Healthy Cities: How our homes and neighborhoods support individual and community health across generations
Thank you to everyone who attended our online forum on April 11, 2024! The recording of this live conversation has been published as an At Home, On Air podcast episode.
Enjoy listening to the conversation, and please share! You may find us by searching for ‘At Home, On Air’ wherever you listen to podcasts.
“I was studying urban renewal and came up with this idea of ‘Root Shock’ … the ways in which losing one’s home and neighborhood reverberate through a community, through one’s life, through generations.”
– Dr. Mindy Fullilove
Thank You to Our Featured Guest: Dr. Mindy Fullilove, MD | Writer, Social Psychiatrist, Professor at The New School
Thank You to Our Forum Host: Susanne Stadler, Architect & the Executive Director of At Home With Growing Older
Conversation Details:
Renowned psychiatrist Dr. Mindy Fullilove has dedicated her long academic career to the intricate human relationship to place and the health effects on individuals and communities resulting from displacement or uprooting. Soon to retire, Dr. Fullilove is set to stay in her long-term home and about to embark on a one-year project, excavating, cataloging and clearing collections and memorabilia accumulated by six generations.
During this podcast episode, we discuss:
- The psychology of place
- The role of neighborhoods in our individual health
- Generational knowledge
- The power of individuals to improve public places
- Memories of place
- Dr. Fullilove’s book, Urban Alchemy
- And, being at home with growing older!
Watch Dr. Fullilove’s TEDx MidAtlantic Talk: How we start envisioning a future where all of us live as equals
More About Dr. Fullilove:
Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, is a writer and social psychiatrist who studies cities. She works on displacement, urban mental health, and collective consciousness. Her work is the subject of feature articles, including the 2015 New York Times “The Town Shrink,” and she herself has published more than a hundred scientific papers and eight books – including Root Shock, How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, And What We Can Do About It. She also teaches a course, which draws on Root Shock, with The New School in New York.
Dr. Fullilove has been given numerous awards for her work, including two honorary degrees, and was elected to honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects in 2016 and Life Fellowship in the American Psychiatric Association in 2018.
Takeaway Resources:
- Dr. Fullilove’s books: Urban Alchemy and Root Shock
- A New England Journal of Medicine article on how place relates to mental & physical health: Excess Mortality in Harlem, by Colin McCord, M.D., and Harold P. Freeman, M.D
- Dr. Fullilove’s article, Psychology of urban neighborhoods, which features French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart and shares: “When we move in a way we’re not allowed, we learn something new.”
- Recommended by Dr. Fullilove is a book by Thomas W. Hanchett, Sorting Out the New South City, Second Edition: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875–1975
- On school violence in East New York, What Did Ian Tell God?
- From the discussion leading up to Dr. Fullilove’s year-long emergent project, A Year in the Closet, the Attic and the Basement: When undertaking a project, a few suggestions are to journal, take photos, talk to lots of people … and ask lots of questions!
- Dr. Fullilove’s project, The CLIMB Chronicles: City Life Is Moving Bodies
- How to talk so teens will listen, and how to listen so teens will talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
- Priya Parker’s book, Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
- How to support & be there for isolated community members: “Chain letters are so powerful, and getting mail in rural, isolated communities can be such a lifeline!” – At Home, On Air participant
- Clare Marcus Cooper’s books, Housing As If People Mattered and House As a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home
- AHWGO’s resource letter Something to Write Home About
- AHWGO selected materials around the season topic of, Exploring Healthy Aging in the Places We Call Home: From a Piece of Nature to Our Bodies
- Listen to our previous conversation with Dr. Michael Smyer, From Anxiety to Action
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The original, live conversation was recorded on:
Thursday, April 11, 2024 at 5:30 PM PST.