Past Event: Our Fair City Virtual Conversation: Home

The video above was recorded on Wednesday, November 18. In this virtual conversation, critic and editor Justin Davidson speaks with architect Victor Body-Lawson, developer and writer Jonathan Rose, and not-for-profit housing leader and expert Barika X. Williams about housing limitations in NYC. See the full event description below.

We hope you enjoy this recording. Please consider a donation to the Museum – of any amount – to support public programs at the Museum and help us continue our role as New York’s storyteller.

SUPPORT

New York doesn’t have enough housing. Despite perceptions that the 2010s were a period of manic condo-building, new housing construction has remained steady for decades, and has never kept up with demand. New York needs a new era of social housing that is sustainable, durable, and designed to be loved.  For this first session in our new series, Our Fair City: Building a More Equitable New York, critic and editor Justin Davidson talks to Victor Body-Lawson, architect of affordable housing, Jonathan Rose, developer and writer, and not-for-profit housing leader and expert Barika X. Williams, about how to get it done.

This program will take place via Zoom Webinar. Registrants will receive the Zoom link the morning of the event. 

About the Speakers: 
Victor Body-Lawson is a licensed architect and a founder of Body-Lawson Associates Architects and Planners. Body-Lawson has directed the production of several flagship projects including the Master Plan for the Riverside Church in New York City and the design of a new 2,500 person sanctuary for the Bethel Gospel Tabernacle in Jamaica, New York. He was a partner at Brownstone Partners Real Estate Development Consortium where he designed and developed projects in Harlem. He is the recipient of the 2011 HUD Door Knocker Award for outstanding work in Affordable Housing, based on his work for Grace Towers Housing Project in Mount Vernon, NY. He has taught at the School of Architecture at Yale University, City College of New York, and at the School of Architecture at the City of Havana, Cuba. He is a professional member of the National Organization of Minority Architects and the New York Coalition of Black Architects.

Jonathan F.P. Rose’s business, public policy and not-for-profit work all focus on creating more environmentally, socially and economically resilient cities. In 1989, Rose founded Jonathan Rose Companies LLC, a multi-disciplinary real estate development, planning, and investment firm, which creates real estate and planning models to address the challenges of the 21st century. Rose’s book on how to create resilient cities, The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life, was published by Harper Wave in 2016, and won the 2017 PROSE Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work by a Trade Publisher.

Barika X. Williams is the Executive Director of the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development Inc. (ANHD), a leading not-for-profit focused on creating housing and economic justice for all New Yorkers. Ms. Williams previously served as the Assistant Secretary for Housing for the State of New York under Governor Andrew M. Cuomo where she managed the NY’s major housing priorities including the $20 billion housing plan and expanding tenant protections statewide. While with NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, she worked on innovative initiatives and published on topics including affordable housing practices, foreclosures, urban mobility, disaster recovery, and the links between health, education, and housing on neighborhoods. Ms. Williams is the 2020 recipient of APA-NYM’s Robert W. Ponte Award for her commitment to a more just NYC build environment that understands systemic racism’s intersection to place and community. 

Justin Davidson (moderator) has been the classical music and architecture critic at New York magazine since 2007. He is now the editor of Cityscape as a part of Curbed/New York magazine.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2002 and an American Society of Newspaper Editors criticism (ASNE) award. He has contributed to The New Yorker, W., Travel and Leisure, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and Salon, and has appeared on WNYC and NPR. He is the author of Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York (Penguin Random House, 2017). Read his recent article about the future of New York City here.  

This is the first event in our series Our Fair City: Building a More Equitable New York. For more information, click here.