Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove will present Urban Alchemy, Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities, published by New Village Press. The presentation will be followed by a conversation with William Morrish on the intersections of public health and urbanism.

What if divided neighborhoods were causing public health problems? What if a new approach to planning and design could tackle both the built environment and collective well-being at the same time? What if cities could help each other?

Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, author of Root Shock, uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore and identify ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart and the American urban design firm Rothschild Doyno Collaborative as guides as well as urban restoration projects from France and the US as exemplary cases, Fullilove identifies nine tools that can mend our broken cities and reconnect our communities to make them whole.

Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove is a board-certified psychiatrist and Professor of Clinical Studies of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She started her research career in 1986 with a focus on the AIDS epidemic, and became aware of the close link between AIDS and place of residence. Under the rubric of the psychology of place, Dr. Fullilove began to examine the mental health effects of such environmental processes as violence, rebuilding, segregation, urban renewal, and mismanaged toxins. She has published numerous articles and six books including “Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities,” “Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It,” and “House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place.”

William Morrish is Professor of Urban Ecologies at Parsons The New School for Design, where he recently served as Dean of the School of Constructed Environments. He is a nationally recognized urban designer whose practice encompasses inter-disciplinary research on urban housing and infrastructure, collaborative publications on human settlement and community design, and educational programs exploring integrated design, which are applied to a wide range of innovative community-based city projects.

Price: Free for AIA members and students with valid student ID; $10 for non-members

Organized by: AIANY Oculus Committee

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