Ann Arbor: October 12
Roundtable
Monday October 12, 2015
International Institute Conference Room 1636
6-7.30pm
Watch the roundtable
5.15-6.0pm pre Roundtable viewing of PBBC | Refreshments
How can Michigan cities become more inclusive and resilient?
What does inclusion and resilience mean when talking about Michigan cities? How can this be achieved? As a way of opening up a discussion, an architect, a lawyer, an educator, a civic activist, and an anthropologist will offer their views and ask how, and by what means, inclusion and resilience might be achieved – sooner rather than later.
Speakers
Peter Hammer, Damon J Keith Center for Civil Rights, Wayne State University
Mitch McEwen, TCAUP; McEwen Studio, Detroit
Mary Morgan, CivCity, Ann Arbor
Andrew Newman, Anthropology, Wayne State University
David Scobey, Visiting Scholar, UMich School of Education
Moderator
Anna Rubbo, CSUD, Columbia University
Peter J. Hammer is a professor at Wayne State University Law School and the director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. The Keith Center is dedicated to promoting the educational, economic and political empowerment of under-represented communities in urban areas and to ensuring that the phrase equal justice under law applies to all members of society. Professor Hammer was instrumental in editing and compiling Judge Damon J. Keith’s new biography, Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (2013). Professor Hammer has become a leading voice on the economic and social issues impacting the city of Detroit.
As Partner at A(n) Office andPrincipal of McEwen Studio, V. Mitch McEwen works in architectural and urban design, focused particularly on the intersection of urban culture and global forces. With design partner Marcelo Lopez-Dinardi, A(n) Office is one of 12 U.S. firms selected for the U.S. pavilion exhibition that will profile Detroit at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Next spring the Detroit MCA will present Algorithmic Recitative, a public engagement project based on A(n) Office’s Detroit-based House Opera | Opera House project. McEwen has worked in the office of Bernard Tschumi Architects and New York City’s Department of City Planning. Assistant Professor of Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning at University of Michigan since 2014, McEwen holds an MArch from Columbia GSAPP and BA from Harvard in Social Studies.
Mary Morgan is founder and executive director of The CivCity Initiative, a new nonprofit that’s working to increase awareness about how local government works and to encourage residents to participate in civic life. She was co-founder and publisher of The Ann Arbor Chronicle, an online news publication that focused on covering local government from 2008-2014. Prior to founding The Chronicle, Morgan worked for The Ann Arbor News from 1996-2008, over the years serving as opinion editor, business editor and reporter. In addition to her career in journalism, Morgan taught English in the People’s Republic of China and the Central African Republic.
Andrew Newman is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University. He researches and writes about cities in the midst of political contestation, urban democracy, and the relationship between the urban imaginary and architecture and design. He is the author of Landscape of Discontent: Urban Sustainability in Immigrant Paris (2015), an ethnography which examines the relationship between urban “greening” and political change in a multiethnic district of Paris. Newman has published on the politics of mapping in Detroit as well as the relationship between food and governance in the Motor City. Most recently, he is part of a group — along with co-editors Linda Campbell, Sara Safransky, and Tim Stallmann — completing a collaborative book project with Detroit residents called Detroit: A People’s Atlas, which features interviews, maps, photography, and poetry focused on alternative imaginings of the city’s future as well as a re-working of narratives about its past.
David Scobey is Visiting Scholar at the School of Education, University of Michigan. A cultural historian and American Studies scholar, he has for twenty years worked on and written about crisis and change in US higher education, focusing especially on community-based learning, new models of liberal learning, and non-traditional students (now the majority of undergraduates in the US). He was a Professor of Architecture at UM and the founding Director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates College in Maine. Before returning to the University of Michigan, he served as the Executive Dean of the School for Public Engagement at the New School in New York City.
Anna Rubbo is the Project Director of People Building Better Cities, founder of Global Studio and Adjunct Senior Researcher in the Center for Sustainable Urban Development, The Earth Institute, Columbia University. She has a doctorate in Architecture from the University of Michigan, and has held teaching positions in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Sydney . The Global Studio, an educational and professional program with a focus on urban poverty, is featured in the PBBC exhibition.
