Urban Studies Scholar to Speak at Fordham

Tom Angotti

On the heels of its third urban dialogue panel on Oct. 10, Fordham’s Urban Studies program welcomes Tom Angotti, Ph.D., professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Angotti, who is also director of Hunter College’s Center for Community Planning & Development, joins Fordham as the first Urban Studies Distinguished Scholar. 

He will be at Fordham all this week, participating in undergraduate and graduate courses, meeting with students and faculty, and delivering a public lecture, "The New Century of the Metropolis: Urban Enclaves and Orientalism."  

Wednesday, October 24

5:30 p.m. 

South Lounge

Lincoln Center campus

Angotti’s most recent book, The New Century of the Metropolis: Enclave Development and Urban Orientalism, was published by Routledge in 2011. His tome New York For Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate (MIT Press, 2008) won the Paul Davidoff Award in 2009 and International Planning History Society Book Prize in 2010. 

New Village Press recently published Service-Learning in Design and Planning: At the Boundaries, which he co-edited with Cheryl Doble and Paula Horrigan. His other books include Metropolis 2000: Planning Poverty and Politics and Housing in Italy. (Routledge, 1993)

The distinguished scholar program brings internationally known urban studies scholars and practitioners to Fordham to interact with students, faculty, and the life of the university. It is made possible by a gift from Podell, Schwartz, Schechter & Banfield, LLP.

—Patrick Verel

Urban Studies Class to Present New Vision for NYC Suburb

If you had 43 acres of property on the Hudson River that afforded stunning views of the Palisades and the New York City skyline, what would you do with it?

Before answering, there’s a catch: The land is heavily polluted and the site is only accessible via a two-lane bridge.

That scenario is one of the challenges facing Hastings-On-Hudson, a village of 8,000 people 20 miles north of New York City.

At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 14, students from the master’s in urban studies program at Fordham will present ideas for retrofitting the village.

Working from the notion that cities aren’t the only places where the principles of retrofitting—improved connectivity, public amenities, affordable housing options, mixed-use buildings, and congestion easing—can be applied, they will present their findings at the Hastings-On-Hudson Public Library, 7 Maple Ave., Hastings-On-Hudson.

The presentation is the final project for the class “The American Suburb,” which was taught by Roger Panetta, Ph.D., visiting professor of history at Fordham.

The students will address issues of governance, housing, the downtown, transportation, and food and community. Their recommendations will come from a larger collaborative project that entailed a semester’s worth of interviews, document analysis and site visits that can be found here.

For more information, call (415) 533-9665.

—Patrick Verel

Bronx Youths Let the Beat Drop in Berlin

Fordham GSAS sudent Kathleen Adams, left, in Berlin with students from CUNY Prep
(Photo courtesy of GangwayBeatzBerlin)

Youths from the Bronx will experience hip-hop culture in Berlin as part of a trip organized by a Fordham professor.

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African-American studies, and about 10 students from Bronx-based CUNY Prep are in Germany’s largest city this week for the final leg of Bronx-Berlin Connection—a transatlantic hip-hop project.

Hosted by GangwayBeatzBerlin, a music association in which young people experience hip-hop culture on the streets of Berlin, the Bronx-Berlin Connection engages young people from Bronx and Berlin in a year-round cross-cultural exchange program. They use music—particularly, rap and hip-hop—to explore and express the experiences of urban youths globally, the critical challenges they face and the solutions necessary to enact change in their communities.

The project will culminate in a full-length, multi-lingual, cross-cultural rap album to be released later this year.

An online diary by GangwayBeatzBerlin mentioned, “The crew from the hip-hop capitol of the world arrived today,” referring to Naison, Fordham Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) student Kathleen Adams, three CUNY Prep teachers and, of course, the students.

Likewise, Naison is reporting on the experience through the social media. In a Facebook message posted on Saturday, he wrote, “We are having an amazing time in Berlin! We met up with people from GangwayBeatzBerlin, who took us to dinner at a great Turkish restaurant and then took us to a community hip-hop jam in Wedding, an immigrant neighborhood in Berlin, where our kids produced a freestyle cipher. Great chemistry between GangwayBeatz and the CUNY Prep kids.”

A “cipher” occurs when two or more rappers freestyle together in an informal context. But hip-hop is not all Bronx youths have in common with their Berlin counterparts, Naison explained.

“Kids from the Bronx think that their situation is unique. When they get to Berlin, they’ll see lots of kids from immigrant families experiencing similar things—employment struggles, family problems, race issues—and who look at hip-hop as a way to express their feelings about the world they are in,” he said.

Immigrants in Berlin hail from Turkey, the Middle East and various parts of Eastern Europe, said Naison, who previously traveled to Berlin to lecture on the “Multicultural Roots of Bronx Hip-Hop.”

Thanks to GangwayBeatzBerlin, youths from Berlin visited Fordham and the New York City area in November 2008 and again a year later. Many of the young poets and rappers performed at Rose Hill.

“The students for CUNY Prep are going to think they are in the Bronx when they arrive in Berlin. They’ll see ethnic enclaves, graffiti, street food vendors and, of course, hip-hop music,” Naison said before he left.

The trip was subsidized by donations, many which came from Fordham alumni.

“We had an amazing outpouring of support from alumni. Without it, this trip wouldn’t be taking place,” he said.

The CUNY Prep students will perform on Sept. 13 at the United States Embassy in Berlin. They’ll visit and be interviewed at radio stations and a television news crew will be following them as they visit clubs and community centers, Naison said.

GSAS student Kathleen Adams is accompanying the group as a chaperone. A student in the urban studies master’s program, Adams said she hopes to teach youths in Berlin about women in hip-hop, which she researched for her thesis as an urban studies undergraduate at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

—Gina Vergel