Parallel Urban Ecologies: Stephan Weiss Design Strategies Dialogues with Andy Merrifield and Neil Brenner

4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Parallel Urban Ecologies explores the urgent problems created by orthodox urban planning under the neoliberal policies of the past thirty years, asking what opportunities and responsibilities design has under current ideological and economic conditions. Can design help develop parallel visions of urban life, visions that could mitigate or even counteract the worst excesses of neoliberal economics, and promote greater equity, diversity, and vibrancy in the allocation, inhabitation, and control of urban spaces? The moderators have asked the panelists to describe or speculate on different strategies for designing scenarios and interventions in a socio-spatial landscape that continues to privilege the few at the expense of the many.

This second dialogue event will feature Andy Merrifield, geographer and urban theorist, and Neil Brenner, professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies at New York University. These prominent urban theorists will share their contrasting analyses of existing urban spatial regimes and visions of alternative urban futures, which call for the need of social and spatial justice as well as environmental responsibility in the imagination and production of new urban environments.

Organized and moderated by Miguel Robles-Duran, assistant professor of Urbanism at Parsons The New School for Design, and Vyjayanthi Rao, assistant professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research.

The School of Design Strategies at Parsons gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support of the Karan Weiss Foundation. 

Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue

Admission:
Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served