Enduring Resistence (Asynchronous Session)
Mental Wellbeing in Urban Environments: Current Scenarios and Future Directions View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Asesh Sarkar, Tina Pujara
In 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution "Happiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development". Happiness and wellbeing came into light following a tremendous increase in the numbers of mental health-related problems worldwide. Studies show a direct link between mental health-related issues with people living in cities. Existing research confirms that urbanization is one of the main health-relevant changes humanity is facing today. Globally urbanization is at peak level, and there is an urgent need to adopt efficient solutions, for new and existing urban areas. There are researches related to the 'built environment and mental wellbeing'; 'the social environment and mental wellbeing'; 'the built environment and the social environment'; separately. This paper focuses on the impact of the urban environment on mental wellbeing and includes all the three concepts (the physical environment, the social environment and mental wellbeing). Furthermore, it highlights the main domains and indicators of the physical environment and the social environment and their interrelationship with the mental wellbeing aspects. While developing the groundwork for a theoretical framework, hundred scholarly articles and literature reviews in English on the connection between urban environment domains and mental wellbeing were studied based on two criteria: 1) the relationship of at least one indicator of the physical environment and mental wellbeing 2) the relationship between the urban social environment resulting as the perceived environment and mental wellbeing.The primary outcomes pertain to opportunities to assess both objective and subjective measures of the urban environment that affect the mental wellbeing.
Women's Urban Shells: A Gendered Approach To Urban Territories View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marie Luce Storme
This research is based on a film and interviews. This paper focuses on how women would like to and could design urban spaces and urban project management. The main question raised is how women develop their own urban territoriality. This takes into account that urban planning has been mostly a man’s privilege. Hence, the related question stands for the nature of womanly formed representations and territorialities. Exploring the nature of those can lead us i) to raise awareness of the role women will play in the regeneration of old andro-centered or patriarchal urban models ; ii) to unleash women’s confidence in such tasks; iii) to design specific workshops informed by and aiming to gender equality within urban transformation. Throughout filmed interviews with women practitioners (architects, urbanists, organizational leaders) we address the question of how women develop their own sense of a daily territory in an urban environment? Furthermore, is there a feminine territorial sense that triggers a relationship within spaces and urban planning? Using grounded visualization crossed with visual studies and film geography, the analyses of collected data generate new leads for researchers and practitioners. Eventually, this is the mental and spatial construction of women's urban shells that would appear within the masculinity of cities designs. Would it reinforce the 21st century women’s rights to build cities closer to their image? Women’s territorial performativity --or spaces for performances as expression of their suitable city—is likely to create more resilient cities.
Community Health Design: Building Power and Places through Participation in Public Interest Design View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Matthew Kleinmann
Research has shown that an individual's life expectancy is determined more by their Zip Code than by their own DNA. After decades of systemic disinvestment, communities across the country have seen their built environment contribute to unequal access to health, education, and development opportunities. Building upon theories of spatial agency, collective impact, and design advocacy, built environment practitioners in the field of public interest design have begun to serve communities as their clients in pursuit of equitable community development. As pre-design advocacy evolves beyond standard forms of community engagement, new methods of participatory design are necessary. These interdisciplinary methods present opportunities for communities to own the visioning and take part in the co-creation of a more equitable built environment. From co-developing and evaluating the impact of bilingual health promotion signage in public parks to forming a community council to develop and launch a mobile grocery store, the participatory design methods highlighted in this paper demonstrate how consent and consensus building can allow for greater representation and participation in design practice. By sharing power with communities the gateway of design possibilities expands, allowing for more diverse voices to be at the table from the beginning. The paper highlights three specific projects that utilized participatory design as a strategy to frame equitable development: addressing an urban waterway under a consent decree to alleviate environmental injustices; promoting greater health outcomes through food distribution advocacy; and empowering the next generation of built environment practitioners from youth in under-served communities.
Women's Resistance to Inequality and Forced Migration Through the Myth of the Zombie in Atlantics by Mati Diop View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Victoria Jara
A luxurious skyscraper being built in precarious conditions by construction workers demanding pay for their labour. The opening scene of the film Atlantics [Atlantique] (2019) captures the employment instability and social inequalities endured by a group of workers in Senegal. In the context of economic and urban marginalization, once these men are fired, they decide to leave their homeland. They attempt to illegally migrate in a boat to Spain, but they drown in their passage. However, this is not the story of the migrating men but of the women that stayed behind in Dakar. The film focuses on the lives of the dead men’s girlfriends and wives whose life is altered by the departure. In this paper, I situate the work of filmmaker Mati Diop in the global context of women film directors engaged in intersectional debates on environment, gender, and race. I analyze this film through the theory of the zombie to understand how Mati Diop appropriates the myth to grant women the power to resist contemporary forms of slavery, while at the same time establishing parallels with transatlantic slave displacement since the colonization of the Caribbean. I analyze the use of the myth to represent female solidarity the filmmaker proposes in order to counteract systemic intersectional oppressions.
Forms of Informality and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hesam Kamalipour, Nastaran Peimani
Informal Urbanism has become integral to how cities of the global South work. Our aim is to explore forms of urban informality in the context of unprecedented global health crises with a particular focus on the role of urban design and planning in relation to the spatial and temporal implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. We begin from the view that the built environment professions can play a key role in responding to the ways in which forms of informality, ranging from street vending to informal transport and informal settlement, work in the face of public health emergencies. At stake is to harness the productive adaptive capacities of informal urbanism and manage the challenges different forms of informality face in a global context. We point to the dynamics of informal settlement, street vending and informal transport across different cities and conclude by outlining some key considerations and discussing the role of the built environment professions in addressing the capacities and challenges of informal urbanism in the state of uncertainty during pandemics such as the COVID-19.
