Synopses & Reviews
What if divided neighborhoods were causing public health problems? What if a new approach to planning and design could tackle both the built environment and collective well-being at the same time? What if cities could help each other? Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, the acclaimed author of Root Shock, uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart and the American urban design firm Rothschild Doyno Collaborative as guides, Fullilove takes readers on a tour of successful collaborative interventions that repair cities and reconnect communities to make them whole.
Review
"Her [Mindy Fullilove's] baseline concern with the dignity and wisdom of individuals, as well as the absolute necessity of broad-based consensus building, puts her approach on a clear moral high ground to which every urban planner and builder ought to give greater commitment, because it's right and because it works. "Urban Alchemy" emerges as a book because years of working to counteract the ills of urban destruction have yielded significant successes in the form of insights, relationships, spaces and even, with the help of collaborators, some buildings. Yet Dr. Fullilove's grounding in disciplines outside urban design results in a complex and multivalent work. To some degree, it is a handbook, with a nine-point instruction list for how to improve cities, starting with "Keep the Whole City in Mind," continuing through "Unpuzzle the Fractured Space" and ending with "Celebrate Your Accomplishments.""
andmdash;Charles Rosenblum, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Synopsis
Investigating urban segregation from a social health perspective, the author presents ways to strengthen neighborhood connectivity and empower marginalized communities.
Synopsis
An identification of the problems of divided neighborhoods and nine tools that can mend them
What if divided neighborhoods were causing public health problems? What if a new approach to planning and design could tackle both the built environment and collective well-being at the same time? What if cities could help each other?
Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, the acclaimed author of Root Shock, uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore and identify ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart and the American urban design firm Rothschild Doyno Collaborative as guides as well as urban restoration projects from France and the US as exemplary cases, Fullilove identifies nine tools that can mend our broken cities and reconnect our communities to make them whole.
About the Author
Mindy Fullilove: Mindy Fullilove is professor of clinical sociomedical sciences and professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. Previous books include
House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place (2002) and
Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It (2004).