Healthy Cities Series - Multidisciplinary and Multi-Sector Approaches to Urbanism Design and Development
The development of scalable and sustainable housing in the rapidly urbanizing context in East Africa presents multiple challenges, including construction material supply, skilled labor, financing and affordability, environmental impact, policy and legal considerations, and planning and design. The Urban Development webinar session for the Healthy Cities series will focus on two multidisciplinary practitioners' work developing design innovations to address critical issues of sustainable urban development.
Both presenters have backgrounds in architecture and urban planning and policy and have worked across the public, private, non-profit, and institutional sectors. Fatou Dieye will share her work and experiences across the multiple systems and stakeholders required to produce quality affordable housing and promote sustainable models for local construction and development. Justin Moore will share examples of affordable housing design and policies from the United States and his social enterprise Urban Patch's recent adaptation of existing policies and design practices to building mixed-income housing in Rwanda. The conversation will also explore the potential for the replicability and scalability of new development approaches to varied urban contexts.
Panelist Bio
Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist and is the program officer at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He has extensive planning and design experience-from regional and urban systems, policies, and projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design, public realm, and arts initiatives. His work spans housing and community development, place and open space design, historic preservation, public art and monuments, and civic engagement. He is also the co-founder of Urban Patch; a social enterprise focused on sustainable design and development projects in the United States and Rwanda.
Justin holds a Bachelor of Design from the University of Florida and a Master of Architecture and a Master of Science in Urban Design from Columbia University, where he is now an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture. Justin has also taught at Morgan State University, Tuskegee University, the Yale School of Architecture, and the Dark Matter University network. His professional affiliations include the American Planning Association’s AICP Commission, the National Organization of Minority Architects, and the Urban Design Forum. He is one of the founding board members of the Black urbanist collective BlackSpace and serves on the boards of ioby.org, the Youth Design Center, and has served on advisory boards for Columbia World Projects, the Van Alen Institute, MoMA, and Dumbarton Oaks.
Consultant, Affordable Housing and Urbanization Specialist
Fatou is an architecture, urban design and sustainability management consultant based in Kigali, Rwanda. She was previously the Managing Director of Skat Consulting’s offices in Rwanda, Burundi and DRC Congo, responsible for the implementation of the Swiss Cooperation’s construction industry transformation program for Africa’s Great Lakes Region. The program introduces affordable construction systems to the region’s fast-growing urban agglomerations and facilitates the construction industry’s shift to environment-friendly production of durable building materials for the mass supply of affordable urban houses. Prior to joining Skat, Fatou was team leader for the Affordable Housing and Neighborhood Development Unit at the City of Kigali’s Office of Urban Planning and Construction.
Fatou holds degrees in architecture, urban planning, and sustainability management from Princeton and Columbia Universities.