Productive and alternate ways of articulating collective resources on account for social mobility and income equality.
Course: Integrative Design Studio 02
Instructor: Mark Kroeckel
Date: Spring 2017
Roles: Design Strategist
The City of New York owns or leases over 14,000 properties, across the five boroughs
Totaling approximately 43,000 acres, they comprise an area comparable to the size of Brooklyn (which, if an independent city, would be the fourth largest in the United States!).
22% are classified as having no current use, accounting for approximately 1,800 acres, an area more than double the size of Central Park.
How might we repurpose underused spaces and buildings to restore community life?
View the final presentation here.
Democratizing the Urbanization Process
Course: Independent Project - Design Research
Instructor: Allie Mahler
Date: Fall 2016
Active citizenship means that urban inhabitants are able to participate not only in the public life of the city, but also in creating the city and in maintaining it for the collective welfare. This can range from maintaining streets, to taking care of public squares and parks, to turning vacant lots and underutilized space or structures into useful resources for communities.
What would be the mechanisms required to set out democratic design principles to scale up to the city level polycentric forms of collaborative governance?
Pass: demos
View the full report of the design research process:
The Urban Commons: Reclaiming & Envisioning Spaces
Course: UTransLab Civic Innovation - The Urban Commons: Concepts & Exploration
Instructor: Eduardo Staszowski & Nidhi Srinivas
Lab Partners: Sheila Foster & Christian Iaione
Collaboration: Kakee Scott & Dimeji Onafua
Date: Academic Year 2017
Roles: Urban Design Strategist, Visual Designer, Project Manager.
Members: Cynthia Warner, Lissa Fedrizzi, Rachel Murray, Rosemary Santos, Federico Zuleta.
Invisibility in the Urban Commons
Reclaiming & Envisioning Spaces
The “Urban Commons” represent an opportunity for new social arrangements that enable sharing of (not always visible) spaces, resources, and information among urban denizens, to meet their needs.
Strategies
Using the lenses of (un)reclaiming spaces, dynamic and inclusive governance, and alternative economies, this conversation explores a deeper understanding of the possibilities of the urban commons and the potential obstacles to their growth.
Frameworks
Building on the contributions of panelists from The In/Visibility of the Urban Commons, who will also join the conversation, we will explore how applying frameworks of the “urban commons” help us envision new arrangements and claims for a specific urban case study - 14th Street in Manhattan.
Taking as our prompt the recent proposal to close 14th Street to private transit during upcoming repairs to the L subway line, our conversation will be an open space to imagine totally new uses, relationships, and interactions for the 14th Street landscape.
Fieldwork
Through field work and, imaginative exercises, we will envision and (re)claim future urban commons of 14th Street.
Our conversation will explore how visibility from urban mapping exercises can help illuminate potentialities and pitfalls for urban commoning.
Learn more about the Urban Commons here.
DEFORMA Architecture, Arts & Design Studio.
Urban Design
2009
Design Strategy & Project Management
1st Phase: Macro
2nd Phase: Micro
A project for the Matanza-Riachuelo river basin: to increase population density and promote a diverse use of the land for economic and social activities of the area.
