Uneven Growth NYC | Documentary

Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities
Exhibition: November 22, 2014–May 10, 2015
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC + Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art (MAK)
Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities is an ongoing project commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. This project comprises a series of workshops, exhibitions and a publication. Uneven Growth brings together six interdisciplinary teams of researchers and practitioners to examine new architectural possibilities for six global metropolises: Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lagos, Mumbai, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. Following on the same model of the MoMA exhibitions Rising Currents and Foreclosed, each team will develop proposals for a specific city in a series of workshops that occur over the course of a 14-month initiative.
Uneven Growth seeks to challenge current assumptions about the relationships between formal and informal, bottom-up and top-down urban development, and to address potential changes in the roles architects and urban designers might assume vis-à-vis the increasing inequality of current urban development. The resulting proposals, which will be presented at MoMA in November 2014, will consider how emergent forms of tactical urbanism can respond to alterations in the nature of public space, housing, mobility, spatial justice, environmental conditions, and other major issues in near-future urban contexts.
For this exhibition, Lest interstices is working with Cohabitation Strategies in addressing the ongoing uneven development across New York City’s boroughs by exposing— through local narratives— the economic, social and spatial inequalities mirrored in the unprecedented housing crisis. The narratives describe the experiences of local advocates for housing justice —citizens, activists, artists, writers, community organizers, academics and urban experts. They reveal the other New York City by exposing some of the agents and outcomes of illegal conversions, homelessness, foreclosures, land values, vacancies and re-zoned inner city areas.
The participants include Rachel LaForest, Right to the City Alliance; Rob Robinson, Take Back the Land; Frank Morales, Organizing for Occupation; Tom Angotti, Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at City University of New York; Laura Gottesdiener, journalist, social justice activist and author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and a Fight for a Place to Call Home; Rachel Falcone and Michael Premo, Sandy Storyline and Housing is a Human Right; David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the CUNY; Harvey Epstein, Urban Justice Center; Brigette Blood, North West Bushwick; Kendall Jackman, housing campaign leader at Picture the Homeless and New York City Community Land Initiative and Brad Lander, affordable housing advocate and member of the New York City Council representing the 39th Council District in Brooklyn.
CREDITS
Uneven Growth NYC – Documentary
Produced by Cohabitation Strategies
Creative Producers: Gabriela Rendón + Miguel Robles-Durán
Directed by Jonathan Lapalme – Les interstices
Creative Director: Santiago Giraldo Anduaga
Production Manager: Raquel de Anda
Music by Rabboud Mens
Cooperative team for the exhibit
Lucia Babina, Emiliano Gandolfi, Gabriela Rendón, Miguel Robles-Durán, Guillermo Delgado, Phillip Lühl, Jonathan Lapalme, Raquel de Anda, Juan Pablo Pemberty, Santiago Giraldo and Juan Junca.
Project Advisors: David Harvey and Tom Angotti.