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? In Urban Alchemy, Dr. Mindy Fullilove uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart as a guide, Fullilove takes readers on a tour of successful collaborative interventions that repair cities and reconnect communities to make them whole.

Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove is Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. She is a board-certified psychiatrist who is interested in the links between the environment and mental 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 four books including “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.”

Helena Hansen is Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry, New York University and Jack Saul is Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and Director, International Trauma Studies Program.

This event is sponsored by the Psyences Project, Metropolitan Studies, and the Institute for Public Knowledge.