The HBS hosts discuss how cities, once considered hubs of public life and interaction, have become increasingly segregated, partitioned, disconnected, and privatized.
Drawing on his experience using the city of a Chicago as a classroom, Rick Lee asks: can we identify the material markers of “privatization” in contemporary cities? How do we know which parts of the city are for “us,” which parts of the city are for everyone, and which parts aren’t? Is there anything like a “public commons” anymore and, if so, where is it? What can we learn from the fact that even park benches and bus stops are physically-engineered to prevent the unhoused from being able to find rest or shelter? How might we build a more just city?
Among other things, the HBS hosts reference the following:
- Iris Marion Young, “City Life and Difference,” in Justice and the Politics of Difference.
- Lucy Parsons, “A Word to Tramps”
- Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- Susan S. Fainstein, The Just City
- Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life”
- Daniel Burnham, The Plan of Chicago
- Motherless Brooklyn (Film. 2019) IMDB listing / watch on Amazon Prime
- Millennium Park (Chicago, IL)
- Plato’s Republic
