CACC Lecture Series : Tony Griffin
In the past semester at Charleston, we had the pleasure of hearing from a lot of speakers at the CACC Lecture series; one of whom was Tony Griffin.
She is the founder of Urban Planning and Design for the American City, which is New York-based firm that wants to promote the idea of Just Cities.
It was an interesting lecture in terms of how she described her association of a just space as an inclusive one where people of different color and economic background could choose to be. It was a very intriguing idea especially in the context of a big metropolitan city, that survives primarily on the politics of power, bureaucracy, and capital. Within all this optimism and the willingness to transform society, though, I keep wondering, if this is our contemporary version of the utopian ideal (like the modernist wanting to save the world through architecture)?
The ideas of a just space are related to so many other ideas; like democracy, equity, rights, law and order, austerity, resilience, diversity and more that its an ideal very difficult for me to comprehend as a citizen of the nation as well as an architect who is to design the spaces people inhabit.
FYI...This seems like a great resource, for anyone wanting to explore the idea further.
https://nextcity.org/ebooks/view/the-just-city-essays
She is the founder of Urban Planning and Design for the American City, which is New York-based firm that wants to promote the idea of Just Cities.
It was an interesting lecture in terms of how she described her association of a just space as an inclusive one where people of different color and economic background could choose to be. It was a very intriguing idea especially in the context of a big metropolitan city, that survives primarily on the politics of power, bureaucracy, and capital. Within all this optimism and the willingness to transform society, though, I keep wondering, if this is our contemporary version of the utopian ideal (like the modernist wanting to save the world through architecture)?The ideas of a just space are related to so many other ideas; like democracy, equity, rights, law and order, austerity, resilience, diversity and more that its an ideal very difficult for me to comprehend as a citizen of the nation as well as an architect who is to design the spaces people inhabit.
FYI...This seems like a great resource, for anyone wanting to explore the idea further.
https://nextcity.org/ebooks/view/the-just-city-essays
Yeah this is absolutely a Utopian idea and and these problems are not something that can't be solved by architecture alone but that's not to say that it is not worth attempting.
ReplyDelete"It's only unthinkable if you don't think it" -Dabo Swinney, 2013
I agree with Tyler (and Dabo) in that we have to be optimists in this situation and push for these ideas of democracy, equity, diversity, etc or else nothing good will come of this world. We specifically as designers have to be the ones pushing for those things too.
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