Socializing Architecture: Top-down, bottom-up- Teddy Cruz & Fonna Forman (2022)

This book is about ________

Students discussion posts said ________ 

Cruz, T., & Forman, F., 2022. Socializing architecture: Top-down, bottom-up. The MIT Press.

Socializing Architecture - Informal Policy Demands

“Close the gap between large-scale, abstract planning logics and the realities of everyday practices”

“Challenge the idea of public space as a manicured site of beauty and leisure, and reclaim it as a site of civic activity, urban pedagogy, and cultural production”

“Question exclusionary logics of land use. Approach zoning not as a punitive deterrent to socialization but instead as a generative tool that organizes and anticipates local social and economic activity.”

“Design new forms of local governance to prevent gentrification, along with the social protection systems that provide guarantees for marginalized communities and secure their right to control their own modes of production and share the profits of urbanization.”

“Challenge existing models of property with a more inclusive idea of ownership”

“Close the gap between large-scale, abstract planning logics and the realities of everyday practices”

“Mobilize social networks in new spatial and economic infrastructures that benefit local communities, beyond the short-term problem-solving logics of private developers or institutions of charity.”

“Create agencies that curate interfaces between top-down institutions and the creative, bottom-up intellegence and sweat equity of communities and activists.”

“Transform cultural practices of social exclusion and the corresponding denigration of public goods by cultivating new norms of human dignity and equality.”

“Politicize density. Measure it not as an abstract number of objects per area, but as the intensity of socioeconomic exchanges per area.”