Synopses & Reviews
Sutton, Kemp, and their contributors demonstrate the importance of place as a site of oppression and transformation, offering placemaking strategies that agents of change in a variety of disciplines can use in working with youth and adults. Their essays lay out both a theoretical terrain and an array of case studies that put theory into practice. This exciting new work documents the persistent intersection of race, place, and power; illustrates placemaking strategies that enable grassroots resistance; and explores the novel professional roles that new technologies make possible. It concludes with reflections upon the potential of transformative placemaking as an antidote to the erasure of place by global capitalism.
Review
“Sutton and Kemp provide a renewed understanding of the role of placemaking in the struggle for racial justice. They offer a way forward beyond paralyzing debate on reshaping our cities and regions, with new tools and roles for community and city building professionals. This is a profoundly hopeful book . . . picks up where Jane Jacobs left off.” --Carl Anthony, Breakthrough Communities
“The Paradox of Urban Space makes a great leap forward in our theorizing about place. Through scholarly explorations of marginalization and resistance, this book opens up the transformative actions that might relieve us of the universal burdens of oppression. It deserves careful reading by all concerned about the future of our cities and our democracy.” --Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University
Synopsis
As racially-based inequalities and spatial segregation deepen, further strained by emergent problems associated with climate change, ever-widening differences between wealth and poverty, and the economic crisis, this book issues a timely call for just, sustainable development.
About the Author
Sharon E. Sutton is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Washington with degrees in music, architecture, psychology, and philosophy. Author of Weaving a Tapestry of Resistance: The Places, Power, and Poetry of a Sustainable Society, she is a fellow in the American Institute of Architects, a distinguished professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and an inductee in the Michigan Womens Hall of Fame. She previously practiced architecture in New York City and, as a musician, performed for the Bolshoi and other ballet companies, and in several Broadway hits.
Susan P. Kemp is the Charles O. Cressey Endowed Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work. She specializes in environmental and community-based interventions, low-income children and families, public child welfare, and social work history and theory. Co-author of Person-Environment Practice: The Social Ecology of Interpersonal Helping and co-editor of Communities, Neighborhoods, and Health: Expanding the Boundaries of Place, she received a PhD with distinction from Columbia University School of Social Work.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Place as Marginality and Possibility--Sharon E. Sutton and Susan P. Kemp * PART I: PLACE, RACE, AND POWER * Place: A Site of Social and Environmental Inequity--Sharon E. Sutton and Susan P. Kemp * Struggling for the Right to Housing: A Critical Analysis of the Evolution of West Seattle's High Point--Sharon E. Sutton * The Ultimate Team Sport?: Urban Waterways and Youth Rowing in Seattle, Washington--Anne Taufen Wessells * Recognizing the Lived Experience of Place: Challenges to Genuine Participation in Redeveloping Public Housing Communities--Lynne C. Manzo * Beyond Insiders and Outsiders: Conceptualizing Multiple Dimensions of Community Development Stakeholders--Linda Hurley Ishem * PART II: PLACEMAKING AS LIVING DEMOCRACY * Place: A Site of Individual and Collective Transformation--Sharon E. Sutton and Susan P. Kemp * Refusing Marginality: Youth as Critical Placemakers in Urban Communities--Susan P. Kemp * Supporting Grassroots Resistance: Sustained Community/University Partnerships to Contest Chicagos HOPE VI Program--Roberta M. Feldman * Mutual Learning in a Community-University Partnership: What Design-Build Projects Contribute to Placemaking and Placemakers--Steve Badanes * PART III: NEW TOOLS, NEW PROFESSIONAL ROLES * Transforming Communities through Mapping: Harnessing the Potential of New Technologies--Amy Hillier * On the Social Construction of Place: Using Participatory Methods and Digital Tools to Reconceive Distressed Urban Neighborhoods--Matthew Kelley * Documenting (In) Justice: Community-based Participatory Research and Video--Caitlin Cahill and Matt Bradley * Socially Conscious Design in the Information