Calendar

Speaker at Cooperative Cities

63 5th Avenue, Room U L104 (Lower Level), Apr 2015

THE JOURNAL OF DESIGN STRATEGIES Weiss Lecture Series,
Fall 2014 - Spring 2015

The last decades have seen an upsurge of urban activist practices propelled by the renewed commitment to “the right to the city.” In the face of scarce and inconsistent public financing, as well as predatory and profit-driven economic and urban development, citizen-driven micro urban economies have emerged as vital to sustaining urban communities across the world. The 2014-2015 Stephan Weiss Lecture Series focuses on ways in which urban activists have conceptualized and fostered the co-production of nonhierarchical and cooperative urban economic models. Two public events featuring academics, scholarspractitioners and activists will delve into the roles urban activists, designers and artists are playing as agents of such urban transformations, and the affordances that design and art processes offer to civic, grassroots and community organizations involved in the creation of new organizational forms and practices of urban solidarity.

The first panel brought together leading scholars, activist and practitioners to discuss and examine urban activist practices with the proven capacity to generate alternative cooperative urban systems while also clearly providing directions to overcome emerging economic and political challenges. The conversatio was led by a trans-generational cohort of women at the forefront of cooperative and commoning urban practices in New York City, Paris, Vienna and Quito: Silvia Federici, Doina Petrescu, Elke Krasny and Ana
Rodriguez, respectively.

The second event brings together leading scholars and active urban practitioners leading the coproduction of innovative, transformative and provocative urban practices in communities struggling with access to education, employment, mobility, housing and food. While focusing on specific cases, the
discussion will revolve around capacities, processes and methods of conceptualization and implementation of innovative strategies and non-hierarchical approaches to urban cooperative systems and models. The conversation will also address the capacity of designers and artists to act as agents of significant socio-spatial transformations.

Wednesday, April 29th, 5:30 to 9:00pm
5:30-6:00 pm Welcome and Introduction
6:00-6:30 pm Jessica Gordon Nemhard
6:30-7:00 pm Jeanne van Heeswijk
7:00-7:15 pm Recess
7:15-7:45 pm Maliha Safri
7:45-9:00 pm Discussion

63 5th Avenue, Room U L104 (Lower Level)
The New School University Center