Model Cities Program @ UnionDocs, Thursday March 15 @ 7:30pm

Thursday, Mar 15 at 7:30 pm

What is the Model City?

Screening to be followed by a presentation by Susanne Schindler and a discussion with Schindler, Gordon Hyatt, and Rebecca Amato.

via UnionDocs

What was the Model Cities program and why have so few people heard about it? Join architect and historian Susanne Schindler as she explains the origins, trajectory and legacies of the Great Society program launched in 1966. Model Cities’ goal was to improve the quality of life in the nation’s most impoverished urban areas by coordinating federal funding and community participation. Despite the best intentions, however, the program’s implementation was rocky. By 1970 it was considered a problem, and in 1974 it was terminated. New York City had three Model Cities Neighborhoods—Central Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Harlem–East Harlem—areas that today are once again highly contested in light of municipal planning policies.

The program will include a screening of Gordon Hyatt’s never-before-shown film, Between The Word And The Deed, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker as well as Rebecca Amato from NYU’s Urban Democracy Lab.