Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities

by Mindy Thompson Fullilove

Overview

Mindy Thompson Fullilove presents ways to strengthen neighborhood connectivity and empower marginalized communities through investigation of urban segregation from a social heath perspective. "Fullilove passionately demonstrates how, through an urbanity of inclusion, we can heal our fractured cities to make them whole again.

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, the acclaimed 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613320105
Publisher:	New Village Press
Publication date:	06/04/2013
Pages:	334
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, is an American social psychiatrist who focuses on the ways environmental factors affect the mental health of communities. She is Professor of Urban Policy and Health, Urban Policy Analysis & Management Program, Milano School for International Affairs, Management & Urban Policy, The New School. She has numerous published articles and six books, including URBAN ALCHEMY: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities and ROOT SHOCK: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It.

Table of Contents

Illustrations xi

Foreword Jean Nouvel xv

Introduction 1

Part I The Madness of the Sorted-Out City 9

1 From Illusion to Solution 11

2 Our Hearts Inspired 41

Part II Align 71

3 Element 1: Keep the Whole City in Mind 73

4 Element 2: Find What You're FOR 99

5 Element 3: Make a Mark 121

Part III Create 139

6 Element 4: Unpuzzle the Fractured Space 141

7 Element 5: Unslum All Neighborhoods 167

8 Element 6: Create Meaningful Places 193

9 Element 7: Strengthen the Region 225

Part IV Connect 253

10 Element 8: Show Solidarity with All Life 255

11 Element 9: Celebrate Your Accomplishments 275

Conclusion Give Me Your Hands 295

Afterword Ken Doyno 303

Acknowledgments 307

Notes 312

Selected Publications by Rodrick Wallace and the Community Research Group 313

References 317

Index 324

Editorial Reviews

"Her [Mindy Fullilove's] baseline concern with the dignity and wisdom of individuals, as well as the absolute necessity of broad-based consensus building, puts her approach on a clear moral high ground to which every urban planner and builder ought to give greater commitment, because it's right and because it works. "Urban Alchemy" emerges as a book because years of working to counteract the ills of urban destruction have yielded significant successes in the form of insights, relationships, spaces and even, with the help of collaborators, some buildings. Yet Dr. Fullilove's grounding in disciplines outside urban design results in a complex and multivalent work. To some degree, it is a handbook, with a nine-point instruction list for how to improve cities, starting with "Keep the Whole City in Mind," continuing through "Unpuzzle the Fractured Space" and ending with "Celebrate Your Accomplishments.""
—Charles Rosenblum, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

From the Publisher

""Her [Mindy Fullilove's] baseline concern with the dignity and wisdom of individuals, as well as the absolute necessity of broad-based consensus building, puts her approach on a clear moral high ground to which every urban planner and builder ought to give greater commitment, because it's right and because it works. 'Urban Alchemy' emerges as a book because years of working to counteract the ills of urban destruction have yielded significant successes in the form of insights, relationships, spaces and even, with the help of collaborators, some buildings. Yet Dr. Fullilove's grounding in disciplines outside urban design results in a complex and multivalent work. To some degree, it is a handbook, with a nine-point instruction list for how to improve cities, starting with 'Keep the Whole City in Mind,' continuing through 'Unpuzzle the Fractured Space" and ending with "Celebrate Your Accomplishments.'""

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Charles Rosenblum