the failures of individuals to move out of poverty as endemic to the individual and not produced by a larger system of inequality This theory has since become synonymous with internalized deficiency and pathology, and takes the form of programmatic intervention aimed at behavioral modification rather than building widespread capacity through systemic transformation (Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M.)*. From this analysis of a “culture of poverty” a particular gap begins to emerge between the multivariable critique of access that focuses on socioeconomic conditions, and how that research is used at the programmatic and intervention level. While the awareness of this gap is not new, it stresses the need for different programmatic interventions. Past initiatives RESH zones: In 2008 The New York City Economic Development Council, presented the findings that correlated concentration of diet-related disease with the sparsity of grocery stores in those areas. Following the Food Desert logic, they presented the argument that creating incentives to build neighborhood grocery stores and supermarkets would increase access to healthy food and decrease the incidence of diet-related diseases.

* Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M. (2010). “Reconsidering Culture and Poverty”. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 629 (1): 6–27. 83

Understanding the paradigms and current policies to address food deserts and access revealed jumps in logic that raised questions about who they benefited.

They proposed zoning and financial incentives to overcome some of the barriers to developing new grocery stores NYC Fresh Retail Expansion to Support Health Zones-- or FRESH Zones were born. Since the goal of the FRESH zone is to incentivize the creation of additional stores, the incentives are not available for pre-existing businesses unless they redevelop. The financial incentives are in the form of real estate tax exemptions, sales tax exemptions on construction materials and mortgage recording tax deferrals (FRESH, NYCEDC).

In addition to these financial incentives targeting landowners and developers there is a minimum of 6000 sq/ft requirement-- thus precluding any small business and tenants businesses. A recent New York Times article discusses Brian Elbel research on supermarkets built with the FRESH zone incentives in Morrisania, a neighborhood or the South Bronx. His research provides evidence that despite the presence of the grocery store “consumption didn’t really change. Purchasing didn’t really change”(Sanger-Katz)*. However much we can question the intentions behind the creation of the FRESH zones, if the evidence undermines their effectiveness it calls into questions who really stands to benefit from them. Health Department Approach: The initiatives headed by the Department of Health target the existing small food retail options in the neighborhood.

* Sanger-Katz, Margot. “Giving the Poor Easy Access to Healthy Food Doesn’t Mean They’ll Buy It.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 May 2015. Web. 13 May 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-thepoor-easy-access-to-healthy-food-doesnt-mean-theyll-buy-it. html?emc=eta1&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1>.

Both the Healthy Bodega and the Modern Bodega programs push for a change in products offered in the neighborhood convenience stores, by encouraging the owners to sell healthier and fresh food options. The Healthy Bodega Initiative was a partnership between the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) and the Center for Economic Opportunity from 2006 to 2010 that combined the Mooove to 1%, Move to Fruits and Vegetables, the Adopt a Bodega, the Star Bodega and the Farm to Bodega campaigns. Reports on the Healthy Bodega Initiative indicate that the project was successful within the scope of its goals. Overall there was a significant increase in the sale of healthier food items within the participating stores and indicates that both the store owners and the customers improved their understanding of the health impacts of diet choices. However within the concluding remarks of the report the following statement indicates that despite the success of the project the complexity of the issue requires additional efforts to be comprehensively addressed. “On the basis of our findings, we made some changes to our intervention model. We revised our criteria to give stores more choice in the changes they make. Additionally, we recognized the importance of engaging and empowering community members to participate in the process. Bodegas are now recruited on the basis of proximity to potential collaborating organizations so that organizations can support stores they already patronize and sustain inventory changes

even after the intervention ends. [...] Behavior change among customers may take time as new products are introduced and promoted. Targeted outreach, community engagement, and dialogue with store owners may be sufficient to effect more immediate change in smaller stores that rely heavily on customer demand and loyalty. However, to fully address the shortage of healthy foods in underserved neighborhoods, a full range of efforts targeting all areas of food retail, from seasonal to year round, large to small, must be implemented.“(Dannefer, et al)* Framing the policy changes made in NYC within their larger conceptual contexts reveals discrepancies in logic between the macro scale approach to access and the micro scale approach to behavioral change. The conclusions of the Healthy Bodega Initiative call for a hyperspecificity that relies on forming social ties and cannot be addressed solely from a policy perspective. Policy change however can play a significant role in shaping the urban landscape that can be conducive or prohibitive to certain social behaviors. This further begs the question of the intention and purpose of FRESH zones in these sensitive contexts.

* Dannefer, Rachel, Donya A. Williams, Sabrina Baronberg, and Lynn Silver. “Healthy Bodegas: Increasing and Promoting Healthy Foods at Corner Stores in New York City.” American Journal of Public Health. American Public Health Association, Oct. 2012. Web. 07 May 2015. <http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490666/>.

NVESTIGATING THE MICRO SCALE: BODEGA OWNERS AND URBAN FARMERS The Bodega Owners The bodega is a distinctive and pervasive feature in the NYC landscape. Although each store is unique in layout, character and products, most share some commonality in basic services and product types (such being open late or selling chips, lottery tickets or cigarettes). As a resident of New York City there is an unspoken understanding of what one might find or expect to have in any given store marked “Deli – Grocery”. Any New Yorker can tell you they provide quick snacks, affordable sandwiches, coffee to go and access to many guilty pleasures. Most are stocked in a small range of seemingly random items. From personal experience, it should not be expected that they take credit cards but they often don’t require exact change either with an added and sometime disgruntled “pay me back next time”. They introduce a greyscale in an otherwise black and white world of transactional service. Without romanticizing the human element they maintain in the corporate saturated service industry, they do provide a rapidly disappearing space for micro-negotiation in terms of introducing change. For example, we witnessed a conversation between a resident and a bodega owner about what brand of detergent would best suited for the store. Jack Sagan, a Program Coordinator with Jetro Cash and Carry, one of the largest suppliers to bodegas, also mentioned the

advantage of introducing a new service (Rotisserie Chickens) incrementally within bodegas that saw this as an viable opportunity rather than having to reprogram a corporate structure allow for its provision. From our conversations with Sagan, the bodega owners today are most commonly immigrants from Latin America or the Middle East and are a new wave in the history of immigrant run convenient stores of New York City. Anecdotal evidence based on this conversation as well as conversations with Bodega owners and Harlem Grown, suggested that the cultural enclaves that exist within the bodega owners could be a significant barrier in forming collaborations with and between bodegas. Our conversations suggest that racial prejudice plays a role in the nature of interaction between the bodega and the residents. Sagan also emphasized that bodegas operate on an extremely slim profit margin and therefore have to be very price conscious in their business operations. They are struggling particularly due to the rise of rent prices in the city which conflicts with the implied cheapness of their products. Because of the number of bodegas (often several on one block), each shop provides a specific quality, service or product to remain competitive in the area. Some have a variety of specialty or ethnic products, others have a key location, some simply have a friendly presence and often it is a combination of these things that make a bodega stay in business. Each store finds its niche within this highly saturated service and highly competitive

Through walking tours, surveys and informal interviews we uncovered struggles and assets faced by many of the bodegas.

market and survives simply by being able to adapt quickly to the demand of the specific clientele that frequents the store. This makes a bodega owner an expert in a hyper local market, with an intimate knowledge of what a section of people in that area buy and what they can afford. Tapping into the bodega owners knowledge of the demand in the neighborhood would be extremely valuable to inform what products or dishes would appeal to his or her customer base. Their intimate knowledge of logistics in food service and pricing of products is an expertise that is difficult to recreate on with such level of specificity and would be an invaluable asset to any new food service in the area. Their biggest barrier is their inability to take on much risk. The low profit margin and vulnerability to rent rises and increase in price of certain key products ( like the rise of cigarette tax) renders them very conservative in their ventures. In addition the bodega owners operate in isolation and it is likely that they have little access to investment capital outside of their social networks. Outside of some services provided by Jetro, we found no evidence of business or financial services specific to bodegas in the city. Without access to outside support and with no structure to pool resources with other bodegas, any risk puts the business in jeopardy and they can only afford cautious incremental small changes in their service until the demand is made evident.

Harlem Grown Harlem Grown is a small urban agriculture nonprofit based in Central Harlem establish in 2011. Their mission is to “inspire youth to live healthy and ambitious lives through mentorship and hands-on education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition.” (Harlem Grown site). Similar to many other urban agriculture projects, Harlem Grown appropriates empty lots, turning them into arable land. Using this land they develop small community gardens and grow sites for micro-scaled supply and distribution at the block level. We had the pleasure of spending time with their Executive Director Tony Hillary. Tony was quick to share with us the pride that he felt when reflecting back on their growth within the neighborhood. Operating largely informally for the first two years, and primarily on the efforts of Tony himself, they have now grown to a small permanent staff growing on two sites. Last year they produced over 1,000lbs of produce and were able to serve an estimated 300 families in the area. Harlem Grown’s method is simple and effective. They grow on land previously unused, they host activities and events building relationships with surrounding residents, and all the produce they grow, they give away for free. While they currently don’t operate as a formal supplier, outside of a few relationships with local restaurants, they have already had an effect on the availability of produce within the area. Tony, often recalls the resistance they faced in their early days. Some local residents were doubtful that there could be a farm in their neighborhood and were skeptical about the organization’s intentions. Partly intended to build support, and partly a result of

not possessing the proper licenses, Harlem Grown’s practice of giving away their produce for free quickly gave them a positive legibility within the neighborhood. In fact demand began to grow so much that they soon began noticing a change in the quality and amount of fresh produce that parallel grocery stores began carrying. While they still continue to struggle with the proper licensing to sell directly from their site, their key asset lies in the neighborhood relationships that have already begun building, substantiating new market demands for fresh produce. As they continue to grow and develop they have long term visions for expanding their organization into an earned income model, culminating in a farm to table restaurant, vocational training, and increased production. Through this expansion they could prove to be a vital supplier of fresh produce at the local level. Land Ownership During our research we had no direct contact with landlords in Central Harlem, but we observed several points of impact they had on the different players in the neighborhood. The value of land and property in New York City permeates all systems.

It is a source of power on all scales that dictates interactions between people, entities, institutions and government. In short, the value of land, the struggle for space and the market forces of speculative real-estate impacts everyone. Our interview with Tony Hillary helped identify how local growers could enter into the Harlem food system

Specifically, struggle and insecurity of space was a topic of concern in both the bodega owners and community agriculture organizations. Rising rent prices were a pressing concern for Bodega owners. Our conversation with Jack Sagan at Jetro revealed that beyond rises in rent, the bodega owners are commonly the victims of extortion by landlords who take advantage of the importance of locality in the bodega business. With limited resources available to them as isolated immigrant businesses the Bodega owners are particularly vulnerable. As a tenant with limited resources, the bodega operates with a shorter perspective that dissuades change ventures even further.

Residents of Harlem are experiencing the effects of rapid rent rises due to real-estate speculation. Gentrification is never far away from long-term residents thoughts because it encapsulates rising costs, insecurity in housing, and cultural shifts that often resonate with a history of systematic discrimination. (Roberts)*. With these perspectives the landowners become key players in any effort towards creating a sense of security.

The idea of control and permanence are vital towards an attitude of investment in the future-- whether articulated in small businesses taking on new risks or individuals making choices to invest in their future health. Precarity impacts everything.

The community gardens and urban agriculture organizations are commonly located on vacant land through implicit or explicit permission by the landlord. Many community gardens throughout New York City are located on city owned land and have formed public land-trust as a lease agreement with the city.

SEEING THE MESO: PLATFORMS AND PIVOTING INTERMEDIARIES In understanding the roles involved in the larger food economy an analysis of food suppliers is essential. Suppliers are individuals or businesses that provide goods or services to retail establishments. Typically, suppliers do not generally interact with consumers directly, but instead are mostly involved with vendors or shop owners to help meet the needs of their customers. Suppliers operate by providing volume based discounts to vendors when they agree to sign long-term contracts or place orders for large quantities. One of the main strategies of suppliers is the creation of volume discounts for vendors who place orders for large quantities of a specific good or service. In many cases, the discounts are structured as tiered pricing. That is, the supplier will charge a fixed price per unit if the order is for up to a thousand units, but offer a specific discount if the order is for between 1001 and 2000 units. For this reason supplies tend to have more long term and involved relationships with their vendors. This dynamic came forth numerous times through our interview with Jack Sagan of Jetro. Throughout the interview he spoke candidly about the importance of the social relationships that he had built with bodega owners and how learning to understand their business and who they are as people allowed him to be better at his job. While the relationship of the supplier is one primarily based on transactions this does not

Despite being on public land, the city reserves the right to sell the property at the end of the term. Gardens located on private land are subject to eviction when the owner of the land decides to reclaim it.

* Roberts, Sam. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No Longer Majority Black, Harlem Is in Transition.â&#x20AC;? The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 May 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/ nyregion/06harlem.html?_r=0>.

discount the importance of non-transactional social relationships both as a foundation and mechanism for the transferring of goods, services, and information.

Bringing Edwardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s definition of infrastructure as a sociotechnical system forth we begin to see the grounding social relationships upon which complex technical systems of food distribution lie. Over the next section we will briefly recap the different roles that Harlem Grown and Jetro play as suppliers and speculate on their potential within a larger collaborative food infrastructure. Jetro Jetro Cash and Carry is a wholesale store that caters to businesses and non-profits and supplies most of the bodegas in NYC. The store supplies a mixture of fresh and non-perishable foods and various miscellaneous household items. Beyond the merchandise it provides a variety of amenities that appeal to small businesses and bodegas such as late night and early morning hours, free parking, no minimum purchase and a business license to get membership. Jetro, different than many other suppliers, also allows vendors to purchase items in an ad hoc fashion rather than buying on scheduled terms. This is particularly beneficial for bodega owners as they often have limited storage

Facilitated by this building of knowledge about the bodega business, Jetro built in certain protocols to allow for maintaining regularity within the shifting landscape of the bodegas.

space and due to their specialized customer base need to be able to adapt to customer needs quickly as they shift. However, by foregoing term based purchases there is an inherent amount of insecurity created. Terms standardize the regularity with which vendors make purchases as well as the revenue that Jetro expects from each sale. From the perspective of the supplier this creates a certain amount of precarity. In order to maintain the health of their business Jetro has responded to this precarity in interesting ways. As mentioned earlier the first tactic involved the building of personal relationships to yield the transfer of knowledge while simultaneously exchanging trust, ultimately, unveiling a relationship of interdependence. Facilitated by this building of knowledge about the bodega business, Jetro built in certain protocols to allow for maintaining regularity within the shifting landscape of the bodegas. One of these features is the Food Base program. Food Base is a membership-based program within Jetro that provides some benefits to bodega owners. One of it’s features allows bodega owners to benefit from collective purchasing power for advertisements. Within the membership structure Jetro is able to provide a clear simple value through discounted advertising purchases. This membership structure allows for some contained regularity while allowing for the spontaneity of purchases that bodega employees need to make in an ad hoc fashion.

Another tactic, involves the regularity with which Jetro prepares and makes public their own periodicals displaying sales items and discounts. Every Thursday Jetro releases its own publication sharing information about new deals, events, and news. Though it’s nothing more complicated than a newsletter, this allows for Jetro to build in protocols for regularity that align values for bodegas and Jetro alike. Bodega owners are able to take advantage of upcoming deals and to plan their purchases accordingly, while Jetro is able to ensure a time during the week when they will have a steady generation of revenue. The Interplay Between While Jetro and Harlem Grown both serve vital functions with the Central Harlem area each has a particular strength and gap. Jetro has the resources to operate at a meso scale, working directly between bodegas and distributors. At this level they possess a certain knowledge about the landscape in which bodegas and small vendors live. However, as is often repeated, “they meet demand, they don’t create it”. This limitation causes paralysis instead of action to alleviate the risk associated with new markets. Harlem Grown on the other hand operates primarily at the micro level, pivoting between roles as both a supplier as well as a community based organization offering additional educational and resource based services.

It is largely within this dual role that their key asset is better understood.

relationships of interdependence that are essential for systems to function.

Because Harlem Grown works so intimately with local residents and community members and has built a highly legible social value they are able to use their constituency as a resource, both as an informational source understanding their taste and preferences, but also as a way to show demand for the ushering of new food based services. While this is a key asset for Harlem Grown it mirrors the potential that other food justice based organizations could have in positioning their constituencies as security for other players like Jetro or bodega owners to offer new services. By aligning the assets that both Jetro and smaller community groups like Harlem Grown possess the perceived risk associated with new markets could be subdued.

Rather than defining these relationships through the market and discounting them as non essential, our work instead drives us to seek out the possibilities for collaboration built through sociotechnical infrastructure.

With Jetro, or another small food retailer such as a bodega, as a partner, this would also build the capacity that they lack, allowing for proper licensing and earned income potential. While both Jetro and Harlem Grown share an involvement in Central Harlem, they understand the nature of their work as being antithetical. Reframing their assets allows for beginning to see room for exchange and mutual benefit. This reframing of assets also allows for the building of a market based knowledge that reduces perceived risk. While this could cynically be understood as “market research” it doesn’t not discount the social

Building the Meso: A platform for engagement The potential of the meso level is largely under theorized and often ignored.

It is this latent potential of the meso scale that we wish to activate as a site for investigating how collaboration works to embolden the social ties upon which infrastructure is based. In its most basic form infrastructure is understood as the network or system that works, often beneath the surface, to supply the essential services needed for daily survival. In its material form we think of a subterranean world full of winding pipes and wires carrying water, waste, and power. However, infrastructure is greater than the sum of its parts and requires flexible entry points. Yet, creating the touchpoints for such flexibility is difficult.

Touch-points, like the fluency of an infrastructure, are important as they place us within a larger context and guide us through its many features, not in a directed path but as a scattering of icons, signifiers, and features. Successful touchpoints teach us to read the signs and select our own paths. As a container for housing multiple entries we turned to the development of a web based platform. Acting as a primary touchpoint the platform is not meant to be complete in its design but instead to work as a framework to be built upon over time by those using it. Bringing our concepts of porous containers and flexible entry points into the form of the platform we primarily used free and open software, or reappropriated proprietary software to allow for new functions and uses.

For this reason, the content is porously contained allowing users to add and extract information that can be used to broker new collaborations, in time building a supportive infrastructure. The key aspects of the platform in this initial prototype include an interactive map and key asset databases.

CONCLUSIONS If we can come to any concluding point at the intersection of infrastructure, collaboration, and food distribution; it is that the reality is overwhelmingly complex, deftly maneuvering between the interpersonal, technological, logistical, and scalar. While the enormity of this complexity may feel dwarfing and omnipresent, our fears to engage and act within complexity does not have to be. Over the course of this past year we have sequestered ourselves to dark rooms cranking through 1930â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s microfiche, investigated the architecture of massive data collection and digital landscapes, looked for signs of life and social engagement in aisles anointed with packaged treats of every neon hue of the rainbow, and written line after line of code, all in an effort to better understand building collaboration, allowing us to move beyond paralysis and confidently into the complex. From a review of past food based initiatives, to grounding reality by walking the path, to interviewing the players, and finally designing a point for engagement; we have come to understand collaborative infrastructure through the following practices: Defining value to frame knowledge Our research on the origins of the narrative of food deserts and the logic of creating access in studies around the world and initiatives in New York City have crafted our understanding of the importance of framing knowledge. In the case of research,

Jetro Cash and Carry provided a model for creating an adaptive supply system that sought to cater the unique needs of each bodega.

his emphasizes the importance of connecting value systems with the creations of knowledge as well as the importance that knowledge has in defining value.

many scholars stated that it is taken out of context and abstracted into simplified shorthands to be utilized by policy makers to push certain value systems forward.

This emphasizes the importance of connecting value systems with the creations of knowledge as well as the importance that knowledge has in defining value. Without creating a circular argument, the key point is to understand the role that context and intention plays in their creation and explicitly embedding it within the crafting of an agent of change ( such as policy or interventions). Collaborative structures can help ground the truth of larger research theories by including different types of experienced knowledges in framing the research in a new situation-- defining specific iterations of value through dialogue to create the frame where knowledges can complement or contradict agonistically. Similar to the F/OSS movement and the communist party in Harlem, defining a value can create an approachable space for knowledge to be circulated and incrementally build upon by a multiplicity of people adding their own particular expertise to create a living knowledge that is far greater than the sum of its parts. This informed our intentions with creating touchpoints and a knowledge base through our website-platform. Rather than designing a finished

The platform seeks to align assets and struggles between different players in the food system to help form partnerships based on mutual interests.

product, we chose to treat it as a theory or work in progress to invite others to contribute and make it a living collective platform to circulate information and ideas. Crafting porous containers to weather precarity: Risk and precarity are an entrenched reality of urban experience. Often we react by receding, and turn to structuring situations where we control for and extinguish risk through insulation.

While this has its benefits, it disallows for the flow of new information and resources to adapt to externally changing conditions. While structure and insulation provide a sense of comfort and stability, we also need to be able to break these patterns to allow for innovation. This dynamic is explicitly seen in the relationship between Jetro and bodega owners. Jetro doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t require term based purchases from their vendors. Terms standardize the regularity with which vendors make purchases as well as the revenue that Jetro expects from each sale. From the perspective of the supplier this creates a certain amount of precarity. In order to maintain the health of their business Jetro has responded to this precarity by building in protocols of structure (food base membership, weekly periodical, personal relationships) that entice bodega owners to

shop more during certain periods. Because Jetro cannot ultimately control for the spontaneity that encompasses so much of the bodega business they have figured out a semi porous system to benefit from the flow of people and information while not insulating completely from the precarity that they bring. Using contradiction to generate momentum

This contradiction of clustering assets, in a way that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t elide difference is paramount. Rather than determining them to be wholly separate entities, their differing needs, inform paths for collaboration; finding others with a corresponding asset.

Collaboration is not an act of consensus. It is not neatly resolving or measured by unanimous support. Instead it is an actively practiced undertaking. On the surface this often appears as contradiction. The success of collaboration is measured by this ability to hold such contradiction, maintaining the ability to function. This ability to hold contradiction emerged from our work last semester and became a key design concept in the crafting of our digital platform. By creating databases born from understanding the assets of different players, different entities, previously unassociated, are now able to see each other in a shared container. This is the case with the relationship between Harlem Grown and Jetro Cash and Carry. Both maintain the asset of working as a supplier for the Central Harlem area, however, at greatly contrasting scales. Evolving from simply seeing each other within the same category, the database also shows their different needs; due to their varying scales of impact.

The interface of the platform identified the key players that shaped the food system in central harlem and provided unique terms of engagement for each. The map database is used to reveal the spatiality of different players in the neighborhood and help form partnerships that rely on locational assets.

Connecting Corners Towards a collaborative food ecology By Anne Duquinnos - Ron Morrison

Anne Duquinos

Ron Morrison

Ron Morrison is a designer, researcher, and social practitioner. He works to create strategies using art and design that help people understand how urban systems work and how to work within them. With a strong background in community development and social advocacy, he believes that people should have participatory access to shaping their cities and communities and sees design as a medium for creating knowledge and moving beyond paralysis in the face of complexity. His current work investigates technology and infrastructure as a sociotechnical system for crafting the design of more equitable and sustainable services. He has been a collaborator with design teams that implemented projects in New Orleans, Ghana, Colombia, Niger, New York, and Venice and has had work featured in AIA New York, the UN World Urban Forum, and the Allied Media Conference. Based in New York, he has worked in a wide range of roles within strategic design, collaborating with such organizations as The Center for Urban Pedagogy, Transportation Alternatives, and the Association of Neighbors and Housing Development. Ron holds degrees in Psychology and Gender Studies, as well as a graduate degree in Design and Urban Ecologies from Parsons School of Design. He is currently an artist in residence at Eyebeam Studio for Art and Technology building open source platforms to upend the continued practice of solitary confinement.

Through many hours working with community partners, faculty and other students from diverse backgrounds, geographies and power positions, they developed counter urban narratives to that of standard urban displacement modes and form codes.

i.i.i Cities Cities as a site of imagination, invention, and intervention By Nadia Elokdah

INTRODUCTION Through the lens of identity, culture, and the urban imaginary, the thesis critically examines the discursive process of city making through everyday practices in order to understand how our urban context changes, and by whose influence.

Cities are dynamic places perpetually reproduced through negotiations and practices of a myriad of complex internal actors and forces of external connections. Each of these contributes to a constant notion of urban transformation: from social to cultural to economic. While this may suggest that transformation is indeed a generalized condition of city life*, seeing cities as active, dynamic sites of encounter shapes their conceptual imaginaries allowing for new openings in the discourse of urban transformation. Cities are amalgams of socio-political processes as much as geospatial; this must necessarily inform the circumstances of change within the urban realm. “Urban scholars have long been fascinated with the idea that cities are sites of invention,” from Louis Wirth’s (1923) argument that cities produce markedly new ways of life to Susana Torre’s (1996) claim of the city as uniquely equipped for a discursive production of social action in space** to Arjun Appadurai’s provocation that the contemporary nature of cities have made possible new, distinct conditions of citizenship.

By engaging a practice of co-design and committing to inclusive, pluralistic values, this pilot design begins to redirect the hegemonic discourse away from co-optation and reductionary practices.

* Jenny Robinson, “Inventions and Interventions: Transforming Cities—An Introduction,” Urban Studies, Vol. 43-2, (2006): 251 - 258. ** Robinson, “Inventions and Interventions: Transforming Cities—An Introduction,” 252.

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An understanding of cities as active sites of collective imagination, invention, and intervention positions the city as undergoing perpetual transformation, shaped by active engagement and lived experience.

This conceptual opening is significant as inclusivity and citizenship* are perpetually under threat – indicating new forms of governance and governmentality are necessary for achieving a paradigm shift. As sites of engagement and negotiation the voiceless and powerful, wealthy and poor, privileged and marginal, continuously redefine practices of cohabitation, pluralism, and inclusivity. Grounding this inquiry into the nature and function of the city is an understanding of precise mechanisms by which the city supports transformation – socially, culturally, politically, and so on. Are all urban dimensions transforming equally, equitably? The particular relationship between spatiality and lived experience, urban structure and urban process reveal important notions of circumstance. “The particular spatial form of the city can establish the potential for transformation; and…the ways in which the city is experienced and used as a space open up the opportunity for social relations to change, even as the physical form of the city might remain constant.”**

Therefore, cities are sites of encounter - social, cultural, political, economic, and spatial - amongst internal and external actors, operating distinctly, yet in parallel.

* Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural dimensions of globalization, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). ** Robinson, “Inventions and Interventions: Transforming Cities—An Introduction,” 252.

With this in mind, cities as the object and condition of inquiry offer a unique platform to reflect upon how and why social construction shape urban processes. Within the context of this research, I am interested in prodding the implication urban has upon our sense of collective identity and shared culture. As discussed above, the distinct nature of the city is to perpetually reproduce desired conditions of urban culture while also allowing for the construction of new paradigms. This particular consciousness in the urban realm necessitates complex understandings of existing processes and yet holds significant potential for intervention. An understanding of cities as active sites of collective imagination, invention, and intervention positions the city as undergoing perpetual transformation, shaped by active engagement and lived experience. By establishing this foundation, the particular concentration of my research can be located within the consciousness of the distinct, yet malleable city. The impetus for my inquiry stems from two concerning observations of contemporary urban processes: the spectacularization of culture in urban policy and the co-optation of a one-dimensional, oversimplified notion of diversity within the construction of new urban realms. While these terms are linked to particular understandings or constructions in our minds, exclusion emerges when entered into the debate over the capacity and composition of the public realm. This research identifies and aims to transform these patterns that have emerged within contemporary US cities.

UNDERSTANDING PHILADELPHIA Image by Nadia Elokdah Understanding Philadelphia as perpetually transforming allows for critical analysis of current systems of urban governance while also creating openings for new possibilities. Putting in conversation unlikely allies moves toward processes of inclusion through the activation of co-design of pluralistic frameworks in

this case, for arts, culture, and diversity politics.

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To do so, this research must address this pattern of construction: co-optation of diversity, veiled characterization of culture, and conscious and unconscious practices of exclusion. I approach this through two series of research questions. The first is concentrated on broad concepts inextricably linked to urban space where the intersection of social, spatial, and political converge:

How is diversity understood and socially constructed within the city? How are identity and culture used to construct and reproduce spaces of pluralism and inclusion within the urban realm? And related to diversity and culture, what are the particular mechanisms utilized in social, cultural, and political transformation?

The second series is specific to the City of Philadelphia, where I have chosen to situate my research: As inquiries into identity and culture have been the work of theorists long before, given are a series of interrelated questions to not only guide, but also focus the research.

What is the landscape of diversity politics within Philadelphia? Who is involved, and at what scale, in informing socio-cultural plans, programs, initiatives & policies?

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While the site of inquiry is not necessarily restricted to the City of Philadelphia alone, a unique set of circumstances provide an opportune case study to reflect upon a larger discourse. Since the 1970s, Philadelphia has undergone a wide-range of change as power structures, which encompass a wide range of actors â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from local foundations to city government to corporations, negotiate with urban citizens over the identity and culture of the public realm. Decisions over public funding allocations vary widely, programs and initiatives communicate an array of messages about the nature of the city, and a striking moment in itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contemporary history occurs, Philadelphia seems to be establishing itself as a smaller-scale urban cultural pocket. Together these phenomena allow for Philadelphia to emerge as a center of arts and culture while simultaneously arising as a celebrated core of diversity. These conditions established a contemporary narrative of cultural city making as embedded within the domain of the political. While the context of particularities here are obviously not universal to all cities, this investigation can implicate new understandings of the interrelated conditions of identity, culture, and urban.

UNDERSTANDING PHILADELPHIA Image by Nadia Elokdah Putting into contrast the arts and cultural institutions with the complexity of cultural and identity at the neighborhood and community level highlights how exclusionary these processes are in Philadelphia. This juxtaposition offers a critical lens for the Mayorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy

to understand the dominant narrative, critically evaluate the cultural landscape of Philadelphia, and advocate for the realization of new paradigms.

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ENGAGING URBAN IMAGINARIES Through the design of an exhibition at City Hall, this collaborative practice is aimed at urban transformation. In approaching the larger questions motivating this thesis a model for engagement is presented to demonstrate two aspirational principles of urban practice: one, how intervention within the process of decision-making can occur; and two, how imagination can create alternative possibilities within the existing paradigm. This pilot practice aims to integrate exhibition design as a creative political act – looking for opportunity to intervene within the current paradigm of power structure and governmentality.

While this is aimed at an ambitious, long-term goal of co-design toward the realization of transformation, what will be discussed are the initial steps and tested methods necessary to establish a radically new engagement with arts and culture governmentality. As will be seen, this was accomplished through the utilization of the urban imaginary as an actionable theory and the home as an entry point to discuss how diverse, complex identities manifest in and then contribute to the discursive production of the city through culture.

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When thinking of cities as shaped by active engagement and lived experience, conversations involving multiple voices from multiple actors are possible. An important moment is when the formation of strategic alliances begins to manifest. If these alliances prioritize complex identity as a foundation for diversity and cultural initiatives, they will consciously move toward a practice of codesign using the urban imaginary as a vehicle for inclusivity of multiple voices and aspirations. The exhibit was a prototype of this. Recommendations stemming from the use of the urban imaginary as transformative urban practice might then form a pluralistic framework for arts and culture within urban governance in Philadelphia. The collaborative team set out to design methods of engaging a wider audience in the internal co-production of alternative imaginaries and aimed to activate spaces of civic engagement through discourse in the public sphere. We looked to anchor institutions, public schools, art in public space programs, and applied for an opportunity to display work in City Hall through the OACCE Art in City Hall program. Al-Bustan was selected to curate an exhibition of original artwork to be on display in a fifth-floor corridor, in-between judges chambers, hearing rooms, City Council offices, and local government administration. This location is quite unique as an exhibition space and the project team discussed extensively what its contents and purpose should be in order to best utilize the symbolic power of a direct engagement with the urban imaginary inside City Hall.

URBAN IMAGINARY Photograph by Nadia Elokdah Students and a parent from a Philadelphia public elementary school contribute responses – written and drawn – to the interactive board during the exhibition opening. “We Went Looking for Home but We Found,” begins to craft a process of co-design – through the exercise of civic engagement in

the public sphere, especially through the inclusion of typically marginalized urban citizens.

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Ultimately, we saw this as a ripe occasion for exercising our theory as intervention within the paradigm of governmentality; we must determine how to most effectively design an exhibition that feels inclusive to multiple voices – local government employees, civil servants, visitors and guests, possibly even the Mayor. This remains a pivotal goal for producing pluralistic space of codesign* within this City Hall corridor. This opportunity manifested as the exhibition, “We Went Looking for Home but We Found,” which featured a recent collaborative, multimedia art display, taking the form of a simple counting book, that explores how home and identity shape and influence one another. This exhibit provided a platform upon which to share the collaborative workshop-style process inherent to Al-Bustan’s youth programs by presenting the final book pages along one wall while the facing wall displayed photographs of the making process. Throughout the planning stages, many ideas were exchanged, however, my primary influence was the creation of a new interactive dimension to “We Went Looking for Home but we Found” that would pose questions to the audience about their own identity and its relationship to the shaping of Philadelphia.

* Jilly Traganou, “Migratory Homes: Redesigning Group Identity, Prototyping Social Change,” Journal of New Frontiers in Spatial Concepts 3, 43-55 (2011).

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CO-DESIGNING SPACES OF PLURALITY Collectively we decided to make an interactive board that have a series of questions visitors could respond to on provided paper squares to pin up for others to see. This was designed as such for two reasons. First, this process is imitable to the program design, which produced the counting boards on display. This process allows for the participant to sit with the question, ruminate as to what is the breadth of the question posed before committing to an answer to share. Secondly, this corridor will serve a distinctly different function from that of a common room for a large group working together for weeks at a time producing conditions of trust for meaningful discourse. Therefore, we designed a board that intends to provoke discourse, however delayed it might be. By doing so, participants could post an answer to a question and then return a few days later to see what other responses were generated; perhaps an individual felt an answer was powerful or provocative or amusing and replied in kind.

Ultimately, the idea is focused toward multiple voices contributing to the discursive production of the space of the fifth floor corridor. This interactive element wants to discover what kind of environment could be produced with such a diverse cross-section of participants involved? CITY OF PHILADELPHIA Courtesy of City of Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs “According to the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings institute, ‘Among its peer regions, Metropolitan Philadelphia has the largest and fastest growing immigrant population’ which [is] now 12% of the total population.” (Immigrant and Multicultural

Affairs, City of Philadelphia)

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DIVERSITY INITIATIVES

CITY OF PHILADELPHIA ARTS & CULTURE TIMELINE

PRIVATE-PUBLIC CITY-LED INITIATIVES PHILANTHROPHY

Reflecting upon the intent of this pilot practice, the complete process of curating this exhibition is quite informative to the initial aims of engaging the urban imaginary as an active form of practice. However, this process is equally unsuccessful in regard to the ambitious goal of co-designing a discursive space of pluralism.

7C0D7F

1981

1983

Arts & Business Council Inc. to leverage new funds, direct new resources, and cultivate new leadership from the business community to support the creative sector including arts, culture and for-profit creative businesses

Arts & Business Council program progressive, results-oriented, receives UDAG, the first ever socially responsible comawarded to a Philadelphia munity investment group cultural institution, to launch the expansion of the Please Touch Museum

1985

ARTS & BUSINESS COUNCIL BUSINESS VOLUNTEERS THE REINVESTMENT OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA FOR THE ARTS RECEIVES FUND established as a established by the Greater small community developURBAN DEVELOPMENT Philadelphia Chamber of ment organization in PhilaACTION GRANT Commerce and the national delphia; evolved into a

PRIVATE SECTOR

1872

1913

[formerly Fairmount Park Art Association]

established to to promote established to foster established to administer the well-being of humanity sustainable communities charitable trusts; envisions throughout the world in the US guided by a flourishing urban region principles of social justice made up of safe, thriving & distinguished by healthy and diverse communities environments, strong local economies, and thriving cultures

ASSOCIATION FOR PUBLIC ART

THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

1917

THE SURDNA FOUNDATION

1918

THE PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION

1936

1940

KNIGHT MEMORIAL THE FORD FOUNDATION EDUCATION FUND [forms the Knight established to advance human Foundation] welfare

1948

CITY OF PHILADELPHIA ART COMMISSION

1999

conceptualizes the arts, culture, and humanities as integral to urban vitality and social wellbeing and develops ways to measure the impact of this sector on community life

INITIATIVE partnering with the GPCC, Arts & Business Council spearheads and launches first comprehensive study produced by the regional business community to measure the impact and economic competitiveness of the arts organizations in the region

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SOCIAL IMPACT OF THE ARTS PROGRAM (SIPA)

2002

Al-Bustan supports the pursuit and affirmation of Arab American cultural identity, while playing a constructive civic role within broader American society

1984

showcases artwork by professional and emerging artisits in Philadelphia

ART IN CITY HALL

1964

1965

1966

1977

advises the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who also chairs the Council, on agency policies and programs [forms the National Council on the Arts]

[forms the National Endowment for the Arts]

grants programs began in 1968 with modest program of support for community arts festivals

the main aims were to give distressed communities funds for residential or non-residential use and to stimulate meaningful privatepublic partnerships; proposals needed to include the cooperation of the city government and private investors to successfully secure funding

NATIONAL ARTS & CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT ACT

NATIONAL FOUNDATION ON THE ARTS & THE HUMANITIES ACT

PA NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THE ARTS

forming the largest-ever advocacy group for the arts in America

2010

CREATIVE PHILADELPHIA VISION PLAN four-year

2011

CITY HALL

2012

CREATIVE ECONOMY

PRESESNTS AWARDS event honoring comprehensive proposal from the work of the region's forKnights Arts Mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council Challenge winner, profit creative sector for supporting and promoting arts, City Hall opens culture, and creative industries plaza to host emerging & professional performing artists

2013

free, publicly accessible webtool providing access initiative in partnership to a spatial database of with the Center for arts and culture organizations Emerging Visual Artists and creative artists across that brings the work of local artists to conference Philadelphia rooms of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce

PCA GROUND-

GALLERIES AT THE CHAMBER

2013

CULTURE BLOCKS

2014

opment for the Arts, Culture & Creative Sectors through a partnership with IBM and The Wharton School [UPENN], initiated by a challenge grant from the Knight Foundation

around the city will host events that promote understanding, respect, and appreciation for the many residents, cultures and communities which combine to make Philadelphia a great destination and a city of exciting multicultural exploration

DESIGNING LEADERSHIP PROGRAM Executive Devel-

XCULTURAL PASSPORT WEEK MOIMA and groups

2013

2015

“IMAGINE A MODERN PHILADELPHIA” FROM PHILLY MURAL ARTS

AL-BUSTAN SEEDS OF CULTURE

“WE WENT LOOKING FOR HOME BUT WE FOUND” EXHIBITION ARTS IN CITY HALL

Mural honoring Edmund Bacon, Executive Director of the City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, who envisioned a new golden age for the city of Philadelphia in the post- WWII era that would reinvigorate community investment and development

1986

2004

Mayor W. Wilson Goode establishes the City of Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture

due to financial constraints, the Street Administration closes the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture

MAYOR’S OFFICE OF ARTS &CULTURE

2013

SWELL coalition of organizations and residents working to make our region a better place for kids to grow, for families to thrive, and for businesses to prosper

GRANTED $98 MILLION FOR 1,610 GRANTS IN 10 YEARS multidisciplinary grantmaker dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community and raising Philadelphia’s visibility as a dynamic hub for a broad range of cultural experiences

established community-based anti-graffiti netowrk of artists working in public space

section 16-103 of the Philadelphia Code establishes Nation’s first One Percent requirement for City projects

NATIONAL ARTS & BUSINESS ABC MERGES WITH AMERICANS FOR ART

THE PEW CENTER FOR ARTS & HERITAGE

1984

1959

2005

To lead, strengthen and give voice to a diverse cultural sector that is making Philadelphia a world-class region to live, work and play

CITY OF PHILADELPHIA MURAL ARTS PROGRAM

REGIONAL ARTS & CULTURE ECONOMIC

OFFICE OF ARTS & CULTURE CLOSES

2008

2010

2011

2013

ESTABLISHES THE MAYOR’S CULTURAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Mayor Michael Nutter signs executive order to re-open the City’s Arts & CUlture Office, adding Creative Economy

oversees art in city hall program and establishes Art Gallery at City Hall

livable, healthy, & economically viable city in the future

Mayor Michael Nutter created the MOIMA for the purpose of ensuring the well-being of immigrants and other groups by providing access to city services; engaging stakeholders in the development of economic resources, promoting civic participation, and assisting with educational opportunities and access.

MAYOR’S OFFICE OF ARTS, CULTURE & THE CREATIVE ECONOMY

OFFICE OF ARTS, CULTURE PHILADELPHIA 2035 PLAN & THE CREATIVE ECONOMY addresses the projects, policies, and changes necessary to start OPENS IN CITY HALL making today to create a more

MAYOR’S OFFICE OF IMMIGRANT & MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS

2014

URBAN DEVELOPMENT ACTION GRANT PROGRAM

PA NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THE ARTS PRESERVING DIVERSE CULTURES INITIATIVE grants budget of $8,945,200 with 8% allocated to initiatives and programs Preserving Diverse Cultures and Folk & Traditional Arts

POTENTIAL TO INTERVENE

GOVERNMENT

1994

1972

ONE PERCENT FOR ART

design review board for architecture and public art paid for with City funds or on publicly owned land, including streets

Councilwoman Joan Specter sponsers Bill 1421 establishing the PCF in partnership with the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance to support arts & culture activities, programs, and organizations across Philadelphia

founded as a division of the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau to help attract more multicultural visitors to the city, to provide innovative, creative customer service and resources to diverse/multicultural groups,and promote economic impact for the hospitality industry and citizens to ensure Philadelphia is known as a premier diverse/multicultural destination. [Forms PHLDiversity]

GREATER PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL ALLIANCE

1911

PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL FUND

PHILADELPHIA MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS CONGRESS (MAC)

independent nonprofit & grantmaking organization

CIVIL SECTOR

PUBLIC SECTOR

1992

1987

THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS

PRACTICE // POSITIONALITY

NATION BUILDING

PRIVATE-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIPS

GLOBAL CITIES

SHAPING ARTS & CULTURE

SHAPING AND SUPPORTING ARTS & CULTURE

EXPERIMENTING AND BRANDING ARTS & CULTURE

GUIDING AND FOLLOWING ARTS & CULTURE

GIVING BACK AFTER GREAT WEALTH PRODUCTION

STRENGTH, POWER, RESILIENCY

COMMERCIALIZED PUBLIC SPACE

MULTICULTURAL/INTERCULTURAL

“GIFTING CULTURE” TO THE MASSES

CIVIL RIGHTS OF A NATION

CULTURE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS

CULTURAL EQUITY & THE ARTS

+MUSEUMS

+SYMBOLIC SPACES

+CORPORATE ART

+PLACEMAKING

+PARKS

+CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUMS

+CONVENTIONS

+PLAZAS

+MAIN STREETS

+PUBLIC ART

+HIGHWAYS

+SPONSORED ART

+ART IN PUBLIC SPACE

+BRIDGES

+FESITVALS

+ARTS DISTRICTS +ART IN CITY HALL

Public-Private Initiatives. Each of these successively speaks to patterns of fluctuating power structures alongside economic and political growth cycles.

PRECARITY

PHILADELPHIA’S INITIATIVES Diagram by Nadia Elokdah The multi-layered timeline of arts and culture outlines the one hundred forty-three year history of Philadelphia’s relationship with arts and culture through key events at several scales including federal, state, city, and local. Three distinct approaches can be isolated from the larger history: Federal and State Initiatives; Private-Public Initiatives; and City-led

+CURATED STREET ART +STREET ART

DIVERSITY = NEW LANGUAGE + NO ACCOUNTABILITY FILLING THE GAP CREATING ALLIANCES IN FOUND SPACES

PHILANTHROPHY

PRECARITY

* Livinia Bifulco, “Citizen Participation, Agency and Voice.” European Journal of Social Theory, May 2013 vol. 16, 174-187 (2013): 182. ** Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 16. *** Susana Torre, “Claiming the Public Space: the mother of Plaza de Mayo,” in The Sex of Architecture, edited by Diana Agrest, et. al. (New York: Abrams, 1996), 249.

PRIVATE-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIPS

PRIVATE-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIP

ENGAGING PLURALISM It is important to speak about the ways in which the exhibition, “We Went Looking for Home but We Found,” begins to craft a process of co-design – through the exercise of civic engagement in the public sphere. Bilfulco, citing Appadurai, discusses how capacity and voice act together in social spaces of co-design to promote the inclusion of multiple voices and multiple belongings, “It is through the exercise of voice (the capacity to debate, contest, inquire, and participate critically) that the sinews of aspiration as cultural capacity are built and strengthened, and conversely, it is through exercising the capacity to aspire that the exercise of voice … will be extended.”* Habermas, Lefebvre, and Torre all indicate a discursive process is a necessary feature of the production of space within democratic practice. For Lefebvre discursive production of urban space is realized through material, human, and social infrastructures.** Torre remarks with a similar sentiment, “public space… and its representation… is the product of the inextricable relationship between social action and physical space.”***

NATION BUILDING

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Language must be more than only symbolic – language is practiced, it is active. Through the practice of actionable theory – it becomes apparent that clarity across language, vision and intent, and practice is achieved.

This thesis asks of the exhibition, how can a discursive process from which a space of pluralism manifests be co-produced and co-designed*, inclusive of disparate, complex, and fluctuating identities? Discursive co-production and in particular co-design, offers an actionable lens through which to understand theory as practice that can potentially illuminate the relationship between Madanipour’s empirical dichotomy, social exclusion and the city, and Said’s theoretical urban imaginary. To complete a final reflection of the exhibition as well as the experimental nature of actionable theory as a whole explored through this thesis, I offer a three-part summary. [1] Finding Pluralism in the Gaps [2] Inclusion and Accountability [3] Actionable Theory in Found Spaces – A Proposal. Part 01: Finding Pluralism in the Gaps Pluralism can be defined as the fundamental commitment to political diversity at all times. “It means that no party has a monopoly on the truth and no party can impose its views on the rest of society. Such a commitment must include developing a system of check and balances that redistributes power”** more equitably and simultaneously provide openings for increased inclusion in decision-making processes. Key to this becoming a practiced reality within governmentality is the building of strategic alliance amongst actors of various capacities, powers, and

* Jilly Traganou, “Migratory Homes: Redesigning Group Identity, Prototyping Social Change,” in Journal of New Frontiers in Spatial Concepts 3, 43-55, (2011). ** Marwan Muasher, The Second Arab Awakening: and the battle for pluralism, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 165.

with access to subaltern knowledges. As of now the paradigm is stacked in favor of predominantly private-public partnerships and joint ventures with the local government. Community-based organizations face a steep barrier of entry, excluding nearly all of civil society from these processes. The local government must provide clear channels of access to improved and sustainable resources to benefit from the innovative creativity and commitment to sharing cultures within their diverse communities.*** These tangible spaces are where imagination and intervention meet to foster urban transformation. Part 02: Inclusion and Accountability One of the fundamental concerns of this research is engagement with rhetoric. Language must be more than only symbolic – language is practiced, it is active. Through the practice of actionable theory – it becomes apparent that clarity across language, vision and intent, and practice is achieved. Subsequent evaluation of this occurs in an accessible and pluralistic form, as these programs and offices are meant to support the mission and needs of the pluralistic community – not the creative urban citizens or politics. In order to evaluate the path down which urban transformation is headed, we need to establish a solid foundation for the language used in dictating practices. For example, whenever speaking about inclusion throughout this thesis, it is critical to keep a sense of consistency in its meaning. Most urban centers are extremely heterogeneous, nearly all

*** One model that can benefit from this approach in the near future is the Community Cultural Legacy Initiative referenced in interviews by Philadelphia’s Chief Cultural Officer.

CITY OF PHILADELPHIA ARTS & CULTURE STAKEHOLDER MAP

PRIVATE-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIP

ASSOCIATION FOR PUBLIC ART

PRIVATE SECTOR

PHL DIVERSITY

CITY HALL PRESENTS

DESIGNING LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

THE WILLIAM PENN FOUNDATION

GOVERNMENT

THE REINVESTMENT FUND

THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS

REGIONAL ARTS & CULTURE ECONOMIC INITIATIVE

ONE PERCENT FOR ART

PUBLIC ART IN PHILADELPHIA

ART COMMISSION

URBAN DEVELOPMENT ACTION GRANT PROGRAM

ART IN CITY HALL

MAYOR’S OFFICE OF IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS [NEA]

CULTUREBLOCKS

MAYOR MICHAEL NUTTER

XCULTURAL PASSPORT WEEK

INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS Diagram by Nadia Elokdah When analyzing the interconnections and interrelations between various stakeholders through the lenses of identity, culture, and diversity patters of intention and impact emerge. Assessing ideologies within practice establishes a guide for evaluation and forming strategic alliances toward the aim of transformation.

THE SURDNA FOUNDATION

PHILLY MURAL ARTS PROJECT

PENNSYLVANIA COUNCIL ON THE ARTS [PCA]

MAINTAIN PARADIGM | SMALL INTERVENTION | INCREMENTAL CHANGES

PCA GROUNDSWELL

THE PEW CENTER FOR ARTS & HERITAGE

GREATER PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL ALLIANCE [PCA]

CIVIL SECTOR

PUBLIC SECTOR

CREATIVE PHILADELPHIA VISION PLAN

NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THE ARTS [NCA]

CREATIVE PHILADELPHIA

PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL FUND

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SOCIAL IMPACT OF THE ARTS PROGRAM [SIPA]

THE KNIGHT FOUNDATION

AL-BUSTAN SEEDS OF CULTURE

MAYOR’S OFFICE OF ARTS, CULTURE & CREATIVE ECONOMY

VILLAGE OF ARTS & HUMANITIES

MAYOR’S CULTURAL ADVISORY

HELEN HAYNES

PCA PRESERVING DIVERSE CULTURES INITIATIVE

MURAL TOUR & PROGRAM

WE WENT LOOKING FOR HOME BUT WE FOUND

ARTS & HUMANITIES CENTER

TRANSFORMATION | SYSTEMATIC INTERVENTION | SHIFT PARADIGM

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A proposal for how multiple voices can be brought together in order to foster the discursive production of pluralism throughout Philadelphia’s urban realm.

comprised of post-colonial or global citizens for which these cities pride themselves for this diversity – as Philadelphia. But the politics do not match the rhetoric. “Diversity of views and perspectives is a prerequisite to problem-solving, scientific and economic innovation, and artistic creativity. An appreciation of different views is also an important factor in the development of domestic peace.”* Respect for diversity should not only be claimed by local government, but also needs to organize and support opportunities for engagement and knowledge exchange. This is the capacity to aspire in the realm of arts and culture in Philadelphia. All that is needed is the political will. Part 03: Actionable Theory in Found Spaces – A Proposal A proposal for how multiple voices can be brought together in order to foster the discursive production of pluralism throughout Philadelphia’s urban realm. “The crucial point is to create space for public sociality and official recognition” in which an exchange of ideas and the practice of the urban imaginary can illuminate critical engagement. Thus, with these conditions, “these events become public and political” and capacity to aspire is not secluded to cultural production, but also public and political.** As Appadurai discusses in relation to deep democracy, the nature of insurgent urbanism, which I am not suggesting this thesis is arguing for, can often be simply to hold consistent in the face of changing politics.*** This tactic, however, is not sovereign to insurgency.

* Ibid, 169. ** Livinia Bifulco, “Citizen Participation, Agency and Voice.” European Journal of Social Theory, May 2013 vol. 16, 174-187 (2013): 182. *** Arjun Appadurai, “Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics,” in Public Culture 14(1), 21-47, (2002), 30.

CULTURE BLOCKS

Office of Arts, Culture & Creative Economy UPenn Social Impacts of the Arts Program The Knight Foundation “The City of Philadelphia has so many diverse cultural assets, it can be a challenge to know the depth and breadth of the artistic opportunities we have to offer. CultureBlocks is a tremendous resource for all Philadelphians to keep track of the wealth of arts and culture experiences available. Having this information in one place, easily accessible, allows us to make better, more informed decisions around research, planning and investment in our city’s creative economy,” Mayor Michael A. Nutter

CULTURE BLOCKS Courtesy of City of Philadelphia CultureBlocks beta launch web application As of now the paradigm is stacked predominantly in favor of private-public partnerships and joint ventures with the local government. Nearly the whole of civil society is excluded from these processes as community-based organizations face an immensely steep barrier of entry.

For projects such as CultureBlock to continue benefitting from the innovative creativity and commitment to sharing cultures within their diverse communities, the local government must provide clear channels of access to improved and sustainable resources.

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Attempts to inform how urban practitioners can engage with community-based organizations and policy-makers to design new types of initiatives that both stem from bottom-up practices and also construct a collective urban imaginary.

“Patience as a long-term political strategy is especially hard to maintain in view of…major forces” such as immediate economic stresses or systemic exclusion by power structures.* This brief proposal speaks to the potential for future engagements based on an analysis of the processes of producing a space of inclusion and exchange at City Hall. A key asset of the exhibition inside City Hall was the situatedness, as it necessarily becomes both public and political, in addition to its cultural production. This is a unique opportunity to engage often disparate elements of social construction and the social imaginary** at once. The deployment of the exhibition is particularly unique. There is something provocative about the location, the otherwise unused corridor walls between judges chambers. This subtle, yet affronting nature of engagement with the spectator (who ideally becomes a participant) is bringing to the user a politically charged public sphere in which to engage. This will, at a minimum, bring a sense of consciousness-raising to spaces otherwise devoid of discursive, politically engaged public space. This is step one. In order to influence the processes and practices of governmentality, many future steps will be necessary, ultimately achieved through processes of co-designing spaces of pluralism.

CONCLUSION Locating the Gap, Establishing a Shift As is obvious with most research, this inquiry sits within a larger discourse including cultural production, inclusion and marginality, notions of democracy and representation within the public realm, and the discursive condition of rights in urban space. Much of this exists within a wide and historic space to which this research contributes in modest, yet tangibly significant ways. The work of organizations such as Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, has the potential for significant impact in shaping cities through the construction of a culturally inclusive urban future. As Edward Said informed decades ago, ‘‘partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic.’’ By engaging with individual identity and multifaceted culture, Al-Bustan participants can build understanding and appreciation of one another’s overlapping yet unique identities and explore together possibilities for alternative, more inclusive futures. The value of such work in shaping the city is that it is fundamentally based on appreciation and respect of complex identities and pluralism rather than one-dimensional representations of culture that are easily and often co-opted, as Said cautioned. This leads to the larger intentions of this research identifying methods to establish agonistic pluralism in the face of reductionist and exclusive practices

* Ibid, 30. ** “Cornelius Castoriadis - Interview on Autonomy and Democracy.” “Paraskinio,” ET1 [Greece], 1984. YouTube. Published 14 March 2014. 56:18.

URBAN IMAGINARY Photograph by Nadia Elokdah An opening reception was held in the exhibition corridor and included music performances by program youth, OACCE representatives, and City Council. This was the opportunity to observe how those in attendance would interact with one another, the questions board, and City Hall employees; this

is where the public sphere merges with the power structures, and an exchange of ideas just might occur. It was precisely this ideal that was intended when curating the overall exhibition, to achieve a pluralistic space of inclusion where individuals could share their voices amongst a group of other committed participants

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Are our lived experiences in or knowledge of this place, considered? How can these other voices participate in a collective construction of the city?

- to identify the driving forces behind sociocultural urban policy-making. It also attempts to inform how urban practitioners can engage with community-based organizations and policy-makers to design new types of initiatives that both stem from bottom-up practices and also construct a collective urban imaginary. In order to accomplish this, the selected methodologies aim to uncover challenges and structural barriers guiding this particular avenue of transformation: for example, examining the limitations created in coupling arts and culture with the creative economy. Additionally, to this end, the research looks to contradictions and ineffectualities within the current operating paradigm of the larger system. In identifying these barriers, pathways toward alternatives can be constructed. Strategies and tactics* for more inclusive, agonistic practices can be discerned in support of the work of arts and culture-based organizations. Essentially, this practice aims to locate the gap of the current paradigm by first asking:

How is the urban imaginary utilized as an active form of practice to engage wider, often voiceless, urban citizens to participate in the construction of our urban realm? Second, Is the type of transformation discussed fundamentally intended to produce a paradigm shift within the urban realm, and if so, toward what new form?

* Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).

Lastly, theoretically, this inquiry reaches to engage notions of knowledge production. This collaborative practice insists upon including alternative forms of urban knowledge in order to deconstruct representative appropriations of culture and, in its place, construct policies that prioritize and inherently value pluralistic practices of cross-cultural respect, appreciation, and agonism. Through mapping actors and analyzing relationships, insights into cooperation, participation, and dominant values begin to emerge. As I began this research, I was curious about the role various people and institutions held in shaping what our cities are now and in working toward a vision of what the future should be. I found myself thinking about who is really involved in the production of these ideas. Are our lived experiences in or knowledge of this place, considered? How can these other voices participate in a collective construction of the city?

i.i.i Cities Cities as a site of imagination, invention, and intervention

Nadia Elokdah As a researcher, design strategist, and urbanist I am perpetually fascinated by cities, as places, systems, processes. The urban realm is multifaceted and infinitely engaging. Building to this as my current practice, I lived and worked in Philadelphia doing architecture, planning, and design work within urban and suburban contexts. While an undergraduate student, I had the privilege to collaborate with several organizations that practice at the intersection of design and social justice: the International Design Clinic on a guerrilla-design and installation project for Treehouse Books, a community youth center in North Philadelphia; Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, an arts and culture non profit in West Philadelphia where artists, educators, and youth come together to explore, understand, and engage in positive images of Arabic culture; and a joint Temple University Japan / Kokushian University design exchange for new Urban In-fill Project in Tokyo. I am interested in exploring the ideas of global identity within urban cultures as a condition of our contemporary, globalized society. Throughout this journey, I have worked on a theoreticalbased intervention to reimagine how the lost hammams of Cairo would engage the contemporary street life culture. This work culminated in a book, Identity Crisis: Creating a Contemporary Bathhouse in Cairo, which has been published by Lambert Academic Publishing and earned the 2010 National ARCC/KING Medal for innovation, integrity, and scholarship in architectural design research. To continue this exploration of identity and culture within the urban sphere as an engaged dialectic between theory and practice, I relocated to New York City and joined the Theories of Urban Practice program at Parsons School of Design where I completed an MA in May 2015 and earned the Parsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hearst Scholarship for a thesis engaged in socially responsible design practice that addressed issues related to urban and global diversity and social agency.

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Name and frame the questions to be addressed, as well as values, actions and tasks that needed to be performed to over throw the constraints that have been assigned by others, and to imagine to the unimaginable.

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My Future <---> My City Rethinking Processes of City Revitalization Through Curriculum Connections in Reading, PA By Nora Elmarzouky

INTRODUCTION While multiple options for effective city revitalization efforts exist, federal and state financial incentives facilitate particularly narrow pathways of economic development, which are only loosely held accountable.

Revitalization processes in struggling post-industrial US cities can be made more inclusive through a change in approach. Through this research, it is argued that one such method of this is acknowledging the indispensible knowledge of local residents reflected through students. As decision-makers strive to rebuild the identity of the city, so too are students discovering their membership into the social world through, through both their lived experiences and particularly the required attendance at school. Representing current lived experiences and the history that has led to these daily experiences, students often bring these contexts with them to school. Education reform rhetoric and urban revitalization processes are broadly correlated in that setting the problem often relies on false negative characterizations of people, leading to addressing the needs through predominantly market-driven economic development terms that are used interchangeably with community development.

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A city, “as a practico-material and architectural fact,” is a place for which exchange and production take place from commodities to language and habits. *

It is a space in which encounters occur that create urban life, “a social reality made up of relations, which are to be conceived of, constructed, or reconstructed by thought.”*** Education can also be framed based on the encounter with difference that allows one to find him/herself within their social context, as well as how one learns. **** The trust that is often given by city officials, without evidential grounds, to developers and private corporations as ultimately knowing the best way forward is problematic, as they are often driven by personal profit and largely exclude the public for whom they are developing for. No matter what is built or designed during this process of revitalization, it is a risk that may not yield the outcomes intended by the developer or the city government. Disregarding those who make up the urban realm, as being inconsequential will inevitably incite discontent, opposition, and/ or apathy. It is expected that there should be no opposition to this form of development with emphasis that anyone can become engaged, but they choose not to. Rather than considering possibilities for integration of new communities together, disintegration is preferred.

* Henri Lefebvre, Writings on the City (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1996). ** David Harvey, “The Right to the City,” in Social Justice and the City (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). *** Lefebvre, Writings on the City. **** Gert Biesta, Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006).

The impacts of the development of the built environment and encouraging a particular kind of “economic development” that targets a narrow population limits the possibilities for what could or should be.***** If the redevelopment of cities focuses exclusively on narrow economic concerns, residents are forced to follow rather than participate in the process, similar to the current rhetoric around education reform. An alternate approach, one that is explored further through this research, is to link area regeneration and urban revitalization with schools in a common pedagogical and participatory process, recognizing the nested ecological context of child development and how these systems are interconnected.****** A core element of this is to consider the context that is necessary for stable, productive, and functioning ecosystems for child development and how this relates to the functioning ecosystem of a city. This particular theory, recognizes that it is not just the role of the home that influences youth development, but the systems surrounding them - their school, peers, parents’ work environments, the relationship between public institutions their parents and the broader cultural, social, and belief systems of which they grow up in.******* The cycle of intergenerational poverty works in parallel with a disconnect from the social and political institutions and often difficult home situations. Youth in cities often lack spaces of nurturing, development, learning, and empowerment.

***** Ibidem. ****** Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979). ******* Ibidem.

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While an economically depressed city may have a minimal budget for day-to-day operations, state and federal funding does exist that can be used to unearth multiple knowledge, which can strengthen the development of the city. To fortify the connection between the urban realm, the city, and education, is to recognize the right to “habitat and inhabit… participation and appropriation… information, symbolism, the imaginary, and play”* that occurs through the forces and spaces of unimpeded possibilities of encounter. The stability of pathways, as a part of the right to the educational encounter, to ensure the availability of students learning and teacher guidance relies upon their access and rights to such things as shelter, mobility, communication, play, and so on. Therefore, it is not simply about learning about and accessing the city, but how revitalization processes should be a moment that overcomes the disintegration of community based on wealth, race, and ethnic lines. These moments could be understood as opportunities for increased encounter for a collaborative and inclusive vision with newcomers (both students and “new” residents) that can lend to increased possibilities for prosperity for more people. “The right to the city includes and can be seen as the right to the encounter that is so central to education.”** Policies for education and revitalization are often decided upon by those who are removed from the experience of those decisions, so engaging peripherality is necessary to unpack how these

* Lefebvre, Writings on the City, 173-174. ** Derek R. Ford, “Toward a theory of the educational encounter: Gert Biesta’s educational theory and the right to the city,” Critical Studies in Education 54, no. 3 (2013).

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policies actually impact the lived experience.*** By engaging youth through projects and other curriculum that are physically present in the city, under the guidance of various types of urban practitioners, the knowledge can flow in both directions. The students can excavate the situated knowledge from the lived experience that can be used to shape alternative possibilities of redevelopment. With urban practitioners, students learn from how and what they are doing that can reach out into their communities, to establish a community of practice. To clarify, a community of practice recognizes that hierarchy still exists, but every level of hierarchy and the multiple members and roles that are a part of the urban practice has relevant and important knowledge that is interdependent on one another.****

Engaging these multiple knowledges is critical to begin to widen the “objective” view of what is best for revitalization. The urban is a form of social, professional practice that is a learned behavior. The more able we are to create spaces allowing for interaction and engagement to explore issues as a community that has difference, increases opportunities to achieve a more fiscally, politically, and socially cohesive urban space.

*** Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 20. **** Thuy Linh N Tu, “All in the Family?: Kin, Gifts, and the Networks of Fashion,” in The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion(Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2011).

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The alternative urban practice proposed aims to widen the consultation, participation, and impact of revitalization processes by offering a model for curriculum reform where the city is the classroom to generate a community of practice. In experiencing practical involvement in the process of urban transformation, students gain awareness, tools, and skills necessary for navigating urban issues, while elevating multiple voices from their communities. Institutionalizing such curricula can reposition public schools as anchor institutions, advancing students’ sense of responsibility as active participants with and for the betterment of their communities for strengthening a democratic society. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS The thesis probes the political, social, and economic history of Reading, PA, focused on contemporary efforts of revitalization and public education development. Reading was used as a case study, as it is not dissimilar to other postindustrial cities – in its concerns, chosen paths of historical and contemporary redevelopment, and potential impacts of redevelopment. Neil Brenner’s critical urban theory*, Sharon Zukin’s analysis of symbolic economies**, Herbert Marcuse’s

* Neil Brenner, “What is Critical Urban Theory?,” City 13, no. 2-3 (2009), doi:10.1080/13604810902996466. ** Sharon Zukin, “Chapter 1: Whose Culture? Whose City,” in Culture of Cities (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Inc,1995.

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deconstruction of the falsity of perpetual scarcity***, and Henri Lefebvre and Don Mitchell’s arguments on the right to the city**** Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford Press, 2003). were predominantly employed to analyze goals and visions of revitalization, and their current and potential impacts. They provide frameworks for investigating who decision-makers are and how power is exercised for the purpose of increasing the exchange-value of the city - a process that is often to the detriment of the use-value for current inhabitants. Furthermore, these lenses aid in interpreting how current residents are represented in relation to the rhetoric of progress and development. Their roles are often assigned, delegitimizing their current role in city-making, while limiting future rights to the city.

Informing the alternative approach, the theory of educational encounter provides one possible entry-point into connecting the importance of context and pathways of child development theories with city revitalization processes. Educational encounter both critiques the neoliberalization of education reform, as well as provides entries into thinking about how education can develop or reduce a student’s right to the city.*****

*** Herbert Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society,” in The Essential Marcuse: Selected Readings of Philospher and Social Critic (Boston: Peacon Press, 2007). **** Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford Press, 2003). ***** Ford, “Educational Encounter.”

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While the social side of climate change has become more prominent the recognition of the social drivers (beyond carbon emissions or broad concepts of neo-liberal capitalism), in particular the relationship to daily choices, was still absent from communication or solution rhetoric.

The curriculum connections proposed are rooted in Paolo Freire* and bell hooks’** critical inquiry, where students are guided in understanding their experiences in ever-changing urban contexts. The curriculum design draws upon analysis of multiple pre-existing models of participatory and experiential education, holistic and collective approaches to development, and is coupled with principles of codesign. The programs studied in-depth were Project H***, Youth – Plan, Learn, Act, Now! (Y-PLAN!),**** City Works Workbook*****, Dream:In******, the Homewood Children’s Village initiative*******, Art of Hosting********, and Supertanker.********

One of the main distinctions of the proposed alternative from those studied, is the focus on developing students’ critical consciousness and self-awareness within site-specific considerations. For such a program to take root requires deep understanding of the place in relation to state, federal, and global context to provide youth with the tools, skills, and thinking necessary to negotiate spaces in which they live, currently and ultimately any future space. This is meant to simultaneously address issues and concerns of the city, involvement in redevelopment, as well as concerns with education and learning.

They provided evidence for the necessity, power, and success in engaging youth in redevelopment practices as a means toward empowering their social membership and practices in the wider community. Additionally, some of these programs are aligned with Common Core standards, demonstrating integration into regular academic curriculum. * Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2000). ** Bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994).¬ *** Emily Pilloton, Tell Them I Built This Transforming Schools, Communities, and Lives with Design-Based Education (New York: Ted Conferences, 2012),11. **** Deborah L. McKoy and Jeffrey M. Vincent, “Engaging Schools in Urban Revitalization: The Y-PLAN (Youth--Plan, Learn, Act, Now!),” Journal of Planning Education and Research 26 (2007). ***** Adria Steinberg and David Stephen, City Works: Exploring Your Community (New York City: The New Press, 1999). ****** Carlos Teixeira, “Design Process as Innovation Technology for Creating Value in Emerging Markets,” The New School, 2014. ******* John M. Wallace and Samantha N. Texeira, “Assessing the State of the Village: Multi-method, Multi-level: Analyses for Comprehensive Community Change,” in Schools and Urban Revitalization (New York: Routledge, 2014). ******** Art of Hosting, The Art of Hosting Social Transformation (Cairo, 2011). ******** Jesper Simonsen, Situated Design Methods (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 188-199.

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My Future, My City – My City, My Future (MFMC-MCMF) is a proposal for an experiential service-learning curriculum, designed specifically for the context of Reading.

METHODOLOGY To understand the dominant narratives on historical and contemporary revitalization and education policies, secondary research was conducted examining framing of concerns and possibilities presented on the federal, state, and local scales in comparison to other urban spaces. This was done through analysis of media coverage, urban and education legislation, revitalization processes and plans, maps, incentives zoning, statistical data, and other official documents. This was coupled with ethnographic research in the form of: 30 semi-structured interviews, 30 informal interviews and focus groups with multiple stakeholders, participatory observation, and advocacy to assemble a dominant narrative of lived experiences within Reading. Participatory observation took place through attending different meetings with the school board, Main Street designation program, Downtown Improvement District, and city marketing and promotional committee, in addition to participating in multiple citywide events, girls leadership program, and volunteering with ReDesign Reading on STAR Framework assessment. Combining these methodologies together was critical to map site-specific relations of actors, processes, and funding flows, in addition to uncovering the socio-economic and political intersectionality of education and revitalization. The coterminous border of the school district and political boundaries highlights their spatial intersectionality.

The outcomes of these methodologies were used to consider site-specific alternative possibilities to transform existing processes to foster institutionalized change in social relations to jointly address revitalization and education. My Future, My City – My City, My Future (MFMCMCMF) is a proposal for an experiential servicelearning curriculum, designed specifically for the context of Reading. It was prototyped as a 3-month internship for high school students at I-LEAD Charter School in spring 2015 - although intended for Reading Public High School. The implementation was used as a participatory action research pilot generating deeper evidence of how students learn from their experiences in the city and through schooling. Simultaneously, it aimed to inform the creation of a comprehensive program for students to uncover how they can participate in active, conscious city making while also developing their membership and civic engagement. No matter how precise we design, no matter how hard we “teach” – one can never truly predict, plan for, or determine future outcomes, whether it is urban redevelopment or the internalization and usage of material that is “taught” to a student.

Ultimately, this alternative proposal is not just about dispersing the power of decision-making to include more voices, but also to engage shared responsibility toward collective action in urban redevelopment processes.

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PROPOSED PROGRAM ALTERNATIVE OVERVIEW AND BRIEF ANALYSIS MFMC-MCMF critically engages young people in the exploration of self in relation to the city in which they live toward the end of co-designing and coconstructing the identity of the city. The internship opened with the co-creation of a Communal Contract to activate a collective, safe space. Students met for 2-4 hours each week for 7 weeks with a month gap before intensive work towards a final event. They explored their connection to others within the program through workshops, discussions, and activities, uncovered community needs and assets, “caught” people’s future dreams, created a proposal to repurpose a vacant factory, and presented knowledge artifacts to the public. The particularities of the curriculum modified according to the direction of discussions, students’ topics of interest and circumstances that emerged while working with multiple parties. The exploration began by looking into their own lives and deconstructing what and how they know through various prompted activities. Within this process they uncover their styles of learning and knowing, skills and talents, and hobbies to consider how to utilize them in the development of projects for impacting community. Pressing questions starting with why, how, or what if provoked thoughtful responses tackling systemic issues and thinking one step at a time. The different viewpoints fueled lively and meaningful conversation, which often carried on without the need for guided

facilitation. As low-stakes experimentation, focusing on the individual and the small group creates the foundations for their community exploration by allowing for the experience to understand their own personal connection and deepening their awareness of self. Appreciating one’s own positionality, or at least beginning to understand it, while interacting with peers exploring the same questions, can help students realize how each individual’s knowledge is partial and can complement the other’s rather than being oppositional.

Crucial to the success of this program was the emphasis on lived experience as it is personal, embodied, and situated, which lends to the theory of situated learning. To activate situated learning into the fundamentals of educational programming is to recognize that learning does not take place in the individual mind alone, but rather in the context of social participation.* Learning should be grounded in realworld contexts, using the city and the urban realm as their classroom, rather than trying to isolate the context of the systems they are a part. For students to participate in the democratic practices of the political realm, to participate in urban settings for which they regularly encounter difference, and to feel valued and have full membership into society.** it is necessary to practice and develop problemsolving, critical thinking, and creative skills, as a part of their required participation in schools for it to become habitual thought and behavior.

* Lave and Wenger, Situated learning. ** Jeff Bale and Sarah Knopp, Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation(Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2012).

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My Future, My City – My City, My Future (MFMC-MCMF) is a proposal for an experiential service-learning curriculum, designed specifically for the context of Reading.

It is critical to find openings in regular curriculum in which to activate situated learning as lacking equal access necessarily impacts the way the urban is inhabited and the interactions between people of multiple communities occur. The most discussed topics revolved around power dynamics, purpose of education, perspective, gender and identity politics, local governmental representation, inequity and social justice, authority and policing, sustainability, drugs, violence, gangs, and community. Some of the most striking conversations happened unexpectedly by continuously asking questions to dig deeper into the topic. These conversations exposed students to the interconnectedness of these topics, as well as how disconnected they are from the context they live in through their unawareness of who the current mayor is, how local government functions, historical relevance of the city, existing opportunities for youth, the political borders of the city, and the disbelief they could be active members of the city. More importantly, some of the students expressed they were not sure knowing their rights was valuable, nor that transformation was possible, as they shared multiple counts of rights violations, lack of interactions with decision-makers, and experiences of exclusion from new redevelopment projects. Even with this disembodiment from the necessarily corporeal politics, students were not without thoughtful and deep conversations about how these topics impact their daily lives.

In parallel to meeting each week, students were asked to collect information from their community. They started with documenting their passive observations of the city and their experiences through written reflections, sketching, mapping, photographing, and collaging in the provided sketchbooks. Passive observation transformed into active observation through interviewing peers, friends, families, neighbors, and later ventured on to interviewing strangers. The collection of community viewpoints happened gradually using guiding questions similar to those explored in the weekly discussions, piecing together partial knowledge of other individuals with their own. As they uncover situated knowledge from their communities, it is also important to explore how the city functions and the chosen paths of redevelopment. This is not to emulate what is currently happening, but to become aware of what exists in order to more effectively critique, consider alternatives, and find ways to productively insert themselves. At the time, the City of Reading focused on using the STAR Framework* as a tool for assessing comprehensive sustainability to inform redevelopment envisioning, which was incorporated into the curriculum. Students organized their information collected into the categories of assessment, based on how they understood the needs and assets and the categories, while also unpacking the inherent limitations of assessments by comparing it to the Social Progress Index.**

* STAR Communities - Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating Communities, “Reading, PA,” STAR Communities, https://reporting.starcommunities.org/communities/93-readingpennsylvania. ** Social Progress Imperative, “Social Progress Index - Data,” The Social Progress Imperative, http://www. socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi.

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It is critical to find openings in regular curriculum iThe knowledge artifacts were turned into an interactive exhibition and shared with the drivers of the STAR Framework. This is the start of creating a landscape of needs and assets collected from within their own communities, opens the dialogue of who constitutes community, how information is collected and analyzed, and how is it is categorized to determine potential futures. Changing the critical lens of inquiry to appreciative inquiry of “what could be,* students, then, videorecorded people’s future dreams to be shared in public settings. Collecting these videos allows both the students and the interviewees to transcend the focus on insecurities and fears to offer positive insights and capture voices often excluded from standard revitalization mechanisms. Students begin to consider the value of non-material dreams, recognize everyone has dreams, and how to share them with a larger audience.** With more time, the videos would be used in large-scale multistakeholder ideation workshops to collectively design services and social enterprises that address needs and future aspirations of the wider community. These explorations culminated in the students’ drive to plan the repurposing of an abandoned space into a safe, fun space for teenagers. After choosing a site, they did an informal assessment of the location, brainstormed activities, surveyed other youth perspectives, did precedent research on what and how this space could look, and built

* Art of Hosting, Social Transformation, p 31. ** Nora Elmarzouky, “My Future, My City - My City, My Future,” The People Chronicles, last modified June 9, 2015, http://www.thepeoplechronicles.com/my-future-my-city-mycity-my-future/.

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a prototype. They created a proposal for how it could be done and the importance of it for the community in Reading with a formal public presentation. The program and final event was a first step toward building bridges across traditionally divided communities to demonstrate the possibilities for an urban community of practice. In attendance were power brokers alongside students’ families, intently listening to what the students had to say and offering them personal feedback. The students were excited about the opportunity to share some of what they learned, but still found it difficult to consider that their ideas and voices might be valid and taken seriously. Even though they were told throughout the program that there would be a final event, they did not believe it would happen until invitees began to respond. The day of the event was surprising as many students were so nervous that some almost backed out as, it was later uncovered, this was a first time presentation for many. This is a huge barrier that will take more than just a 3-month program to overcome. It is a hurdle that is built throughout their formative years in school through the various systems of influence mentioned earlier and lasts into their adult lives, impacting their active membership into a community of practice. By involving students in assessing and acting upon the city, they can begin to explore urban issues, but also provide an added fresh perspective that can build trust between those who engage with this urban realm.

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The MFMC-MCMF program provides students with an opportunity to think differently and critically.

Revitalization is not just about fixing buildings and encouraging economic development, but changing the mindset of how we view and engage with the city on a personal and community level. The physical and visible nature of the representation of knowledge from the community encourages more voices to be seen and heard, and also “empowers” people to want to continue to see their voices in public space and feel recognized as having value CONCLUSION

Just like the educational space, cities are a force of liberation and discovery - a place where people encounter themselves, imagine new possibilities, and be creative. *

In the current state of Reading, as in other cities, the identity of certain students is decided for them in a way that does not reflect nor consider them. This can also be said for the way some residents are often spoken about during revitalization processes. Because of this disconnect, conflict arises and continues to try to force people into narrowly defined spaces without considering how to incorporate and engage these multiple communities.** The MFMC-MCMF program provides students with an opportunity to think differently and critically.

* Rebecca Solnit, “Atlases Against Empire: A Woman Measures The City” (lecture, Lewis Mumford Lecture on Urbanism, CUNY, New York, April 2, 2015). ** Donna Jeanne Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: the Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).

By interrogating the places in which they currently live, students understand their role within the city, connecting self with intellectual growth and development while having visible impact on the community. While education and urban revitalization are rarely discussed together, beyond economic development, public schools are one of the most accessible urban social institutions that provide a link between multiple communities and the urban realm. Public schools are sites of social practice and production. Through activating situated learning, schools can foster creativity and provoke critical thinking towards collective and civic participation.*** By shifting the paradigm of reform and purpose of schooling they can become vehicles for community development in relation to the endeavors of revitalization.

***

Lave and Wenger, Situated learning, 57.

My Future <---> My City Rethinking Processes of City Revitalization Through Curriculum Connections in Reading, PA

Nora Elmarzouky Nora Elmarzouky grew up between Cairo, Egypt and Pennsylvania, consistently finding herself pursuing ways to build bridges between communities. With a BA from Tufts University in International Relations, and studying in Spain and Morocco, she developed an interest in the interactions between humans, culture, identity, and the built environment. In Egypt, Nora worked on various research projects related to human development, spanning Arab families and youth, democratic transition and empowerment, environmental and political concerns, for policy recommendations, grassroots activism and international youth programs. Transitioning to formal education, she designed and strengthened curricula at an American school to engage students with communities of greater Cairo and beyond through creating multiple servicelearning, performance based programs. She then pursued an MA at Parsons School of Design in Theories of Urban Practice, to enrich her passion for increasing the role of the public in community development practices. Her research focused on the intersections of public education and urban revitalization - lending to the prototyping of an experiential educational program for youth. She is currently the Director of Programs at Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, an Arab arts and culture organization. She also co-founded an interdisciplinary urban consultancy firm, in.site collaborative, to develop strategies for more inclusive urban development.

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collective research as a starting point rather than simply accepting what they have made as a conclusion.

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extra.ORDINARY Integrating methodologies for change By Dagny Tucker

INTRODUCTION Despite an expansive body of information on “sustainability” there still exist huge gaps between stated sustainability objectives, mandates, metrics and actual implementation and /or efficacy. These disconnects stem from a myriad of root causes. The following excepts from extra. ORDINARY: Integrating methodologies for change touch upon these root causes and the present state of climate change and sustainability, a critique of the current framing and an innovative framework of methodologies and tools that attempt to address the need to “give symbolic shape and plot”, as well as a foundation for innovative solutions to address the “formless threats whose fatal repercussions are dispersed across time and space.”*

extra.ORDINARY uses a novel combination of proven and emerging methodologies (systems thinking, social and environmental life cycle analysis, transition management and design) to deeply inform innovative approaches and strategies to enable broader adoption of sustainable practices. In doing so it provides a framework to close the gap on what we say we want to do and what we actually do when it comes to issues of sustainability.

Visualization based on the social and environmental life cycle of a mobile phone.

* Ibidem

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METHODOLOGY Extra.ORDINARY is diachronic study using qualitative and quantitative methodologies to incorporate both primary and secondary sources. Research methodologies included a situation analysis, interviews and praxes engaging participatory action research, prototyping and surveys. Praxes undertaken over the course of one year include: 1. A systems thinking design challenge, 2. The visual representation of the social life cycle assessment (s/LCA) and 3. The design of an integrated methodologies framework implemented with a. sustainable design students over two semesters, b. the New School facilities management personnel, the general student body and c. through a narrative podcast format aimed at the general public.

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motivation to act on issues of climate change or sustainability. Sustainability’s positioning as purely environmental is not only misleading, but incorrect and important connections to doing more then reduce, reuse and recycle are missed. In part, this is because choices of daily consumption and their far-reaching ramifications on both social and environmental well-being are obscured by global supply chains, green-washing and poor communication strategies regarding the impacts of climate change. This obscurement is part and parcel of the veil of placidity cultivated by a globalized, infowhelmed culture and the “gap between acts of slow violence” for in “their delayed effects, both memory and causation readily fade from view and the causalities thus incurred pass untallied.”*

The framing of climate change and/or sustainability as a colossal issue—only to be solved via government, industry or other monolithic interventions—obscures the complicity of normalized everyday behavior and individuals ability to effect change.

Environmental impacts have taken center stage in the sustainability conversation but the ultimate impact will be on humanity itself.

Colossality diminishes the relational component of daily decisions and broader impacts. Collectively, everyday choices drive cultural normatives. These normatives feedback into broader societal structures, such as business, industry and government and inform larger decisions. This positioning is negatively impacting individual

Some reports are more pronounced in outlining the social impacts: “Due to excess carbon dioxide pollution, the climate is no longer stable and is instead projected to change faster than at any other time in human history. This rapid climate change will expose people to serious risks. Sea level rise… and other

* Nixon, R. (2006-2007). Slow Violence, Gender and the Environmentalism of the Poor in Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Vols. 13.2-14.1

The following images are a series depicting the s/LCA alone and combined with the e/LCA. At the time of writing no visuals could be found representing the s/LCA online, in literature review or in the official s/LCA guidelines (aside from limited charts).

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effects of climate change all pose risks to human health, infrastructure critical to our homes, roads, and cities, and the ecosystems that support us.”* And while these reports of climate change imply or even state the extreme impact on human society, the dominant narrative of climate change continues to produce common mainstream perceptions of climate change that ingrain: 1. It is about the environment 2. Technology will fix it 3. There is nothing I can do as an individual Social sustainability implies supporting structures that build equity and well-being. The “current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already existing crisis of poverty and violence.”** If society is going to address ensuing environmental changes it will need to bolster communities and societies to be buoyant enough to not only “weather the storm” but to flourish in innovative and truly sustainable ways. Unveiling and connecting our everyday actions may seem minor but ultimately these are the choices that feed the “hidden agency and certain form of violence that are imperceptible.”*** Today, in business, government and academia, sustainability is referred to as three overlapping and mutually dependent goals: “ a) To live in a way that is environmentally sustainable, or viable over the long term, b) to live in a way that

* USGCRP (2009). Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States . Thomas R. Karl, Jerry M. Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson (eds.). United States Global Change Research Program. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA. ** Ibid *** Nixon, R. (2006-2007). Slow Violence, Gender and the Environmentalism of the Poor in Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Vols. 13.2-14.1

Visualization based on the social and environmental life cycle of a mobile phone.

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is economically sustainable, maintaining living standards over the long-term and c) to live in a way that is socially sustainable, now and in the future (Dillard, 2009: 2)”.

toward a framing that recognizes and prioritizes the capacity of individuals and communities to both respond to and create change, including envisioning and pursuing alternative futures.”**

The reality remains that while overlap and mutuality are acknowledged, the way issues of sustainability are seen and addressed is separate. In the last decade social sustainability has begun to have its own distinct voice both in theory and in practice. That said, it is still very much a developing field and a lack of consensus on its singular definition remains (Dillard, 2009). The following definition represents the most generally accepted: “a socially sustainable system must achieve fairness in distribution and opportunity, adequate provision of social services, including health and education, gender equity, and political accountability and participation (Harris, 2001: xxix).”

SHIFTING WORLDVIEWS: SYSTEMS THINKING

A reframing of the issue to accurately communicate the social along with the environmental is required. Reframing climate change through a social or human security lens implores the participation of social scientists and creates an opportunity to examine and address the deep underlying structures and conditions at play*. A reframing would not only help to actualize the human as part and parcel of the issue but also shift the focus from a “change through a utilitarian, problem-solving approach or cost-benefit analysis

* O’Brien, K. et. al. (eds.) (2010). Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Reframing can act to shift the way something is understood or viewed. Systems thinking is a primarily a worldview that offers an important alternative lens to old paradigms (Flood and Jackson, 1991) and acts as a practical tool. How one sees the world determines not only what is seen—but also what action is taken about what is seen. For instance, if a dollar bill was only seen as a piece of paper—as opposed to a unit of exchange—a decision might be made to use it as kindling for a fire as opposed to trading it for a loaf of bread. A systems thinking worldview frames materials and relationships in the world as interconnected. Seeing actions, interactions and the things commonly used as having connections beyond the scope of our immediate view allows us to have an expanded understanding of our broader relationship with the world. Systems thinking implements tools, concepts and habits to build an understanding of events, patterns and behavior through increasingly deep comprehension of underlying structure. *** Systems thinking can inform a strategy by guiding a

** O’Brien, K. et. al. (eds.) (2010). Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 4. *** Richmond, Barry (2000). The Thinking in Systems Thinking: Seven Essential Skills. Pegasus Communications

deep and broad understanding of the situation to be transformed. Because systems thinking focuses on the whole, including the feed-back relationships between what is being studied and the other parts of the system, the systems thinking approach is fundamentally different from traditional forms of analysis. *

to enact change. While the social side of climate change has become more prominent the recognition of the social drivers (beyond carbon emissions or broad concepts of neo-liberal capitalism), in particular the relationship to daily choices, was still absent from communication or solution rhetoric.

Systems thinking addresses complexity but there is no reason the basic tenants and tools of systems thinking need be cloaked in complexity. But it remains mainly locked up in business and academia and generally inaccessible from the broader population that might most benefit from what is has to offer. The one exception is in the design field where concepts of systems thinking are frequently implicitly applied and in the case of whole systems design—explicitly applied. MISSING NARRATIVES

The taxonomies on events and solutions rhetoric revealed that the majority of “solutions” conversations remain in the private sector— invitation only—with a continued focus on addressing environmental issues. Events and rhetoric in the public realm specifically showed fewer conversations about solutions. When solutions were addressed the focus remained environmental. Many discussions centered around a need to organize and build solidarity but none discussed societal underpinnings, everyday decisions nor enactable actions for the individual.

A situation analysis, including in depth taxonomies of rhetoric, of The Peoples Climate March revealed an actively engaged community of people who already want to act on issues of climate change but analysis revealed people feel overwhelmed and don’t really know how to takes steps, beyond changing their light bulbs and driving less, to have any impact on climate change. In part this can be attributed to the social environmental disconnect that prohibits a view of the ubiquitous entanglement of our daily choices with unsustainable practices but it is also a result of missing narratives and the accessible tools

Interviews revealed that participants left still feeling overwhelmed and confused about how to engage as the following quote from Climate March and event participant Samantha Bernard demonstrates: “I might have missed this, it might have happened at some point but there could have been a focal point. Speakers talking about issue…get to hear concrete stuff… The issue is so big it can feel overwhelming and of course I know some of the day-to-day concrete things I can do but in terms of more creative steps or even what are possible solutions to the issue…I feel it’s hard to…unless you

* Aronson, D. (2009), “Targeted Innovation: Using Systems Thinking to Increase the Benefits of Innovation Efforts” in R&D Innovator Volume 6, No. 2.

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really seek it out and research for yourself that information isn’t really available.”* Tools are needed to both challenge mental models and develop alternative visions. A vision representing both our daily entanglement with unsustainable practices and the possibilities for sustainability are necessary precursors to using tools to develop solutions. To move towards social and environmental sustainability a visual connection to how daily choices drive and impact the world is crucial. Concepts of sustainability and stories of possibility must be made vividly tangible. The social and environmental LCA’s offer a potential map that designers and others could use, in conjunction with systems thinking to ensure all the pieces within the eco-system of an issue are at least being acknowledged—even if not being acted upon. DESIGNING THE DOTS Design can play an important role in both creating its own sustainable design solutions and in making visible the existing or new narratives, translating the opaque idea of sustainability into something more tangible and making accessible the complex tools such as systems thinking that if made accessible, can be used for deciphering, understanding and creating actionable solutions for issues of sustainability.

Visualizing the environmental life cycle, along with the stakeholder, in the “local community” category of the social life cycle assessment.

* Samantha Bernard in a recorded interview with Dagny Tucker on 10/22/14

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While scope is foundational to success, the key to whole systems design is in understanding how the various parts of the system interact together. Systems thinking provides the frame to see that changes in one part of the system often inadvertently affect other parts of the system—sometimes to the worsening or detriment of the whole and broadens awareness to consider the performance of the whole even if it means a sacrifice of a part. A good deal of the focus of design thinking has been in application to product oriented problems but there is an ever-stronger movement of design practices that seek to address ‘wicked problems’ and the complex dilemmas of societal structures. But first, design itself needs to understand the story and issues of sustainability. SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (SE/LCA) The social and environmental life cycle assessments are methodologies that provide specific guidelines on processes, players and impacts that should be considered when measuring a product or services impact on the environment and society. A demonstration of the deeply ingrained social environmental disconnect is that while the environmental LCA has been around for a half century—making connections between product production and environmental impact—the social life cycle assessment s/LCA was only first published in 2009. Beyond a consumer relationship to “brand identity” or perhaps with the shopkeeper, most products are faceless. A crucial connection is lost when the relationship to those making and manufacturing the very things people depend on daily is completely obscured. People lose a sense of responsibility to the other when they don’t concretely realize the other even exists. Further, this disconnect prohibits recognition of externalized

costs. Making visible these connections can help to make tangible peoples daily participation and impact on systems beyond their local circumference and develop increasingly broader awareness. As such the s/LCA offers a significant new opportunity to guide better understanding of crucial touch points when evaluating social or socio-economic impacts. For the designer specifically, using a combined social and environmental (SE) LCA would allow them the ability to trace the social, socio-economic and environmental impacts of their design. While many research and design methodologies have principles, methods or processes that address pieces of sustainability, very few offer holistic frameworks for deep analysis and mapping of both the social and environmental components together. Approaching the problem from a systems thinking perspective it would make sense to combine the s/LCA and e/LCA. This is not to say that they should merge but instead suggest combined visual representations that would lay all the pieces out in one place—allowing for increased perspective and big picture vision. Further it would connect the dots and facilitate a piece of the much needed restoration to the damage caused by the deeply ingrained “man as separate from nature” and “society as separate from sustainability” memes.

The visual narrative of the combined s & E LCA is a start to a needed dialogue.

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DESIGN + SYSTEMS THINKING OR SYSTEMS THINKING + DESIGN OR WHOLE SYSTEMS DESIGN Using systems thinking and the SE LCA can assist in addressing issues of framing and a provide framework for mapping crucial stakeholders, processes and impacts. These two methods alone are promising in their potential to better inform the everyday choices that impact humanity’s shared destiny—but the linchpin is that they need design to take on their translation for the general public. Many design methodologies are derived from the systems thinking worldview- such as interactive planning and systems dynamics. Other design methodologies have brought heightened awareness of the social—such as human-centered design—but most offer guidance on how to gather information and reflect back interventions and designs for just one part of the puzzle.* While scope is foundational to success, the key to whole systems design is in understanding how the various parts of the system interact together. Systems thinking provides the frame to see that changes in one part of the system often inadvertently affect other parts of the system— sometimes to the worsening or detriment of the whole and broadens awareness to consider the performance of the whole even if it means a sacrifice of a part. While this may seem obvious the process of uncovering the ‘how’ and ‘where’ of these

* Pourdehnad, J. et. al. (2011). “All Together Now: Working across Disciplines” presented at the 55th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), July 17-22, Hull UK: University of Hull.

interactions is far from “systemically” codified in design methodology.** In part this is ‘by design’ as there are countless means of gathering information and there is no infallibly correct process. That said, with the level of complexity that a designer working in fissures of sustainability is dealing with—a guiding map could assist in highlighting necessary touch points. Pourdehnad et. al. contend that: “how well we deal with emergent problematic conditions depends on the quality of the approaches we use to try and implement. In this regard, design practices will benefit from consciously integrating the systems thinking worldview into its methodology.”*** INTEGRATED METHODOLOGIES (IM) FOR CHANGE The integration of systems thinking, social and environmental life cycle assessments and design will have a multiplier effect, increasing the capacity to make more sustainable choices and ability to arrive at more sustainable options. To be clear the IM for change is not intended to be a technical framework but instead a means of informing a more complete view. While an obvious danger exists that an overly simplified integration of methodologies runs the risk of being “watereddown,” equally an opportunity exists to use a version of these methodologies to build general awareness and bring an accessible worldview to a broader population.

** Blizzard, J. and Klotz, L. (2012). “A Framework for Sustainable Whole Systems Design” in Design Studies, vol. 33, no. 5: 456-479. *** Ibid.

Several praxes were undertaken to test the efficacy of IM for change in varied settings including: A. with sustainable design students over two semesters, B. with the New School facilities management personnel and the general student body and C. through a narrative podcast format aimed at the general public. Conclusions as to the success of the IM for change are only partial because at the time of writing several praxes continue. The most demonstrable success at the time of writing comes from surveys of two separate groups of students, both of which used the IM for change in their course on the Ethics and Economics of Sustainable Design. In the second phase of the project students apply the systems thinking and design portions of the IM to develop a redesign of the product or spin-off service to address negative externalites or other issues identified in SE LCA phase. The student projects are a demonstration of the depth of information elicited through the use of the SE LCA in phase-one. The final projects themselves act as further indications of the success or failure to apply the IM for change and demonstrate the depth, creativity and innovation that the methodologies facilitate even when applied with limited technical capacity. Beyond the applied implementation of the IM students are surveyed on the first day of class and then again at the end of the semester to ascertain

their initial knowledge base versus their perceived and demonstrated gain of knowledge and sustainable decision-making and design skillsets by semesters end. The surveys were designed to gather information regarding the student’s ability to integrate systems thinking, the SE LCA and design. 83% of students report a significant increase in their ability to think in systems, 100% reported an increase in their understanding of how to assess social impacts and 96% report an increased capacity to design differently or to think creatively about sustainable “solutions.” The surveys provide evidence that use of the IM over the course of a semester had an impact on students thinking and everyday choices, as well as, being transferable to application in other courses.

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extra.ORDINARY Integrating methodologies for change

CONCLUSION The preceding excerpts outlined the existing disconnect between the socio-enviro sides of climate change. These disconnects act as barriers to broader adoption of more sustainable practices. We have seen that people are overwhelmed with the issue of sustainability—often framed as requiring colossal change. This is compounded by a lack of narratives demonstrating actionable “connections and possibilities.” This lack of narratives feeds back to reinforce and exacerbate the feeling. Further, an information inequality exists in making accessible a worldview and tools to assist in developing sustainable solutions. The issue of worldview and the potential for systems thinking to address reductive thinking were highlighted. Interventions to begin addressing these shortcomings through better translation and communication and a demonstration of opportunities to facilitate greater embracement

ways of conveying and operationalizing these methods was undertaken. Prototypes included: teaching the IM for change for students to apply to their projects, developing a graphic language for the social life cycle assessment, visuals for behavior change, creation of the System Thinking Explorers group, and production of a podcast that gives voice to the stories behind everyday choices. In many cases the IM for change proved impactful beyond the issue at hand and moved into the realm of everyday choices. Student testimonies exhibit this on a personal level: “learning the social and environmental life cycle assessment made me look at things as a whole process, not only the product itself but where it comes from and where it goes after I use it. Every decision I make now comes with a lot more thinking.” * Further investigation would be useful for better developing applicability and translation of the IM for change methodologies both for general use and for broader awareness building of the farreaching ramifications of everyday choices.

were outlined. The prospect for the SE LCA to guide systems thinking and design in identifying what to map is an exciting possibility. The SE LCA can serve to strengthen systems thinking and design as well as address the aforementioned severance of the social and environmental sides of sustainability along with the ubiquitous engagement with unsustainable daily choices.

Dagny Tucker Using innovation, strategy & design Dagny’s work pushes the boundaries of how we think about everyday decisions and builds the capacity in others to have real impact on today’s pressing issues. Her appointment with non-profit, business and government players has traversed five continents and navigates complexity to forge deeper and actionable understandings of sustainability and positive peace. With a foundation in international peace, conflict & development, her work aims to bolster others working on “wicked problems” through novel, engaging and sound frameworks, interventions, workshops, popular education pieces and media. Words can be hollow: sustainability, fair trade, conflict resolution- but Dagny strives to put the fat meaning back onto the hackneyed bones of jargon. Sustaining means not only lasting, but good, solid solutions to complicated issues. Fair trade means truly happy families, laughter, food from clean soil on both sides of the trade lines. Conflict resolution doesn’t mean buried in the sand or chilly relations, it means break though, break down, restart from the seeds of creation, it means sleep well at night knowing the children are safe. Drawing from extensive inside institutional work on big picture analysis and in-depth community based research, her work translates complex systems and process and her diverse background brings a unique and integral vision to all her projects. She teaches at Parsons The New School for Design, was formerly the Managing Director of Strategic Global Affairs for New Hope Natural Media and is co-founder of Thread Count. She is a Tishman Scholarship recipient for “outstanding achievement in sustainability,” and a Ph.D (c) at Universitat Jaume I in Spain and is often found exploring the wilds of both the urban and the back-county with her 6 year-old son.

In parallel to the development of the IM for Change, creating and prototyping accessible

* Anonymous (2015) Integrated Methodologies (IM) for change Student Surveys; Ethics and Economics of Sustainable Design Course, Parsons The New School for Design; New York

Learn more at www.threadcountcreative

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Creating significant contribution to the oncontinuing production of urban knowledge, to generate new forms of practice and expand and deepen their capacity to design through lens of urban practice, urban ecologies and the right to the city.

SCHOOL OF DESIGN STRATEGIES

THESIS WORK

2015

design and urban ecologies THEORIES OF URBAN PRACTICE