AQB Urban Studies Program’s Travel Abroad Workshops: Columbia & USA

The CoDesigning Cities project is concerned with questions of access to public and urban services in so-called marginalized and migrant (national and trans-national) communities. Al-Quds Bard College students NihalAlmasri, Khaled Amro, AmeedFaleh, NaghamAsal and Urban Studies & Spatial Practices lecturer Jens Haendeler traveled to Phoenix and Bogotá for four weeks alongside Master students from Universidad de los Andes and PhD students from Arizona State University.

Together, we asked what role design as a discipline across the social, spatial, and political domain may take in addressing inequalities.

We explored how to provide or improve access to urban services to different community groups and migrant populations at the scale of the neighborhood and the public park. Restricted access to services, limitations for civic engagement, spatial exclusion, cultural segregation, and stigmatization permeate the reality of the two sites we engage and codesign with.

The CoDesigning Cities project is organized in between the Department of Design at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, the Design School at Arizona State University, Phoenix, US, and the Urban Studies and Spatial Practices Program at Al-Quds Bard College, Palestine. This project is supported by a grant from the Open Society University Network.