WELCOME ADDRESS BY MAYOR MARTIN J. WALSH
MAYOR MARTIN J. WALSH, an accomplished advocate for working people and a proud product of the City of Boston, was sworn in as the City’s 54th Mayor on January 6, 2014. With a commitment to community, equality and opportunity for every neighborhood, Mayor Walsh is a champion for civil rights and a vocal early advocate for marriage equality, which he calls his proudest vote ever as a state lawmaker. A resident of Dorchester, Mayor Walsh has a strong record in support people of color, immigrants, seniors and all Bostonians.
KEYNOTE PANEL
After decades of urban disinvestment, communities across the country are beginning to grapple with the opposite swing of the pendulum - enormous flows of capital into low and middle-income communities. From construction cranes and condo conversions to foreclosed homes and imminent displacement, inequality, racial disparity, and environmental injustice are being knit into the urban fabric raising urgent questions about the possibility of achieving equity. How can design build a more just city?
The Keynote Panel continues the Old South Meeting House’s tradition of civic debate and discourse. Moderated by Nigel Jacobs, co-chair of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the panel will address how innovation in architecture, planning, participation and public policy can be part of the solution to inequity and injustice.
MAYOR MARTIN J. WALSH, an accomplished advocate for working people and a proud product of the City of Boston, was sworn in as the City’s 54th Mayor on January 6, 2014. With a commitment to community, equality and opportunity for every neighborhood, Mayor Walsh is a champion for civil rights and a vocal early advocate for marriage equality, which he calls his proudest vote ever as a state lawmaker. A resident of Dorchester, Mayor Walsh has a strong record in support people of color, immigrants, seniors and all Bostonians.
KEYNOTE PANEL
After decades of urban disinvestment, communities across the country are beginning to grapple with the opposite swing of the pendulum - enormous flows of capital into low and middle-income communities. From construction cranes and condo conversions to foreclosed homes and imminent displacement, inequality, racial disparity, and environmental injustice are being knit into the urban fabric raising urgent questions about the possibility of achieving equity. How can design build a more just city?
The Keynote Panel continues the Old South Meeting House’s tradition of civic debate and discourse. Moderated by Nigel Jacobs, co-chair of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the panel will address how innovation in architecture, planning, participation and public policy can be part of the solution to inequity and injustice.
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THERESA HWANG, Community Architect, Skid Row Housing Trust, Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow 2009-2012
Activist-turned-architect, Theresa Hwang has spent over 10 years engaged in community organizing work for equitable cultural development and community empowerment with multiple groups and campaigns in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. She implements participatory design and development processes to create affordable housing, community gardens, and social spaces with the resident community in a historically under-developed and under-recognized neighborhood. Currently, Theresa works with the Skid Row Housing Trust and is an adjunct studio professor at Woodbury University. She is on the Board of Directors for the Association for Community Design. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Art History from the Johns Hopkins University and is a LEED accredited professional. |
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RICK LOWE, Founder, Project Row Houses, MacArthur Fellow 2014
Rick Lowe is an artist whose unconventional approach to community revitalization has transformed a long-neglected neighborhood in Houston into a visionary public art project that continues to evolve, two decades since its inception. Originally trained as a painter, Lowe shifted the focus of his artistic practice in the early 1990s in order to address more directly the pressing social, economic, and cultural needs of his community. With a group of fellow artists, he organized the purchase and restoration of a block and a half of derelict properties—twenty-two shotgun houses from the 1930s—in Houston’s predominantly African American Third Ward and turned them into Project Row Houses (PRH), an unusual amalgam of arts venue and community support center. |
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MARC NORMAN, Director, UPSTATE, Loeb Fellow 2015
Marc Norman has dedicated his career to finding remedies to inequality and promoting economic development and social justice through innovative financial strategies paired with community development and design. As director of UPSTATE, a Center for Design Research and Real Estate at Syracuse University School of Architecture, he supports mechanisms that reduce the cost of housing, expand access to education and employment opportunities and promote health. |
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GEETA PRADHAN, Associate Vice President for Programs, The Boston Foundation
Geeta Pradhan is responsible for overseeing The Boston Foundation’s community goals across five program areas — Education, Health, Jobs, Neighborhoods, and the Arts. She leads the Foundation’s investment and alignment efforts along the Fairmount Corridor designed to generate equitable development and transformational opportunities through new transit investments in Boston’s lowest-income neighborhoods. Over her decade of work at the Boston Foundation, Geeta co-created the Boston Indicators Project, launched a 5-year special initiative on the digital divide in Boston, and developed a strategy to support the nonprofit sector. Geeta has over twenty five years of experience in the field of community development. Prior to her work at the Boston Foundation Geeta spent thirteen years at the City of Boston as the Assistant Director for Design in the Department for Neighborhood Development and as Director of Sustainable Boston. Geeta received her undergraduate degree in architecture from New Delhi, India and her Master’s degree in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. |