Modeling Alternatives: A conversation with Candace Borders and Sarah Rose

Modeling Alternatives brings together historian Candace Borders (Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Humanities) and community-based developer Sarah Rose to discuss the past, present, and future of social housing in the city of St. Louis. Borders will speak to her dissertation research on Black women’s activism for public housing in mid-20th century St. Louis. Rose will draw on her own experience developing housing in St. Louis to describe how affordability is produced and maintained in the present. Together, the panelists will put forward ideas for social housing which overcome the narrow focus on prominent failures and draw lessons from the deep history of local tenant-led housing activism.

This event takes place on the opening night of Counterplanning from St. Louis, an exhibition on how housing affordability shapes, and is shaped by, construction practices. This event and affiliated exhibition is made possible by the James Harrison Steedman Fellowship in Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis, and AIA St. Louis.