Spring 2021 Virtual Events

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2/26 Friday 10 a.m. – 2:45 p.m.
 register
fordham urban law journal spring symposium 2021
A Taxing War on Poverty: Opportunity Zones and the Promise of Investment and Economic Development
Following the 2008 Great Recession, general economic uncertainty and anxiety enveloped the United States but was more acutely felt in specific pockets of the nation. Severely distressed areas across the country suffered from severe unemployment, low levels of and declines in public investment, and the lack of infrastructural improvements and access to private capital. The seemingly localized adverse effects ultimately spilled over into the national economy. Responding to this economic despair, Congress believed it drafted a provision to remedy the uneven economic recovery in the United States: Opportunity Zones (OZs). These are low-income census tracts that lure private investment through private opportunity zone funds (OZFs), which reward investors with tax deferrals, reductions, and exclusions. Since its inception, states have designated nearly 9,000 OZs across the nation in hopes of bringing economic growth to “blighted” areas. Alongside professors, attorneys, scholars, economists, investors, and advocates, the Symposium will explore what OZs are, the reasons for persistent gaps in access to capital in distressed areas, private-sector investment motivations, and the misnomers and shortcomings of OZs, as well as the possibilities of equitable or sustainable economic development.

• also, 3/16 columbia gsapp lectures in planning series, “Opportunity Zones: A Baseline Evaluation in West Baltimore”

Recent Publications

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Donovan - Canaries in the Data Mine

gregory t. donovan

Canaries in the Data Mine

Understanding the Proprietary Design of Youth Environments

9789811572883
Palgrave Macmillan
October 22, 2020

from the publisher:

Canaries in the Data Mine offers an account of the lived experiences and cultural expectations of young people growing up in digital environments increasingly owned by others and designed for profit. At the book’s core is a participatory research project that first interviewed New York City teens about their digital habits and then engaged a group of five young people in designing the prototypical platform of their time: a social network.

In this engaging book, Gregory T. Donovan penetrates beyond the interface to consider the digital geography of contemporary youth, arguing that understanding what young people are grappling with portends what is, or will soon be, felt by society at large. Drawing from in-depth interviews and design workshops, he shows how informational capitalism is reproduced at an intimate scale as well as how involving young people in digital design can foster capacities for reworking and resisting the conditions of a rising rentier society.

Also recently published by Gregory T. Donovan:

• “Minor Data: Reading the ‘Smart’ City Through Engaged Pedagogy,” in Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume II: Social and Natural Sciences (eds. Robert J. Diyanni and Anton Borst), Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.

Past Spring 2021 Virtual Events

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3/4 Thursday 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
 register
fordham environmental law review symposium 2021
Urban Climate Change and the Law
panel 1: cities and climate change
Outlining roles played by the laws & policies of cities and other municipalities in addressing the unique calamities faced by urban populations.

  • Extreme Weather Events
  • Heat Island Effect

panel 2: cities, climate justice, and the law
Discussing the role of policymakers and practicing attorneys in ensuring that principles of environmental justice guide governmental action relating to the environment.

  • Vulnerable Populations
  • The Unequal Cost Of Environmental Protection

panel 3: adaptation and resilience
Exploring what the future could look like for cities and urban populations regarding climate change, examining the role of policymakers and lawyers in creating that future.

  • Urban Land Use Law
  • Urban Adaptation And Resilience To Climate Change
  • How Can Emerging Technologies Reduce A City’s Environmental Impact?

2/12 Friday, 10 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
 register
fordham international law journal symposium 2021
Black Lives Matter Around the Globe: A Symposium Focused on Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Abroad
In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests in the United States, the 2021 Fordham International Law Journal Symposium topic will focus on the manifestation of the Black Lives Matter movement and the issue of racial and ethnic discrimination around the globe. Panelists will include judges, scholars, and activists within and outside of the Fordham community well versed in civil and human rights issues in an international context. Conversation will surround an identification of the particular issues in jurisdictions outside of the United States as well as ongoing proposed solutions.

1/28 Thursday 12:30 p.m.
 register
fordham law speaker series 2021
Supercharging Environmental Justice in Crisis Times
Hayley Gorenberg is the Legal Director of NYLPI, where she guides the organization’s litigation and advocacy. Before joining NYLPI in 2018, Hayley was General Counsel and Deputy Legal Director of the national civil rights organization Lambda Legal, where she litigated landmark cases advancing the rights of LGBTQ people, including a range of pathbreaking matters involving disability rights, health access and discrimination against marginalized communities. Prior to that she ran a citywide task force at Legal Services for New York City, creating legal advocacy campaigns and training other lawyers and advocates to achieve high-impact results for low-income New Yorkers living with HIV. Hayley was named 2017 OUTLaw Alumna of the Year by New York University School of Law and received a 2018 Forger Award from the American Bar Association for “sustained excellence” advocating for the rights of people living with HIV. She has served as a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard and sits on Princeton University’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Advisory Council and the New York State Council on Women and Girls. Hayley earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, her law degree from New York University School of Law, and a certificate in change leadership from Cornell University.

Learn more about the A2J Initiative at Fordham Law.

Urban Law Day Roundtable Discussion

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Law and the New Urban Agenda in the Current Crisis

October 6, 2020 — 8:30 a.m. ET
Virtual / New York.

In honor of the annual World Habitat Day, please join UN-Habitat and the Fordham Urban Law Center for an Urban Law Day Roundtable Discussion on October 6, 2020. Featuring a panel of urban legal scholars from around the world, the Roundtable will engage with the recently published book, Law and the New Urban Agenda, and its significance for the contemporary urban moment in the face of the challenges from COVID-19 and related pressing issues.

introduction and moderation:

scheduled panelists include:

Statement of Solidarity

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STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY AND COMMMITMENT TO JUSTICE

Institutionalized racism and violence against African Americans and other minorities have been part of our society for centuries. The brutal killing of George Floyd was one of many acts of violence against black lives, but it has created a tipping point, sparking protests nationwide, and, along with them, the recognition that our minds, our society, and our institutions have to change fundamentally to address racial injustice. The Fordham Urban Consortium stands in solidarity with the protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Fordham Urban Consortium is an interdisciplinary, university-wide research consortium, where we work to understand cities not from just one academic perspective, but from the recognition that it takes multiple disciplinary angles and perspectives to understand our cities’ challenges—and their promise. Cities are not just containers of social interaction, but they are true incubators of social relations, and, sometimes, of societal change. The current movement started in our nation’s biggest cities, but has since spread around the world, as well as into rural communities across the country, demanding justice and change. In the light of these protests and their focus on ending violence against black bodies, and the institutionalized racial disadvantages facing Black, indigenous, and people of color, we, the members of the Fordham Urban Consortium, reaffirm our commitment to confronting these injustices in our research and teaching, as well as in our daily lives.

Law And The New Urban Agenda

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Nestor M. Davidson & Geeta Tewari - Law And The New Urban Agenda
order
20% Discount: code BSE20

from Nestor M. Davidson & Geeta Tewari —

Dear Colleagues,

The Urban Law Center’s newest volume, Law and the New Urban Agenda is available now.

Given COVID-19’s impact on cities globally, it is more important than ever to highlight the significance of urban law and policy for students. This new book offers a constructive and critical valuation of the legal dimensions of the U.N.’s New Urban Agenda (NUA), adopted at the 2016 United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to foster a globally shared understanding of the vital link between urbanization and a sustainable future. A myriad of legal challenges – and opportunities – stand between the NUA and its goals. Examining case studies from natural disasters and resulting urban migration in Honshu and Tacloban, to innovative collaborative governance in Barcelona and Turin, to the accessibility of public space for informal workers in New Delhi and Accra, and power scales among Brazil’s metropolitan regions, the contributions in this new book frame an important academic dialogue about the legal dimensions of the NUA, all of which will be of interest to scholars across the range of urban studies.

Law and the New Urban Agenda underscores the value of urban law as a discipline in supporting the healthy development of inclusive cities for all. This timely volume sheds light on the many complex challenges that urban growth poses for legal systems around the globe, and I commend this eclectic group of scholars for their engagement with the New Urban Agenda. – Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director, UN-Habitat

Order Law And The New Urban Agenda.

Cities in a Changing World: Questions of Culture, Climate and Design

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AMPS Conference 2021

June 16–18, 2021
Virtual / New York. City Tech, CUNY

call: 

The premise of this conference is that the city is a site of interconnected problems. No single issue dominates its needs. No single discipline has the answers to its questions. As a result, the range of issues we deal with is vast. Urban designers are developing new models of settlement planning to address housing needs. Architects are renovating ever more existing buildings. Infrastructure designers are developing faster modes of transportation. Planners are demanding lower C02 emissions from industry. Health professionals are rethinking movement in the city. Policy makers are addressing grass-roots demands for regional governance.

While all such issues respond to unique and independent demands, they are all interrelated. Climate change is a perfect example. Scientists, policy makers, activists and designers the world over are engaged in the issue. Some focus on rehousing displaced peoples, others challenge throwaway culture and stress reuse. Health professionals examine disaster relief while planners look at shared transport models. Environmentalists seek to reduce energy consumption, while communities plan for resilience. At the same time, economists look to finance cleaner industries. In tackling a particular issue then, multiple disciplines are overlapping and drawing on the work of others. In short, their work is reaching beyond the boundaries of individual fields.

In looking at the city as a site of such inherent interdisciplinarity, the conference venue offers insights. New York is a city of over 8 million people. It has an affordable housing problem and, located on the coast, is threatened by rising sea levels. The site for the United States’ most iconic historic buildings, it demands 21st Century uses of them. The home of the US public health movement in the 19th Century, it is at the forefront of the healthy city agenda today. Historically a landing port for immigrants it knows the pressures of displacement and migration. A city for the wealthiest elites in the world, it exhibits poverty, social exclusion and periodic cultural tensions.

In this place, as in cites the world over, none of the issues that vex the metropolis are isolated, and none of their factors, consequences or responses are limited to single disciplines.

June 30, 2020: Early abstracts.