My name is Deanna, and I believe that in order to create safe and equitable cities, we must address violence through rehabilitation rather than punishment. As principal and founder of FOURM design studio, I seek to create new types of infrastructure to support this shift. I work collaboratively across disciplines with social workers and sheriff’s departments to implement prototypes like the Designing Justice Designing Spaces toolkit for exploring restorative design with incarcerated men and women.
We also work to apply our strategies to placemaking. The Syracuse Peacemaking Center and the Pop-up Resource Village both seek to reduce recidivism and support the transformation of people and place at the locus of need. Together, we are exploring how to scale these prototypes to design cities and neighborhoods that embrace food, environmental, and restorative justice to create healing and peaceful places. #iamcnu
CNU
CNU and its members have worked to address equity issues since the organization’s founding. From working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help rehabilitate failed public housing projects to stitching damaged urban neighborhoods back together through the Highways to Boulevards project, we fight to build more inclusive and equitable places for all users. In October 2014, CNU hosted an Equity and Transportation Summit in New York, NY to explore these issues.