How do we contend with these spaces in an age of rapid urbanization? Is there room for just redevelopment or is the destruction of the industrial past only a prologue to worsening urban inequality?
On Tuesday, April 26 at 6:30 p.m., Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Urban Democracy Lab at NYU present a panel discussion among Boris Vormann, Eve Baron and Robert Elmes. The discussion will be moderated by Gordon Douglas at Deutsches Haus, located at 42 Washington Mews, New York, N.Y. It is free and open to the public. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu. As space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event to ensure you get a good seat.
It's not difficult to visualize the postindustrial city. It is a patchwork of vacant lots, community-cultivated gardens and playgrounds, new arts and performance spaces, and other urban imaginaries that include luxury housing, well-ordered public spaces, and massive palaces of consumption. With the disappearance of industrial economies -- and industrial infrastructures -- in cities like Detroit, New York, and Berlin, urban landscapes must be refashioned in response to, as economist Joseph Schumpeter famously called it, the "creative destruction" of (postindustrial) capitalism. How do we contend with these spaces in an age of rapid urbanization? Is there room for just redevelopment or is the destruction of the industrial past only a prologue to worsening urban inequality?
Boris Vormann is professor of political science and urban political economy at the John-F.-Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.
Eve Baron is the Academic Program Manager at The Murphy Institute/CUNY School of Professional Studies/The Graduate Center and Consultant for Urban Planning and Policy Analysis at The Collective for Community, Culture, & the Environment.
Robert Elmes is the Founder and Executive Director of Galapagos Art Space in Detroit (formerly of Brooklyn).
Gordon Douglas is the Associate Director and postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU.
Landscapes of Creative Destruction: Regenerating the Postindustrial City is a DAAD-supported event.