New article in Urban Geography, with Laura Wolf-Powers

We published an article in Urban Geography: “User fees and the permeability of public space at municipal pools and bathhouses in New York City, 1870 – present.” Find the article here.

In this article, we combined my archival research from The Amphibious Public with Laura’s work on municipal policy-making, particularly in terms of fiscal decision making. Using pools and bathhouses in New York City as an historical example, we show how fees were administered (or cancelled) at various times in the city’s history in order to promote values, uses, and public-making by different groups. Put differently: paying the fee at the pool has a social dimension! It is not just a way to pay for operations (though at times it has), but rather it sets up a relationship of the user to public space that is markedly different from free general entry (though anyone who uses New York City pools in the summer knows that those have plenty of restrictions as well.)

Looking forward to hearing from you. Contact me at naomi.adiv@utoronto.ca

Talking back (to theatre)!

This coming Saturday night, Sept 15, I will be at La Mama theatre in New York City, in conversation with playwright/director Kevin Doyle about the new play from his company, Sponsored By Nobody, THE AЯTS.

The play deals with the history of federal arts funding in the US, particularly the founding and subsequent de-funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. I am there to chat because of the paper I published this past spring in Arts and International Affairs, entitled Goodbye to the NEA?

I’m so pleased to be part of this effort connecting academic study with the arts as a topic, and with art in live theatrical performance. See you in NYC!

University of Toronto!

Hi all! Some news!

Starting now, I’ll be a (Visiting Assistant) Professor at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Geography and Planning. I’m on leave from Portland State University, as my partner got a job here in Toronto (UT-Scarborough: Arts, Culture and Media) and we decided to come and see what Canada has to offer.

In our first 48 hours here, Canada has offered us Greek food, a lot of rain, and very polite immigration officers.

I will miss my students and colleagues at the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning sorely, but I will be back to visit, continue archival research, sit on some graduate student committees, see friends, and swim in waterfalls.

This fall, I’ll be teaching an undergraduate class called Urban Planning Processes, and a graduate class called Planning Decision Methods. I look forward to learning a new city — its history and its systems — and meeting students with a different perspective.

If you’re in town, get in touch and we’ll go get dumplings!

Review: City Unsilenced

I got to review City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy, an edited volume on protest around the world in the last decade, centered on Urban Public Spaces, for the journal, Urban Studies.

“In response to austerity politics and market-based governance of urban land, large-scale social protest has erupted in the public spaces of cities across the globe. In City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (Routledge, 2017), editors Jeffrey Hou of UW-Seattle and Sabine Knierbein of SKuOR, Vienna – both scholars of the dynamics of public space –  have compiled the stories, strategies and theories derived from social movements in urban spaces since 2011. In this volume, the collected authors demonstrate how public spaces in cities operate as both the subject and object of civic unrest.”

Check out the full review here and let me know if you can’t get behind the paywall.

Quoted on racism in public space

I was quoted in Quartz magazine (online) regarding a recent spike of white people calling the cops on Black people in public spaces. (BTW, it’s the reporting that is new, not the bad behavior of white Americans.)

“Calling the police in these instances is about having “the power to say you don’t belong here,” says Naomi Adiv, a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, whose research explores power dynamics in public spaces. Adiv says that the issue of who is feared, and who is seen as having a “right” to be in a certain space, is deeply intertwined with race and the US history of segregation.”

In which I get to speak about my research to students! (Or, this is one of the best parts of my job.)

The Institute for Sustainable Solutions (ISS) Student fellows invited Dr. Jola Ajibade and I to speak to them at their monthly event.

What a wonderful and smart group of students! I say this without exaggeration — they were so engaged and thoughtful. Here are some photos of the event (credit: Maria Sipin).

Gotham center post by yours truly

The Gotham Center for New York City history published a bloggy version of some of my favorite research: a story about the conflict over whether or not it was ok to swim in New York City’s rivers, which went on for over six decades! Take a look here. Thanks, Gotham Blog!

I am famous.

I was quoted in  Oregon Business, in an article on luxury apartments.

Goodbye to the NEA?

I wrote this piece on the proposed defunding of the National Endowment for the Arts (and the NEH, and the CPB) for the online journal Arts and International Affairs. It talks about where the idea to defund came from, how its supporters spin it, and what the NEA was meant to be about at its outset.

You can read it here!

On being groped and staying quiet. Or, what kind of place an airplane can be.

I published this short personal essay in the academic journal, Gender, Place and Culture in response to a call for papers about the Women’s March. It’s about the 2016 presidential race, being groped on airplanes, and how particular kinds of spaces are used to keep women quiet.

This was a tricky one for me to publish, exposing moments of personal vulnerability in an academic setting. That said, I believe that a great part of our responsibility as scholars – especially in the social sciences – is to expose injustice; in this case, that means sharing my own story in the present political moment.

Thanks for reading. If this piece moves you to comment, I ask that you send along an email rather than posting below.

Thanks very much for reading.

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Fifty people can download the article for free, here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/yJ7TAQ9Fz9VKNSxV79pE/full

After that, if you have a hard time getting to it (paywall, etc.) let me know.

Here’s a pre-publication copy (for those of you who don’t need to cite.)