University of Orange serves as a consultant to projects that link equity to the built environment. In addition to our work in Orange, NJ, our team has consulted in many places including Philadelphia, PA, Niagara Falls, NY and Detroit, MI. The UofO Urbanism team pairs a research-based approach with place-based community engagement.
Research
Our Urbanism Consultancy is headed by Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, LFAPA, Hon AIA, who has conducted 30 years of research on the health effects of inequity with the Cities Research Group of Columbia University and The New School. That work, in turn, was guided by the renowned French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart. Over her career Fullilove has studied interventions that can address major structural issues. She is known internationally for her work on serial forced displacement, published in book Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, and her restorative urbanism text Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities. Her 2020 collaborative publication with Hannah L. F. Cooper, From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence brings Fullilove’s insights to our present moment. UofO’s vision of urbanism has informed and is informed by these crucial texts.
Engagement
Our community engagement work nationally, is grounded in this research and over a decade of community organizing locally, led by Co-Directors Molly Rose Kaufman and Aubrey Murdock. Our Urbanism Department dedicates a significant amount of time and attention to the creation of learning environments and educational tools that build collective efficacy. We respect residents’ lived experiences as an invaluable form of local knowledge. All of our community engagement consultancy work centers place-based knowledge within a collaborative learning process. This approach helps to build trust and social cohesion between participants, the foundational building blocks needed to move a plan to reality.
Our Work
Cody Rouge & Warrendale Neighborhood Framework: Youth Urbanism Summit
Detroit, MI, 2019
Cody Rouge & Warrendale Neighborhood Framework was a youth-centered neighborhood planning process led by Hector Design Service. UofO led the development and implementation of a Youth Urbanism Summit.
Lower Eastwick Public Land Strategy
Philadelphia, PA, 2017 – 2018
UofO worked with Interface Face Studio on the development of The Lower Eastwick Public Land Strategy in the Eastwick neighborhood of Philadelphia, PA. We used the elements of Urban Restoration to fram three public roundtable workshops, walking participants through all of the findings of the plan and creating a shared vision for the neighborhood.
Organizing With The City In Mind
Orange, NJ & Niagara Falls, NY, 2017 – 2018
Organizing with the City in Mind was a collaboration with University of Orange, Create a Healthier Niagara Falls Collaborative (CHNFC), Healthy Orange Coalition, and Pedja Stojicic of Rethink Health, to create a community organizing and urbanism training. Our team developed a collaborative learning structure and facilitated a pilot of the four part training in Orange, NJ.
Love Lives Here: Consulting with the Create a Healthier Niagara Falls Collaborative
Niagara Falls, NY, 2016
University of Orange collaborated with Pedja Stojicic of Rethink Health and Create a Healthier Niagara Falls Collaborative (CHNFC) to offer Urban Alchemy training for resident leaders. Our team developed tools and activities that helped participants to articulate and align values, activated local knowledge, and continue building a health-equity focused collaborative.
