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Nadia Elokdah is an urbanist, designer, and cultural producer.  She graduated in 2015 from the MA Theories of Urban Practice at Parsons The New School For Design.  Prior to that, she earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Temple University in her hometown of Philadlephia. 

While at Parsons, she focused on concepts of inclusion, belonging, and co-creation of urban imaginaries through creative practice.  She currently serves as Deputy Director & Director of Programs for Grantmakers in the Arts, where she works to increase support for peoples, communities, and cultural organizations often marginalized by arts insitutions. 

For the last two years, Nadia served as Special Projects Manager with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as the agency worked to prepare two major policy documents: the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers Report and CreateNYC, the first-ever comprehensive cultural plan for NYC in 2017.  For the Commission Report, Nadia co-led the design of the research and public engagement processes, which sought to integrate deeply personal values and public opinions of New Yorkers with legal and theoretical analysis of public art. The report made an urgent call to confront histories of structural racism and exclusion embodied in our public spaces, and laid out a process for evaluating monuments or markers that may create controversy and strong public response in the future.    

In the production of CreateNYC, Nadia led hundreds of engagements with nearly 200,000 people — collaborating with cultural producers, artists, community-based organizations, and residents — to serve as the foundation of this plan for an equitable, inclusive, and resilient cultural future for all New Yorkers. In the Plan, the City committed to increasing support for arts and culture in under-resourced communities, and also addressed critical issues such as: displacement and affordability; arts, culture, and science education; social and economic impact, and; public space, among others.

Nadia is a published author, adjunct lecturer at Parsons School of Design, and a founding Partner of in.site collaborative, an international collective of women designers and researchers working to make urban transformation more participatory and equitable, most recently participating in Philadelphia Assembled with artsit Jeanne van Heeswijk, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and more than 300 collaborators from Philadelphia.  She is devoted to engagement in culturally responsible and equitable design practice with emphasis on inclusion, exemplified in collaborations with the International Design Clinic, a community youth center in North Philadelphia, and an arab-led arts and culture non-profit Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture.

DIVERSITY POLITICS AND ENGAGING PLURALISM AS TRANSFORMATIVE URBAN PRACTICE

My most recent research, a graduate thesis in theories of urban practice, examines notions of identity, culture, and urban imaginary in everyday practices.

Cities are dynamic, perpetually reproduced through negotiations and practices of myriad endogenous and exogenous actors and forces, as well as their interconnnections. In this regard, cities are active sites of collective imagination, invention and intervention. In these sites, there is perpetual urban transformation shaped by active engagement and lived experience.

There is a disconcerting pattern that has emerged in contemporary cities, which is the co-optation of diversity alongside reductionist notions of culture. The critique of this pattern lies in understanding how notions of diversity are wielded by power structures, such as city governments or anchor institutions. Rather than offering the city as an active and pluralistic platform, diversity is used as a veil to mask the actual and often complicated richness of pluralism.

The “We Went Looking for Home but We Found” interactive, bi-lingual exhibition asks attendees to contribute to the discourse of urban transformation through questions such as, “How does your identity shape the culture of Philadelphia?”

Mapping the relations between various stakeholders demonstrates which voices included in decision making and how power structures negotiate.

In order to identify new possibilities of diversity, I am collaborating with Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, an arts and culture non-profit organization based in Philadelphia. My argument has three facets. One is the design of an interactive exhibition embedding identity within the urban realm, on display from February to April 2015 at Philadelphia City Hall. The second is a series of interviews. The third is a repositioning of actors from city departments, arts and cultural organizations, and small-scale, community-based organizations as collaborators.

These actors can inform and support one another in multiple ways to activate and co-design spaces of plurality toward urban transformation. Key actors are positioned as intermediaries able to wield power to affect transformation beyond symbolic support. These actors are fundamental to bridging the gap between local, nuanced knowledge of grassroots or community-based organizations and top-down, reductionist practices often found in urban governance.

When thinking of cities as shaped by active engagement and lived experience, conversations involving multiple voices from multiple actors are possible. An important moment is when the formation of strategic alliances begins to emerge. If these alliances prioritize complex identities as foundations for diversity and cultural initiatives, they might be able to consciously move toward a practice of co-design using the urban imaginary as a vehicle for inclusivity of multiple voices and aspirations. The interactive exhibition is a prototype of this. The goal is a practice of co-design of multiple voices and aspirations and a pluralistic framework for arts and culture in urban governance.

Understanding the city of Philadelphia as perpetually transforming allows for critical analysis of current systems of urban governance while also creating openings for new possibilities. Putting in conversation unlikely allies moves toward processes of inclusion and co-design of pluralistic frameworks for arts and culture and diversity politics.

I conclude the thesis by addressing a critical question: How can actors better navigate current power structures for urban transformation, while offering expanded notions of what constitutes valid knowledge of the urban? This necessarily becomes a project of making inclusive urban epistemologies while expanding and deepening urban practice.  NE

Infill: Incremental Process

As Spiro Kostof says, “In cities only change endures. Patterns of habitation are provisional, transformed by the ebb and swell of residency…” Cities are constantly evolving. Responding to economic pressures, demographic shifts, infrastructural challenges, advancements in technology and ever moving real estate trends. As identified by this week’s readings, there are various guiding powers informing the incremental processes of urban change: religious doctrines; social consensus; economic development; political strategies. Each present a sustained push for urban change through collective actions.

In the case of Philadelphia, similar to other Rust Belt cities like Detroit and Baltimore, much of the city has been abandoned due to suburban flight and divestment of industry. As the city has worked to change this urban pattern, new systems of approach have been established. Community Design Collaborative’s program Infill Philadelphia, a design competition seeking innovative designs and ideas, presents a social mission to incrementally reframe the image of Philadelphia: the city as an urban haven for community engagement and sustainable intervention. Collaborations between community board members, citizens, government representatives, and the design community produce both small and large scale approaches to implementing infill development throughout the vacant regions across the city. This approach often challenges the standard local government response to condemn and demolish properties without regard to the impact on the urban fabric and neighborhood morale.

By prioritizing social values and incorporating community involvement, the Community Design Collaborative provides an opportunity for engaging and critical incremental change.