Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion

Design has been employed as an agent of social and political change, and a catalyst for spatial and urban transformations in cities across the world. Concurrent Urbanities argues for the centrality of designing in the conceptualization and production of inclusive and participatory urban space, by bringing together civic and urban activists, urbanists, designers and architects committed to exploring designing as a socio-spatial praxis concerned with the reorganization of urban socio-economic systems and relations of power.

The blend of first-hand experiences and reflections of the urban practitioners featured reframes design practice beyond the design of physical objects and public amenities, to the design of social protocols, processes, and infrastructures for radically reframing practices of socio-spatial inclusion ‘on the ground.’ Through illustrated examples, this book features the work of Stalker and Stealth who employ design to negotiate new social contracts; Teddy Cruz's design of urban political and economic processes; models of urban pedagogy by the Center for Urban Pedagogy; Cohabitation Strategies’ work on designing urban social cooperatives; and others.

Concurrent Urbanities presents a compendium of the emerging models of design-driven urban practice that offers important new insights to professional urban practitioners as well as to students of urbanism, architecture, urban design, and urban and spatial planning.

Miodrag Mitrašinović is an architect, urbanist, and author. Miodrag is an Associate Professor of Urbanism and Architecture at Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA, where he has served as Dean of The School of Design Strategies (2009-12), and Chair of Urban and Transdisciplinary Design (2007-09). He is the author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (Ashgate 2006), co-editor of Travel, Space, Architecture (with Jilly Traganou, Ashgate 2009), and editor of Concurrent Urbanities (Routledge 2015). His first two books received Graham Foundation Grants in 2004 and 2006 respectively. His professional and scholarly work has been published internationally.