Design Trust for Public Space, New York, NY

During the summer of 2012, Melissa Alexander (MAUD 2013) served as a Program Associate at The Design Trust for Public Space in New York City. The Design Trust is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to improving the design, utility, and understanding of New York City’s parks, plazas, streets, and public buildings. Their project-based model brings together neighborhoods, public agencies, and design professionals to identify innovative opportunities within the city.

While at the Design Trust, Melissa worked on two major projects: Five Borough Farm, which looks at New York City’s urban agriculture movement through the lens of community development, and Making Midtown, a report on NYC’s garment district which offers important policy recommendations to increase the viability of urban manufacturing.
Melissa’s experiece was funded by the Harvard Club of New York.

Summer 2012

Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Conflict

The sources and forms of social and political violence have been extensively examined, but the ways ordinary people and officials cope with chronic urban violence has received less attention. Using case studies of eight cities suffering from a history of violence, this project explores the phenomenon of coping with urban violence, which is termed resilience. This research report identifies the sets of conditions and practices that enhance an individual or a community’s capacity to act independently of armed actors.

The findings suggest that resilience appears at the interface of citizen and state action, and is strengthened through cooperation within and between communities and governing authorities. The security activities produced through citizen-state networks are most accountable and durable when the communities themselves, in a relationship of cooperative autonomy, direct them. Urban resilience also benefits from good urban planning, including promoting and investing in mixed land usage and building infrastructure that enables the free movement of people within and between all neighborhoods to promote security and livelihoods. The report also develops the idea of legitimate security as a way to address the vexing interactions of the state and communities in the provision of security and positive resilience. Legitimate security seeks to ensure democratic and participatory governance in the political, civil, and social sense. This research stresses that legitimate security fosters broad participation and initiatives from “below” with an increased focus on multi-sector partnerships to provide more effective, lasting, and accountable ways forward for cities seeking security.

Collaborator: John Tirman, executive director of MIT’s Center for International Studies

Sponsor: USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation

View the full report. 

Korean and East Asian Urban Research Program

Research focuses on urban settlement dynamics in evolving natural and regional contexts of Korea, China and Japan aimed towards identifying and explaining processes and arrangements that might be more optimal than others. Focus is also given to the physical characteristics of urban settlement patterns, involving planning, management and design associated with land use and environmental issues, buildings, landscapes, and supporting infrastructure, as well as on social, economic, and environmental factors which bear on the physical environment. Data is being gathered and a knowledge base formed extending to:

1. National and regional patterns of urban settlement at different scales, including spatial and inter-temporal changes, rank-size distributions and considerations of locational advantages and disadvantages.

2. Formal-functional properties of urban settlement at different scales. These will include densities, characteristics of transportation, regimes, land uses and mixes of uses, morphological consideration of building concentrations, open space and urban service provision, along with apparent economies of scale and scope.

3. Rights, roles and responsibilities, and underlying processes of involvement by the public sector, private sector and civil society in shaping settlements, including differences among various national settings in these regards.

4. Metrics of sustainability, flexibility, and resilience. Periodic reports and other publications will be published during the course of the research, and results will be incorporated into on-going coursework and teaching at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.

Seoul, South Korea

2012-2017

Sponsored by the Eugene Corporation. 

Concord, MA: Old and New

Name

Holly Masek, MUP 2013

Project Title

Concord, MA: Old and New, Second Semester Core Studio

Instructor

Anne Tate

Date

Spring 2012

The Urban Restructuring of Metropolitan Detroit

Name

Catherine Tang, MAUD 2012

Project Title

The Urban Restructuring of Metropolitan Detroit, Thesis

Instructors

Toni Griffin and Michael Hooper

Date

Spring 2012 

Linking the Hill to New Haven's Central Corridor

Name

Fabiana Meacham, MUP 2013

Project Title

Linking the Hill to New Haven’s Central Corridor, Second Semester Core Planning Studio

Instructor

David Spillane

Date

Spring 2012

The School of the Year 2030 in Rio de Janeiro

Urban Development in Complexo de Alemão

Name

Raquel Fernández Gutiérrez, MAUD 2013

Project Title

The School of the Year 2030 in Rio de Janeiro. Urban Development in Complexo de Alemão

Instructors

Jorge Silvetti and Paul Nakazawa

Date

Spring 2012

The first movement of this proposal is the introduction of a new teleferico station in the Mineiros neighborhood. This represents a great opportunity to link Rio de Janeiro with the protected municipal park, turning this precise point into a new centrality, not just for the Complexo de Alemão, but for the whole city.The urbanization of this area will start from the very core of the favela, giving sense to the axes that run along the lower and upper parts of the valley, and giving coherence to the preexisting structure by incorporating an intermediate axis where the main services are located, and two main transversal corridors that take advantage of the natural troughs and sew the complex together. These corridors concentrate all the urban infrastructures (sewage, pedestrian communications, water supply, etc.) and bring closer the municipal park to the highly densified areas of the favela by letting the vegetation slide along it.

With regard to the chosen residential type, the main purpose is to emulate the spatial richness that the organic growth of the favelas have achieved. The type consists of a topographical volume that acts as a retaining wall, allowing the generation of patios in between; and an upper volume resting on pilotes which provides shaded public spaces.
The school would act as a mediator between the existing urban fabric and the new developed areas, becoming a place for exchange and junction.

The Future of US Mortgage Finance

A Public Proposition

Name

Pamela Lee, MUP 2012

Project Title

The Future of US Mortgage Finance: A Public Proposition

Advisor

Toni Griffin

Year

2012

My thesis examines existing federal housing finance policies in the United States, drawing connections between such policies and the core urban planning problems of the twentieth century: wasteful sprawl development, concentration of poverty in decaying urban centers, auto dependency, mismatch between jobs and housing, and negative environmental externalities. Key problems with the existing system of federal housing finance include a lack of affordability and extreme risk to taxpayers and the federal government, as evidenced by the costly aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The thesis then explores post-crisis reform proposals, which largely favor a privatization of the housing finance system. These proposals will likely exacerbate existing problems, and will ultimately lead to future economic crises.

I argue that dealing with the fundamental problems requires the creation of a new system of mortgage finance. Taking its cues from alternative reform proposals, which favor a more public system of housing finance, I consider how a publicly financed system of housing finance would work, and propose creating a single-lender model of housing finance. I estimate the impact of the single-lender system on housing affordability, exposure of the federal government to mortgage default risk, and the role of federal, state and local government in housing development. In comparison to reforms adopted in the wake of the recent housing crisis, the single-lender system increases affordability, decreases Treasury risk, and shifts development authority to state and local government. 

New Haven 2050

Re-connect Open Space Celebrating a Knowledge-based Urban Life

Name

Qingnan Liu, MUP 2013

Project Title

New Haven 2050: Re-connect Open Space Celebrating a Knowledge-based Urban Life, Second Semester Core Planning Studio

Instructor

Anne Tate

Date

Spring 2012

MudWorks

MudWorks is a design-build installation and exhibition demonstrating the potential of building with raw earth. Organized by the 2012 Loeb Fellows and led by Anna Heringer and rammed earth specialist Martin Rauch, the design and construction has involved students, faculty, and the public. The companion exhibition within Gund Hall describes eleven exemplary projects from five continents. Three techniques of earth construction were tested and are demonstrated here: rammed earth construction, formwork, and plaster lime. MudWorks demonstrates earth as a material central to architectural discourse for reclaiming cultural identity, providing tactile and human-scaled environments, and producing plentiful labor opportunities.