Democracy and Urban Form

Event Description

This pair of events marks the release of the book Democracy and Urban Form, which brings together a series of six lectures that the sociologist Richard Sennett gave under the same name at the GSD in the fall of 1981. These lectures, which happened now more than 40 years ago, addressed a much different political climate. But Richard’s core insight into the connections between democracy and justice, matters of architecture and urban design, the growth of cities, cosmopolitanism, inclusion, free speech, and other related matters are just as relevant today.

On the evening of Wednesday, October 9, the political philosopher Michael Sandel will deliver a lecture that draws on themes from the new edition of his book Democracy’s Discontent. What accounts for the polarization that imperils democracy today, and what might be done about it?  In this talk, Michael Sandel analyzes the forces that will decide the 2024 election and proposes a bold project of civic renewal to reimagine the economy and empower citizens as participants in a shared public life.

On Thursday, October 10, a panel including Richard Sennett, Diane Davis, Claire Zimmerman, Markus Miessen, and Miguel Robles-Durán, will reflect on Sandel’s talk, as well as on the state of democracy as it relates more specifically to architecture and the design and planning of cities and metropolitan regions.

Event Overview

Wednesday, October 9, 6:30 p.m.
Piper Auditorium

“Democracy’s Discontent”
Michael Sandel

Thursday, October 10, 12:30 p.m.
Stubbins, Gund 112

Panel Discussion 
Richard Sennett, Diane Davis, Claire Zimmerman, Markus Meissen, and Miguel Robles-Durán

Speakers

Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). She also is the director of the Mexican Cities Initiative at the GSD, and faculty chair of the committee on Mexico at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. Before moving to Harvard in 2012, Davis served as the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where she also was Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.  Trained as a sociologist with an interest in cities in Latin America (BA in Geography, Northwestern University; Ph.D. in sociology, UCLA) Davis’s research interests include the relations between urbanization and national development, urban governance, urban social movements, and informality, with a special emphasis on Mexico.

Books include Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (Indiana University Press, 2011); Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2004); Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press 1994; Spanish translation 1999). Her recent research has focused on urban violence as well as spatial strategies to minimize risk and foster resilience in the face of these and other vulnerabilities.

Markus Miessen is an architect and writer, and in 2021 was appointed Professor of Urban Regeneration at the University of Luxembourg, where he holds the Chair of the City of Esch. Miessen has previously taught at the AA, London, the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, has been a Harvard GSD Fellow, and has held professorships at Städelschule, Frankfurt, and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He received his PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London, supervised by Eyal Weizman. His work revolves around questions of critical spatial practice, institution building, and spatial politics. As a spatial consultant, he currently works with the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism. He previously worked with the EU Commission, non-governmental organisations, the Republic of Slovenia during their presidency of the EU council, as well as many cultural and art institutions globally. Miessen is the author of “The Nightmare of Participation” and “Crossbenching”. He has edited volumes such as “Para-Platforms: on the spatial politics of right-wing populism”, “The Archive as a Productive Space of Conflict”, “Agonistic Assemblies, on the spatial politics of horizontality”, and is the co-editor of the book series “Critical Spatial Practice”. In Spring 2025, he will be the Dean’s Visiting Professor at Columbia GSAPP, NY.

Miguel Robles-Durán, born in Mexico City, is an urbanist, theorist, designer, educator, and podcaster known for his transdisciplinary approach to urbanization. Combining urban political ecology, Marxist political economy, and critical human geography, he serves as a tenured Associate Professor of Urbanism at The New School / Parsons School of Design, where he directs the graduate urban programs. Before his 2010 appointment at The New School, Robles-Durán held academic positions at TU Delft, The Berlage Institute, and Zürich University of the Arts. Alongside David Harvey, he co-founded Urban Front, a transnational consultancy working with progressive governments on urban justice initiatives. He also co-founded Politics In Motion, an anti-capitalist media organization where he hosts the podcast “Cities After.”

In 2008, Robles-Durán co-founded Cohabitation Strategies, a cooperative that addressed socio-spatial inequities and urban development across Europe, North America, and South America. The cooperative’s work, spanning over a decade, dealt with housing, public infrastructure, and territorial development before merging with Urban Front in 2019. His global influence has been recognized through exhibitions at institutions like MoMA and La Biennale di Venezia. His upcoming book, *Cohabitation Strategies: Challenging Neoliberal Urbanization Between Crisis*, will be published in 2025.

Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. His books on justice, democracy, ethics, and markets have been translated into more than 30 languages. He has been described as “a rock star moralist” (Newsweek) and “the world’s most influential living philosopher.” (New Statesman).

Sandel’s recent book, The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?, seeks a way beyond the polarized politics of our time. His previous books include Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? and What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. A new edition of his classic book Democracy’s Discontent has been described as “essential–and ultimately hopeful–reading for all those who wonder if our democratic experiment will survive in the twenty-first century.”
Sandel’s free online course, “Justice,” has been viewed by tens of millions of people, including in China, where he was named the “most influential foreign figure of the year.” (China Newsweek). His BBC series, “The Global Philosopher,” explores the ethical issues lying behind the headlines with participants from around the world. His lectures have packed such venues as St. Paul’s Cathedral (London), the Sydney Opera House (Australia), the Delacorte Theater in New York’s Central Park, and an outdoor stadium in Seoul (S. Korea), where 14,000 came to hear him speak.

 Richard Sennett currently serves as Chair of the UN Habitat Urban Initiatives Group.  He is Senior Fellow at the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at MIT. Previously, he founded the New York Institute for the Humanities, taught at New York University and the London School of Economics, and served as President of the American Council on Work. Over the course of the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labour, and social theory. His books include The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man,  The Corrosion of Character, The Culture of the New Capitalism,  The Craftsman, and Building and Dwelling. Among other awards, he has received the Hegel Prize, the Spinoza Prize, an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University, and the Centennial Medal from Harvard University.

Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago.  He attended the Julliard School in New York, where he worked with Claus Adam, cellist of the Julliard Quartet. He then studied social relations at Harvard, working with David Riesman, and independently with Hannah Arendt.

Claire Zimmerman is an associate professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. She received her PhD from the City University of New York, her Master of Architecture from Harvard University and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2006 to 2013, she served first as an assistant professor and then as an associate professor of architectural history and theory at the Taubman College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Michigan. In her work, Zimmerman focuses on “protocols of modernization and modernity” in architecture and the built environment. She has taught about the effects of mass production and mass reproduction, reading architectural photography and industrial building against prevailing narratives of the profession and the academy, but also in relation to users and public audiences.

Recently, Zimmerman submitted the final manuscript for Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry to MIT Press (2024). A co-edited book, Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917-1945 (MIT), will appear in August 2023, and a second co-edited book, Architecture against Democracy: Histories of the Nationalist International (UMP), will appear in spring 2024.

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