Book chapter
Democracy as Demonstration: A Lifelong, Dreamed of, Home
Democracy as Creative Practice, pp 63-74
2025
Abstract
This chapter details the work of Writers Room, a university-community literary arts program at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and its process of research and design into affordable housing. The authors capture the history of relationships between neighbors and university students, faculty, and staff, and their determination to address concerns of unstable housing conditions including eviction, gentrification, and other forms of displacement. The resulting initiative is the Second Story Collective, an arts-based effort to build shared housing for seniors and students. The chapter is rendered in a polyvocal style, integrating voices of many participants in the Writers Room story into the text. The work of Writers Room and Second Story Collective has deep implications for the practice of democracy, as it allows for community members to build multiple forms of community wealth, counteracting patterns of long-standing spatial injustice.
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Details
- Title
- Democracy as Demonstration
- Creators
- Kirsten KaschockRachel Wenrick
- Contributors
- Tom Borrup (Editor)Andrew Zitcer (Editor)
- Publication Details
- Democracy as Creative Practice, pp 63-74
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Edition
- 1
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts and Sciences; English and Philosophy; Architecture, Design, and Urbanism
- Other Identifier
- 991021892015304721