See you tnite @7PM! (drinks afterward for Critical Urbs) Gordon Douglas X Margaret Crawford - The Help-Yourself City

[Matt Wade]

Just a heads up....
Critical Urbanisms will go for drinks following the discussion. See you tonight!

Critical Urbanisms 
+
Environmental Design Library 
Book Talk Series 

The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy & Inequality in DIY Urbanism

by Gordon Douglas (SJSU Urban Planning) 
with Discussant Margaret Crawford (UCB Architecture)

Tuesday, March 20 2018 
7:00 - 8:30 PM 
Environmental Design Library, Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley

When local governments neglect public services or community priorities, how do concerned citizens respond? In The Help-Yourself City, Gordon Douglas looks closely at people who take urban planning into their own hands with homemade signs and benches, guerrilla bike lanes and more. Douglas explores the frustration, creativity, and technical expertise behind these interventions, but also the position of privilege from which they often come. Presenting a needed analysis of this growing trend from vacant lots to city planning offices, The Help-Yourself City tells a street-level story of people's relationships to their urban surroundings and the individualization of democratic responsibility.

Gordon Douglas is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Director of the Institute for Metropolitan Studies at San Jose State University. A multidisciplinary urbanist, Gordon aims to bring critical social and cultural analysis to the study of urban planning and development. He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago.