Keynote: Liz Ogbu - Re-inventing Portland: Parks, Public Space, Memory, and Justice

CM | 1

Over the last year, the City of Portland was a national epicenter for protests against Portland's, Oregon's, and America's deeply rooted racism. From marches to street theater to murals, downtown has become a stage and a canvas filled with calls for meaningful change. But as protests brought our public spaces to life in profound new ways, the downtown is struggling as never before—from the pandemic; vandalism; and the growing humanitarian crises of addiction, mental illness, and houselessness. A designer, urbanist, and spatial justice activist, Liz Ogbu is an expert on engaging and transforming unjust urban environments. She invites us, "to examine the spatial and emotional wounds of the places we inhabit and how we might move towards repair." Her multidisciplinary design and innovation practice, Studio O, works on a wide array of initiatives from designing shelters for immigrant day laborers to developing a Social Impact Protocol for housing initiatives in 44 states. “Justice has a geography," Liz said in a recent talk, Design in the Apocalypse. "The equitable distribution of access, services, and opportunities is a basic human right.” This presentation is brought in partnership with the Portland Parks Foundation.

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