URBAN COLLOQUIUM I FALL 2025
This fall, the MS Design and Urban Ecologies’ Urban Colloquium I explores the urgent need to rethink our relationship to land. It examines how treating land solely as a commodity has failed most communities across the city, showing how concentrated control and rising housing costs have become root causes of the homelessness and housing crisis in New York City. This speaker series will bring together progressive policymakers, land defenders, and community members to share their stories of struggle and resilience. Through these conversations, guest and students will discuss strategies and tactics that challenge existing norms and build a shared vision for the just, inclusive city we all want to live in.
RECLAIMING A HUMANSCALE VERSION OF NEW YORK CITY.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025, 4:00 to 6:40pm
Room 601, New School University Center
63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Lynn Ellsworth is an economist, mother, New Yorker, and founder of Humanscale NYC, the Tribeca Trust, the Empire Station Coalition, the Citywide Land- use Coalition, and the Friends of Duane Park. She is on the advisory board of them historic preservation program at the University of Notre Dame and lives in Lower Manhattan. Ellsworth has a BA from Barnard, (economics) an MA from Columbia (international economics), and PhD (economics) fromUW-Madison.
Most of her professional life was working in the policy world of foreign aid working for Canada’s International Development Research Center as the social scientist for their West and North Africa office and then many years consulting for foundations, foreign aid organizations, USAID, and the World Bank. She specialized in economic development, urban development, and common property management. She also founded and built the first endowed grant-making non-governmental organization in Africa.
This lecture is a part of the Urban Colloquium I program Fall 2025.
