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| EDRA52 Keynote & Plenaries |
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| EDRA52 speakers EDRA52 DETROIT will include a variety of renown speakers that will present virtual keynote or plenary sessions. The keynote and plenary speakers will focus on issues of justice in the environment in relation to social, cultural, and economic sustainability, race and culture, education, equality in planning, policy making, and public space design, urban fragmentation and divisions; practices of inclusion and community engagement, accessibility and mobility, environmental and community shared resources, and the necessity of creating social, built, and natural environments in support of a just future. EDRA52 opening keynote A Conversation about Just Cities with Toni Griffin on May 20, 2021. Toni L. Griffin is founder of urban AC LLC, based in New York, a planning and design management practice that works with public, private and nonprofit partnerships to reimage, reshape and rebuild just cities and communities. The practice designs, leads and manages complex, and transformative social and spatial urban revitalization frameworks, rooted in addressing historic and current disparities involving race, class and generation. Over the past ten years, we have successfully collaborated with several major U.S. cities on the cusp of just economic recovery. Recent clients include the cities of Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Memphis and Detroit. Ms. Griffin is also a Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she teaches design studios and seminars also rooted in issues of social and spatial justice. She is founder and director of the Just City Lab, an applied research platform that investigates the ways design can have a positive impact on addressing the conditions of injustice in cities. EDRA52 closing keynote Justin Garrett Moore on May 22, 2021. Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist and is the program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He has extensive planning and design experience—from regional and urban systems, policies, and projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design, public realm, and arts initiatives. At the Mellon Foundation, his work focuses on advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice through place-based initiatives, built environments, cultural heritage projects, digital and ephemeral programs, and commemorative spaces and landscapes. What are we planning, designing, building, and maintaining? Where, why, how, and for whom? Designers and urbanists increasingly hope to develop anti-racist and equity-focused approaches to their practices to contribute to communities, cities, and environments that have been marked by injustice, neglect, and erasure. As the multitudes seek liberation and stewardship for people and the environment, it is important to promote an ethics of care in the built environment, and design fields of practice uniquely positioned to advance social justice in place. The ERDA closing keynote presentation will offer examples of collective actions, conversations, questions, ideas, images, and projects that demonstrate how we might grow capacity and power with designers and across disciplines and sectors to make positive change for people, places, and the planet. EDRA52 opening plenary Reckoning with History to Repair the Commons on May 19, 2021. This plenary explores the legacy of racism that continues to compromise the public domain of cities, robbing BIPOC urbanites of a sense of comfortability and excluding their voices from the planning and development process. It points to the amnesia that hides the symbols of white supremacy in plain sight and allows schools to continue offering an outmoded city-making education that prepares students to perpetuate racial injustice. It offers an interdisciplinary perspective on these issues, analyzing the history of real and perceived marginalization in the public realm and also opening the door to mechanisms that can result in a more just and equitable future. The plenary is moderated by Sharon Egretta Sutton, an architect, environmental psychologist, and distinguished educator in multiple city-making disciplines. In her presentation, she finds fault with Bauhaus-descended pedagogy that prepares students to produce the commodities of a consumerist society that has permanently consigned many BIPOC workers to the bottom of the wage-earning ladder. She advocates for a decolonized pedagogy that prepares students to help build communities where residents share resources rather than selling them to the highest bidder, thereby wrenching control of the commons from the clutches of neoliberal capitalism. Lauren Hood, an urban planner and native Detroiter with a background in business shares her perspective as an advocate for civic engagement strategies that advance inclusion in all aspects of life. She believes that the strategies envisioned by advocates of equitable development are woefully inadequate to address the racial injustice that the George Floyd moment revealed and calls for a bolder, reparations approach. [Sharon Egretta Sutton, PhD, FAIA Visiting Distinguished Professor of Architecture, Parsons School of Design](#resourceCollapseOne) **A Critical Pedagogy for Designing the Commons** The historical roots of design education and practice continue to be enriched by the Bauhaus, founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius and invested in using fine and applied art to create forms that utilized modern technologies and lent themselves to replication. Design produced the simple, graceful commodities of an emergent industrial society. Recently, design students and recent alumni have organized in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement to demand an anti-racist transformation of Bauhaus-descended design education and practice. Their demands range from greater inclusion of BIPOC voices in their schools to reparations for the harm their institutions have done to BIPOC communities. While wholeheartedly supporting their activism, I wonder whether the proposed “decolonization” of design education will help them address mounting injustices in “the commons” due to the shameless reach for more wealth by the very rich and powerful that has left the poor without political agency. The space that lies beyond private residences and semi-private institutions no longer sustains communities but rather is a privatized resource for a commodity-intensive society in which the basic needs for survival, like housing and education, must be paid for through wage labor and investment income. Historically, design education has equipped students with the competencies necessary to create commodities that are out of reach for an increasing number of people, and in do so prepares them as roadrunners for neoliberal capitalism. To address the race-based inequities that concern today’s students and alumni, I propose reorienting design education toward helping them acquire the competencies necessary to break their dependence upon rich and powerful clients, for example a design curriculum might encompass research, project planning and development, fundraising, advocacy, and relationship- and coalition-building. I envision that such competencies would allow designers to wrench control of the commons from the clutches of global capitalism and thus create an anti-racist space for “we” the people. Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA is a distinguished visiting professor of architecture at Parsons School of Design and has also served on the faculties of Columbia University, Pratt Institute, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington. She was the twelfth African American woman to be licensed to practice architecture, the first to be promoted to full professor of architecture, and the second to be elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects. Dr. Sutton's scholarship explores America's continuing struggle for racial justice. A recent book, When Ivory Towers Were Black: A Story about Race in Americas Cities and Universities, portrays an audacious affirmative action effort at Columbia University during the Civil Rights Movement. A forthcoming book (Fordham 2021), A Pedagogy of Hope: Pursuing Democracy’s Promise through Place-Based Activism, characterizes the struggles of low-income youth to improve their rundown surroundings as a new form of activism. Early in her career, Dr. Sutton worked as a professional musician in New York City, most notably in the original cast of Man of La Mancha. Her fine art is in the Library of Congress and has been widely exhibited and collected. She holds five academic degrees—in music, architecture, philosophy, and psychology—and has studied graphic art internationally. She has been a keynote speaker at conferences in five disciplines and has been a distinguished lecturer and guest studio critic at more than 100 colleges and universities internationally. Dr. Sutton received the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award from the American Institute of Architects, the Medal of Honor from both the New York and Seattle chapters of that organization, and the Oculus Award from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. She is a distinguished professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and an inductee into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame. [Lauren Hood, MCD Founder Institute for AfroUrbanism](#resourceCollapseThree) **Reimagining Reparations: Centering What is Owed When Planning in Communities of Color** As a Black person working in the planning and development disciplines, I’m perpetually reconciling my practitioner identity with my “person” identity. My critical analysis of the shortcomings in revitalization efforts is rooted in a deep understanding of the historical “policy violence” and psychological warfare that Black city dwellers have had to endure from the period of Urban Renewal to todays Foreclosure crisis, cultural erasure and other gentrification related circumstances. Given that the world, post George Floyd, has, at least superficially, experienced a paradigm shift with regards to racial awareness, we are in a moment where we, the people, can finally, demand what is owed in the spirit of repair. In advance of long-shot legislation mandating reparations, my current work seeks to determine how might we hold the power structure accountable for its declarations toward “equity and inclusion” and liberate resources to restore the balance of power in communities of color. JLauren A. Hood is an AfroUrbanist and planning practitioner working at the intersection of Black aspiration and city change. Applying a reparations lens to the work, Lauren employs the strategies of storytelling, visioning and relationship building to addressing a community’s past harms, present needs and future hopes & dreams. Credentialed and experienced as both a community developer and equity facilitator, she holds space for otherwise difficult conversations that allow for the co-creation of transformational outcomes. Lauren is also an avid daydreamer and powerful manifestor who finds inspiration in the woods, near the ocean and in desolate landscapes where the veil is thin. EDRA52 transdisciplinary plenary Social Justice, Culture, and Public Space: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on May 21, 2021. How can we create a more socially just and culturally diverse public space? Four experts from landscape architecture, urban planning, geography and anthropology address this critical question by outlining their working concepts and practice strategies as applied to contemporary public space. Julian Agyeman explores the concept of “just sustainabilities” in terms of what our cities can ‘become', in relation to who can ‘belong’ in them. Jeff Hou shares methods of building community capacity and intercultural processes to co-create inclusive public space. Setha Low employs “spatializing culture” and a broader understanding of social justice to research and co-produce more equitable and democratic public spaces. James Rojas evokes a sense of place through Latino enactments and objects in their public and private spaces. Each presentation offers a glimpse into the richness of incorporating cultural meanings, notions of belonging, diverse concepts of justice and different forms of activism into the design, planning, management and governance of public space. [Setha Low, Ph.D. Distinguished Professor of Environmental Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Public Space Research Group at The Graduate Center, City University of New York](#resourceCollapseEight) **Spatializing Culture and the Co-Production of Socially Just Public Space** In her talk, Setha Low traces “spatializing culture” from the ethnography of the plaza to revealing social and environmental injustice in urban space. She argues that public space promotes interpersonal contact and social inclusion when based on a broad understanding of social justice including distributive, procedural and interactional aspects as well as recognition of difference and an ethic of care. Her Toolkit for the Ethnographic Study of Space (TESS) enables community members as well as practitioners to co-produce more equitable and democratic spaces. Setha Low is Distinguished Professor of Environmental Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Public Space Research Group at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and was an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania before her current position training Ph.D. students in the anthropology of space and place, urban anthropology, security studies and ethnographic methods. She has been awarded numerous awards including the Athena City Accolade, a Getty Center Fellowship, a NEH fellowship, a Fulbright Senior Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship for her ethnographic research on public space in Latin America and the United States. Setha is widely published and internationally recognized and translated for her award-winning books on public space and cultural diversity. Her most recent publications are Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place (2017), Anthropology and the City (2019), and Spaces of Security (with M. Maguire) (2019). In 2019 she developed the TESS training on public space and social justice at UN Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya and in 2020 lectured on the public space and civic life at the Strelka Institute in Moscow, Russia. Her commitment is to both research and engagement to create a more just and inclusive city. [Julian Agyeman, Ph.D. FRSA FRGS Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University](#resourceCollapseNine) **Just Sustainabilities in Policy, Planning and Practice** In his talk, Julian will outline the concept of just sustainabilities as a response to the ‘equity deficit’ of much sustainability thinking and practice. He will explore his contention that who can belong in our cities will ultimately determine what our cities can become. He will illustrate his ideas with examples from urban planning and design and the ‘Minneapolis Paradox' Julian Agyeman is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is the originator of the increasingly influential concept of just sustainabilities, the intentional integration of social justice and environmental sustainability. He centers his research on critical explorations of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the urban environment, whether mediated by governments or social movement organizations, and their effects on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity. He believes that what our cities can become (sustainable, smart, sharing and resilient) and who is allowed to belong in them (recognition of difference, diversity, and a right to the city) are fundamentally and inextricably interlinked. We must therefore act on both belonging and becoming, together, using just sustainabilities as the anchor, or face deepening spatial and social inequities and inequalities. He is the author or editor of 12 books, including Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press, 2003), Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability (MIT Press, 2011), and Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities (MIT Press, 2015), one of Nature’s Top 20 Books of 2015. In 2018, he was awarded the Athena City Accolade by KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, for his “outstanding contribution to the field of social justice and ecological sustainability, environmental policy and planning.” [Jeffrey Hou, Ph.D. Professor of Landscape Architecture and director of Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington, Seattle](#resourceCollapseTen) **Building Intercultural Capacity through Placemaking** In his talk, Jeff Hou will share methods of build community capacity and inclusive public space using cases from Seattle’s Chinatown International District. Specifically, he will how designers can leverage skills and knowledge that community members already possess to build capacity and how design can serve as a medium for navigating contentious, intercultural processes to co-create inclusive public spaces. Jeffrey Hou is Professor of Landscape Architecture and director of Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on public space, democracy, community design, and civic engagement. In a career that spans the Pacific, Hou has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, neighborhood residents in Japan, villagers in China, and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities. He has written extensively on the agency of citizens and communities in shaping the built environments, with collaborative publication including Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010), Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking (2013), Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity (2017), and City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (2017). Most recently, he served as a guest editor for the special issue on Guerrilla Urbanism (2020) for Urban Design International. [James Rojas Urban planner, community activist, educator, and artist, founder of Placeit](#resourceCollapseEleven) **How Latinos Transform US Urban Space through Memory, Need and Aspiration** I examine how Latinos use their front yards and streets to create a sense of “place.” The environment created in this way I call “enacted.” People are both users and craters of a place and thus become “texture” in the urban landscape. People activate environments merely by their presence. People enact place because of use and social interactions, contrary to the belief of architects that peoples’ lives neatly revolve around functions of physical form. There are many different approaches to understanding physical environments and social characteristics of people, but very few deal with “enacted environments.” The sociologist examines peoples’ behavior. The urban planner analyzes numbers. The anthropologist examines artifacts while movie directors and writers recreate the “feeling” of a place by combining peoples’ lives with the physical form. All are excellent in understanding a specific dimension of a place. However, in comprehending the complexities of the enacted environment one needs to rely on all these disciplines. James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, educator, and artist. He developed an interdisciplinary, community healing and visioning process that uses storytelling, objects, art-production and play to help participants understand their relationship to place and each other. Directly involving participants (as opposed to “audiences” or passive viewers) in re-imagining equitable growth and development in their community gives them the know-how they need to achieve their goals. This allows participants to examine landscape through a different sensory lens and teach people how to articulate their needs, ask better questions on the proposals, and projects, and ultimately find common ground through memory, experiences, and aspirations. He is an international expert in public engagement and has traveled around the US, Mexico, Canada, Europe, and South America, collaborating with municipalities, non-profits, community groups, educational institutions, and museums on transportation, housing, open space and health issues. |
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