Eugenie Birch, co-director of the Humanities, Urbanism and Design (H+U+D)  Initiative as well as the  University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Urban Research and the , has been elected as the first president of the new General Assembly of Partners (GAP), a special initiative of the United Nation’s World Urban Campaign. Birch was elected at the GAP’s inaugural meeting, held in Nairobi, Kenya in mid-April. At the same meeting, New Delhi’s Shipra Narang Suri, Vice President of the International Society of City and Regional Planners, was elected as GAP’s vice president.

The General Assembly of Partners is a new global initiative that will play an important role in the preparation process for the United Nation’s Habitat III conference, the world’s premier conference addressing urban issues, to be held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016. Through a process of engaging groups of diverse of stakeholders— including city policymakers, organized groups of women, academics, indigenous peoples, foundations, farmers, and the media—GAP will seek to identify and address new and emerging urban challenges in advance of the Habitat III conference.

GAP has identified 14 “partner constituent groups” to engage in this process, most of whom have elected chairs and will be electing co-chairs at the GAP’s upcoming October meeting.

“Habitat III is about creating a vision and plan for the future of urban communities around the world,” says Birch. “In order to really understand the depths and nuances of urban issues, we must bring together the diverse constituents who have a stake in making cities better, stronger, and more livable in the 21stcentury. And that’s exactly what the new General Assembly of Partners hopes to do.”

In her role as GAP’s president, Birch, with the help of the United Nations Division of Economic and Social Affairs Major Group Programme Manager, is launching a wide-ranging engagement effort to bring together members from the 14 major constituent groups, and beyond. The GAP will work with these members to engage in dialogue, propose actionable recommendations, and publicize outcomes and collective positions to the Habitat III conference.

The deadline for undergraduate and graduate student research awards has been extended to May 15, 2015!

The Project in Humanities, Urbanism, and Design (H+U+D), invites undergraduate and graduate students to submit research proposals for Academic Year 2015-16.
Small grants will be awarded to support projects that align with the mission of the H+U+D project.

The application should include:

Research project proposal (maximum: 500 words)
Short itemized budget
Unofficial Penn transcript
Letter or recommendation from sponsoring faculty member, requested by the
applicant via the Letter of Recommendation Request Form

Submit your proposal no later than MAY 15, 2015, to the Center for Undergraduate
Research and Fellowships (CURF) via the student application. See

http://www.upenn.edu/curf/research/grants/mellon-humanities-urbanism-and-design-project

Students on the terrace of Palacio Capanema

The course “Cosmopolitan Urbanism: Rio de Janeiro” has taken as its object of study the uneven ways in which urban development proceeds through international and universalist models. It is taught by Daniel Barber, Assistant Professor of Architecture in the School of Design, and John Tresch, Associate Professor in History and Sociology of Science in the School of Arts and Sciences. Rio is an ideal site, not only in that the city has increasingly faced pressure to enter the network of ‘global cities’ over the past few decades, but also because its urban development has been subject to so many different forces, both internal and external, since its founding.The first part of the course was spent examine the history of Rio in the context of the history of architecture and urban planning, on the one hand, and the history of universal tropes of science, positivism, and development on the other. Special attention was also paid to the importance of Rio as a site for the elaboration of Brazilian identity, and for how this has played our recently through the recent World Cup and the upcoming Olympics. We then traveled to Rio and visited a heterogeneous collection of buildings and sites in order to explore the richness and diversity of the city. Some highlights: a visit inside the Palacio Capanema (also called the Ministry of Education and Heath, Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, et. al., 1936-1943); a tour of the renovations to the Pedregulho housing complex (Affonso Eduardo Reidy, 1947-1951); a soccer match at Maracana; and a visit to the Foundation Oswaldo Cruz including the Museum of Life and the original building that housed the laboratories for many of the public health experiments and vaccines that were so significant to the development of Brazil – and remain crucial to the region today. Now that we are back at Penn, students are hard at work preparing the collective project “RioAtlas: Cosmopolitan Urbanisms” in which they are expanding on their exploration of these different sites organizing them into a web-based interface. Students for the course are divided between the Architecture Department, History and Sociology of Science, and related fields. They are: Megan Bridges, Kahaari Kenyatta, Carissa Lim, Paul Marett, Martina Merlo, Ariela Osuna, Natalia Revelo, Monique Sager, Emma Schad, Emily Siegel, Sean Turner, and Lindsay Wong. We have also benefited from the experience of our TAs Erin Putalik, PhD Student in Architecture, and Rosanna Dent, PhD Candidate in History and Sociology of Science, and from the knowledge of Rio (and of Brazilian Portuguese) of Daniella Costa, a visiting scholar in Historic Preservation in the School of Design.

Renovations at Pedregulho.

Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Museo de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, 1952-57

Paris, France

The H+U+D Initiative’s first city seminar courses departed Philadelphia for explorations abroad during Penn’s spring break. In an effort to integrate the humanities and design disciplines around the study of cities, H+U+D sponsored two international courses. Each seminar is co-taught by two faculty, one  from the humanities and one from design. This semester H+U+D’s Co-Director Dr. Eugenie Birch, City and Regional Planning, and H+U+D colloquium participant, Dr. Andrea Goulet, Romance Languages, ventured with students to Paris to study the connections between city planning and French literature. Dr. Daniel Barber, Architecture, also a H+U+D colloquium participant teamed up with Dr. John Tresch, History and Sociology of Science, traveled with their students to Rio de Janeiro to study topics related to cosmopolitanism in the 21st century.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Applications are now invited for two one-year Junior Fellowships to be held in 2015-2016. One fellow will be selected from the humanities and one from design disciplines. Each will be hosted at Penn by a department in the other discipline. Mellon Junior Fellows will be selected on the basis of their ability to contribute, through research and teaching, to the mission of the initiative. During their nine months in residence, they will have the opportunity to pursue their own research. They will participate in the bi-weekly Colloquium, presenting their research at one of those sessions, and they will also participate fully in the academic life of their host departments. In the spring semester they will teach an undergraduate seminar, which may be co-taught by the two fellows. The deadline to submit applications is January 15, 2015.PennHUD Junior Fellow description  Junior Fellow application cover sheet

At the 2014-2015 kick-off meeting, the H+U+D colloquium welcomed five new members to its ranks. Applications were solicited from across the university for participation. This year’s membership reflects a range of disciplines involved involved in exploring cities.

• Stephan Al, Associate Professor of Urban Design, School of Design
• Francesca Russello Ammon, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning, School of Design
• Nancy Davenport, Assistant Professor of Photography, Fine Arts, School of Design
• Tsitsi Jaji, Assistant Professor of English, School of Arts and Sciences
• Naomi Waltham-Smith, Assistant Professor of Music, School of Arts and Sciences