{"product_id":"contested-city-art-and-public-history-as-mediation-at-new-yorks-seward-park-urban-renewal-area-humanities-and-public-life-9781609386108","title":"Contested City: Art and Public History as Mediation at New York's Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (Humanities and Public Life)","description":"\u003cp\u003e2020 Brendan Gill Prize finalist For forty years  as New Yorks Lower East Side went from disinvested to gentrified  residents lived with a wound at the heart of the neighborhood  a wasteland of vacant lots known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA). Most of the buildings on the fourteen-square-block area were condemned in 1967  displacing thousands of low-income people of color with the promise that they would soon return to new housinghousing that never came. Over decades  efforts to keep out affordable housing sparked deep-rooted enmity and stalled development  making SPURA a dramatic study of failed urban renewal  as well as a microcosm epitomizing the greatest challenges faced by American cities since World War II. Artist and urban scholar Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani was invited to enter this tense community to support a new approach to planning  which she accepted using collaboration  community organizing  public history  and public art. Having engaged her students at The New School in a multi-year collaboration with community activists  the exhibitions and guided tours of her Layered SPURA project provided crucial new opportunities for dialogue about the past  present  and future of the neighborhood. Simultaneously revealing the incredible stories of community and activism at SPURA  and shedding light on the importance of collaborative creative public projects  Contested City bridges art  design  community activism  and urban history. This is a book for artists  planners  scholars  teachers  cultural institutions  and all those who seek to collaborate in new ways with communities.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647135244341,"sku":"ByrdShop_1609386108","price":39.72,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781609386108.jpg?v=1781688958","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/contested-city-art-and-public-history-as-mediation-at-new-yorks-seward-park-urban-renewal-area-humanities-and-public-life-9781609386108","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}