From the Civil War to the recent troubles in Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri is a city that has long been a site for conflict, division, and violence. It also has hosted an array of legal, political, social, and design experiments intended to transcend its contested present and past. With this forum, jointly mounted with the Sam Foxx School of Design at Washington University, we seek to stimulate a conversation about the city’s history and its present conditions, using methodologies and questions drawn from architecture, design, and planning as well as the arts, humanities and social sciences. The aim is to explore and debate issues of injustice, inequality, and racial exclusion in ways that have broader resonance for urban America and will open new terrains for constructive action. Topics include the history of modernist planning, the urban impacts of post-civil war politics and governance, the social and spatial correlates of racial exclusion, and the planning and design responses that have been proposed to counter these conditions.
Open to the public with a keynote on Wednesday evening and subsequent panels showcasing the perspectives of a wide array of actors and institutions who have made cities such as St. Louis what they are today; closing on Friday with an array of GSD-based exhibitions, projects, and presentations from GSD students and faculty.
Organized by Diane Davis, chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD, with:
Eve Blau, adjunct professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD
Sylvester Brown, Journalist, St. Louis
Daniel D’Oca, Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Planning, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD; co-founder of Interboro Partners
Adrienne Davis, Vice Provost and William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis
Jill Desimini, assistant professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD
Catalina Freixas, assistant professor of architecture, Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis
Antonio French, Alderman of the 21st Ward, City of St. Louis
Margaret Garb, professor, Department of History at Washington University in St. Louis
Colin Gordon, professor, Department of History at University of Iowa
Toni Griffin, professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD
Joseph Heathcott, associate professor of urban studies, The New School/Parsons School of Design
Patty Heyda, assistant professor of architecture and urban design, Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis
Walter Johnson, professor, Department of African and African American Studies, and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University
Eric Mumford, Rebecca and John Voyles Professor of Architecture, Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis
Jamilah Nasheed, Missouri State Senator
Jason Q. Purnell, assistant professor, Brown School, and faculty scholar in the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis; and head of the “For the Sake of All” initiative
Ken Reardon, director of the Department of Urban Planning and Community Development at University of Massachusetts Boston
M. K. Stallings, Founder of UrbArts
Denise Ward-Brown, associate professor of art, Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis
Michael Willis, Architect, MWA Architects
Heather Woofter, Professor of Architecture and Chair of Architecture, Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
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