Join us for the Architects' Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) @ 60: Bridging Past Visions and Current Reality keynote lecture, "Race, Gentrification and the Financialization of Housing", by Dr. Seumalu Elora Lee Raymond, Director, Ph.D. Program and Assistant Professor of City & Regional Planning at Georgia Institute of Technology, with a response from Moses Gates, Vice President for Housing and Neighborhood Planning at the Regional Plan Association.

About the speakers:

Dr. Seumalu Elora Raymond is an urban planner and Associate Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning in the College of Design at Georgia Tech. She is interested in the financialization of housing and property in land, displacement and dispossession through housing systems, housing and disasters, and housing justice. Dr. Raymond has explored widening housing wealth inequality following the real estate and financial crises of the 2000s, and the relationship between financialization of rental housing and eviction-led displacement. Dr. Raymond has ongoing projects on housing, displacement and disasters, including work on eviction and migration following disasters.

Dr. Raymond has testified before the House Committee on Ways and Means, the House Committee on Financial Services, and has presented for HUD’s PD&R Quarterly. She has published articles in Human Progress in Geography, Urban Geography, Cityscape, JPER, Housing Studies, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Community and Economic Development Discussion Paper Series. Her research has been awarded Best Paper Award from Housing Policy Debate, and Best Conference Paper from the Journal of Urban Affairs. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the Economist, Bloomberg’s Businessweek, NPR’s Morning Edition, ABC's Good Morning America, Telemundo, Univision, and Radio New Zealand, among other news outlets.

Moses Gates is Regional Plan Association's Vice President for Housing and Neighborhood Planning, leading the organization’s planning, research and advocacy efforts in affordable housing, economic development, and urban design. He also leads RPA’s efforts to build international partnerships.

Since joining RPA in 2016, Moses has led RPA’s recommendations on affordability, economic development, and livable neighborhoods for the Fourth Regional Plan and authored or overseen several reports on housing policy and neighborhood planning. Prior to joining RPA, Moses was director of planning and community development for the Association for Neighborhood Housing Development, where he initiated New York City’s first Community Development Fellowship program.

Moses also has worked for New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, as a nonprofit affordable housing developer, as a licensed New York City tour guide, and as a visiting assistant professor at the Pratt Institute. He serves as vice president of the board of directors for Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City. He has a master’s of urban planning from Hunter College, a bachelor’s in history from the University of Wisconsin, and is the author of the memoir ​“Hidden Cities” (Tarcher/Perigee 2013).

About the symposium:

2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Architects’ Renewal Committee in Harlem which was started to serve the planning and urban design needs of Harlem residents. It was formed by planners and architects to ensure residents were the ones shaping their community's future and was once led by J Max Bond, former dean of the architecture school at City College. ARCH at Sixty will use several of ARCH’s projects - ARCH itself as a model for community design centers everywhere, its advocacy and organizing work on housing and tenant's rights, and visions for 125th Street that countered the plan for the State Office Building - as starting points for conversations about Harlem’s transformation physically and demographically amidst ongoing development, including the need for more affordable housing, and the fight for neighborhood autonomy.

This event is supported by funding from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the West Harlem Development Corporation.

This event is co-organized and sponsored by the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures at City University of New York; New York Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (nycoba|NOMA); AIANY Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Join us on Saturday, November 16th, for a full day of discussion on ARCH's legacy - to register for Saturday, please use this link.