The financial crisis caused by unbridled housing construction and the financialization of subprime mortgages has brought into stark relief the unsustainable and non-equitable nature of contemporary urban development across the globe. In response, the Occupy movement and other forms of protest have taken to the streets in order to reclaim the city and democratic politics more broadly. Should the architectural profession be considered complicit in the production of the contemporary crisis? What might an alternative and more socially engaged urbanism education as well as practice for the future look like?

Miguel Robles-Durán is an Assistant Professor of Urbanism & Design Strategies at Parsons New School for Design, where he convenes the MA Design and Urban Ecologies, and a co-founder at Cohabitation Strategies (COHSTRA), an international non-profit cooperative for sociospatial development based in New York and Rotterdam. Robles-Durán has wide international experience in the strategic definition/coordination of transdisciplinary urban projects, as well as in the development tactical design strategies and civic engagement platforms that confront the contradictions of neoliberal urbanization.