Reflections on Democracy and Urban Form: Provocations from a Panel at Harvard's Graduate School of Design

Leading scholars explore the connections between democracy and justice, architecture and urban design, the growth of cities, cosmopolitanism, inclusion, and free speech.

This book builds on conversations that took place in the Fall of 2024 at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design marking the release of the book Democracy and Urban Form, a co-publication by Harvard Design Press and Sternberg Press. The original book showcased a series of six lectures that the sociologist Richard Sennett gave under the same name at the GSD in the fall of 1981. The original lectures, which happened more than forty years ago, addressed a much different political climate. Even so, Richard’s core insights into the connections between democracy and justice, matters of architecture and urban design, the growth of cities, cosmopolitanism, inclusion, free speech, and other related matters remain just as relevant today.

In the spirit of reflecting on these urgencies, the GSD invited the political philosopher Michael Sandel to deliver a lecture that drew on themes from the new edition of his book Democracy’s Discontent. In his opening talk, which took place on the evening of Wednesday, October 9, Sandel encouraged the audience to consider what might account for the polarization that imperils democracy today, as well as what might be done about it? Beyond analyzing the forces that were about to decide the 2024 election, he proposed a bold project of civic renewal to reimagine the economy and empower citizens as participants in a shared public life. 
On Thursday, October 10, these provocations continued during a panel discussion that included Richard Sennett, Diane Davis, Claire Zimmerman, Markus Miessen, and Miguel Robles-Durán. All reflected on Sandel’s talk, as well as on the state of democracy as it related more specifically to architecture and the design and planning of cities and metropolitan regions.

Contributors
Diane E. Davis, Markus Miessen, Miguel Robles-Durán, Richard Sennett, Claire Zimmerman

Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). Her current research focuses on spatial strategies and territorial assemblages that minimize risk and foster resilience in the face of violence, climate migration, ecological crisis, and other vulnerabilities.  Davis was recently named Fellow and Co-Director of a five-year project titled “Humanity’s Urban Future” funded by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).

Markus Miessen is an architect and writer, and in 2021 was appointed Professor of Urban Regeneration at the University of Luxembourg, where he holds the Chair of the City of Esch. Miessen has previously taught at the Architectural Association (London), the Berlage Institute (Rotterdam), has been a Harvard GSD Fellow (Cambridge), and has held professorships at Städelschule (Frankfurt), HEAD (Geneva), the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), and HDK-Valand (Gothenburg). As a spatial consultant, he currently works with the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism. Amongst many other books and writings, Miessen is the author of The Nightmare of Participation and Crossbenching (both Sternberg Press), and has edited volumes such as Para-Platforms: On the Spatial Politics of Right-Wing Populism, The Archive as a Productive Space of Conflict, Agonistic Assemblies: On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality, and, with Nikolaus Hirsch, is the coeditor of the book series “Critical Spatial Practice”. Since 2024, he is also a Dean’s Visiting Professor at Columbia GSAPP, NY.