Lecture: The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York and Its Art Commission

10:41 AM EDT on August 12, 2007

Who keeps the City beautiful? Who decides what the municipal built environment should look like, what belongs where, and what the city's public realm should mean? This lecture illuminates these issues through examination of the activities of the Art Commission of the City of New York — the city's official design review board — past and present.

Aaron Donovan

Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.

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