Visible Competency: Shaping Capital through Public Space in Latin America

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Date/Time:Thursday, 10 Nov 2011 from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Location:Room 130, College of Design
Cost:free
URL:http://home.design.iastate.edu/news.php?...ICLEID=481
Contact:Jane Rongerude
Phone:515-294-5289
Channel:College of Design
Categories:Lectures
Actions:Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder
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Rachel Berney, an assistant professor of landscape architecture, urban design and planning at the University of Southern California, will highlight the efforts of two South American cities to reinvent themselves through public space in this presentation cosponsored by the College of Design and Department of Community & Regional Planning. Free and open to the public.

Berney is an assistant professor of landscape architecture, urban design and planning in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and interim director of the school's landscape architecture graduate program. Her research focuses on the use and politics of public space in urban regeneration projects.

"Public space increasingly is used to front city-regeneration projects because of its visibility and low cost to develop relative to other infrastructure projects," Berney said. "The paradox of using public space to create visible competency is that public spaces frequently become landscapes monitored to control behavior, rather than spaces to encounter 'the other.'"

Berney will present examples from Bogota, Colombia, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, and describe each city's attempt to use public space as a tool for building equity, reinventing and defragmenting the city.

Berney received a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Master of Community Planning and doctorate in landscape architecture and environmental planning from the University of California, Berkeley. Her illustrations have appeared in a number of publications, including Randolph T. Hester's Design for Ecological Democracy (MIT Press, 2006), the Journal of Urban Design and the City of Seattle's Making Streets Work. Her article on creating citizen space in Bogota was published in Planning Theory in 2011.

Berney's lecture is cosponsored by the ISU College of Design and Department of Community and Regional Planning.