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Friday, April 10, 2015 12:00pm Wood Auditorium

In recent decades, debates on slums and the future of urban life have raged. Novelists, filmmakers, academics, cultural institutions, NGOs, foundations, and think tanks from across the political spectrum have offered ways to alternately upgrade, reinforce, preserve, integrate, and learn from these precarious landscapes, highlighting their many complex socio-spatial questions.

In Housing the Majority, scholars, architects, urban planners, artists, and activists gather from global cities with soaring rates of inequality—Cairo, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, New York City, Mumbai, Istanbul, and London—to define the terms of the debate. Moving beyond traditional and quantifiable definitions of informality, the panels focus on politics, representation, governance, and form as entry points to the difficult humanitarian challenges to “housing the majority.”

Organized by Dean Amale Andraos and Studio-X Amman, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro, with support from the Columbia Global Centers

II. Representation, 2–3:30pm

How does representation of informal places and their constituents affect political voice and agency? How does visibility create opportunities for political change?

Alfredo Brillembourg, Urban Think Tank, ETH Zurich Ramin Bahrani, Columbia University School of the Arts Jaílson de Silva Souza, Ashoka Innovators for the Public; Observatorio de Favelas Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University Response by Hilary Sample, Columbia University GSAPP, Nora Akawi, Studio-X Amman, and Rajeev Thakker, Studio-X Mumbai