Join us for the first event in an ambitious new series bringing Other New Deals into our existing political arena. Here we will set an “open table” together to generate catalytic actions for our complex urban futures. In this first event we will host a conversation with Alex Schafran, one of the authors behind The Spatial Contract, a critical revisioning of social and spatial urban realities. 

The Spatial Contract: A New Politics of Provision for an Urbanized Planet 

“The spatial contract is a form of social contract that pays attention to a simple fact: in order for humans to be free, we rely on these basic systems that enable us to act. At the heart of the spatial contract is an agreement to channel that action into ensuring these systems are built, maintained and available to all who need them in big cities and small towns all around the world.”

Alex Schafran is a  writer, planner, geographer, educator and researcher, based in Marin, CA.

Author: The Spatial Contract: A New Politics of Provision for an Urbanized Planet (2020), Alex Schafran, Mathew Noah Smith, and Stephen Hall and The Road to Resegregation, “Northern California and the Failure of Politics”, (2019)

in discussion with:

Oscar Sosa Lopez, Faculty, Milano School of Policy, and Environment, New School, NY

Miodrag Mitrašinović, Faculty, School of Design Strategies, Parsons School of Design, New School, NY

The Other New Deals series promotes three topics that are conspicuously missing both from “big deal” political policy debates and from frontline struggle reports on what is failing in our present urban ecologies.  They are:  failed everyday “reliance systems”, rural and urban food delivery relations, and COVID Data Surveillance Capitalism.

Save the date for:

Marshall Plan for Rural America, Friday February 26, 4-6 PM

Future Urban Smartness: Connectivity Zones with Disposable Identities, Friday, March 12, 12-2 PM

RSVP to receive a packet of further information, readings, and a guide to the topic at hand before each event.