Program Background

The Urbanisms of Inclusion program was an education and research program which ran from 2010 to 2014 and brought together faculty and students from The New School – Parsons, UC San Diego, Morgan State University, KU Leuven, TU Eindhoven, and Università Iuav di Venezia (IAUV). It created as part of the European Union-United States Atlantis Program, a transatlantic student and faculty exchange conducted cooperatively by the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture (DG EAC).

The program sought to address the inequities and injustices of the last four decades of global development and economic growth policies, the antisocial turn in planning and design practices, and planetary-scale environmental destruction. These issues —including dualization, gentrification, mobility and migrations, territorial fragmentation, and uneven development— were investigated in this exchange program through the lens of social inclusion, noting that these issues often disproportionately affected the urban poor and marginalized. One of the goals of the program was to produce more inclusive methods of design practice among highly qualified, university-trained urbanists: strategic designers and planners, visual communicators, urban researchers and activists. The program brought together the strength and richness of different design approaches and methods, and the long tradition and experiences in urbanism in each of the participating universities.

Some of the work from this program is shown below:

Thesis Projects

Recl/fr)a(i)ming the Voids of Laag-Molenbeek and Cureghem
Author: Evelyne Vanhoutte

Vo-Tech market for Molenbeek, Brussels: Interweaving the commercial and educational landscape
Author: Barbara Sandra

Setting a Scene for Inclusion: Molenbeek in the Brussels Sports Landscapes
Author: Miguel Vanleene

Baltimore: Urbanisms of Inclusion
Authors: Sven Augusteyns, Ben Dirickx, Esther Jacobs

Common Wealth
Author: Verena Lenna

PAVING (A)WAY: Envisioning the 21st century public market Brussels/Sint- Jans-Molenbeek
Author: Payam Tabrizian

Holiday Spaces for Molenbeek-Brussels: A Place for Culture in the Multicultural Metropolis
Author: Rana Sadat Habibi

Urbanism of Inclusion, Sunset Park
Authors: Jana Grammens, Amber Kevelaerts, Maarten Wauters

THE AGONISTIC CITY: Building the Political in Sunset Park
Author: Michele Girelli & Verena Lenna