Last Sunday, Students and faculty from Urban Studies Department and Social Practice Queens Art Department at Queens College celebrated The Mobile Carts Project (Carritos) Urban Experiential Learning DIY Workshop and Performance at 2019 Loisaida Festival final celebration of the Research Project Interdisciplinary project Art against Displacement and Austerity.

On May 26^th 2019, Loisaida Center and Architect and Professor Nandini Bacghee team from the School of Architecture (CCNY) in collaboration with Professor Rafael de Balanzo and students from the Urban Studies Department (URBST732 Course Researching NYC) and Social Practice Queens from Art Department at Queens College ( CUNY), celebrated The Mobile Carts Project (Carritos) as an Urban Experiential Learning Workshop and Performance at 2019 Loisaida Festival for a co-participation process by mapping out the past challenges and connecting it to a future vision of the Lower East Side neighborhood where local community gardens, affordable housing, storefronts and cultural institutions continue to thrive against displacement and austerity.

The mobile carts were carrying sections of the map of Lower East Side neighborhood and part of urban studies 732 course student’s projects and were dispersed in the 2019 Loisaida Festival. Each of these carts are becoming a neighborhood resilient strategic vision plan database tool to collect people stories and record the memories of the struggle for self-determination in the neighborhood. The mobile carts, the eponymous symbol of an informal economy, will also register the potential threats to the commercial and institutional landscape of the city. The Mobile Carts (carritos) will be part of the next exhibit, Activist Estates: An Alternate History of Real Estate in Loisaida curated and designed by Nandini Bagchee in collaboration with the Loisaida Center in the fall of 2019.

Art against austerity/memories of disinvestment/pageantry of resistance Research Project:

Faculty: Greg Sholette, Scott Larson, Brian Rosa, Chloe Bass, Rafael de Balanzo, Jeff Kasper, Tarry Hum & Libertad Guerra, Director Loisaida Center

Students from Urban Studies and Art Department, Queens College: Constance Hosannah, Joaly Burgos, Cassildra Aguilera, Jacqueline Perrone, Aracelia Cook, Kevin Elder, Louis Lopez Naxielly Dominguez, Albarosa Abdellatif, Liz Durango, Naomi Kuo, Kim Torres, Ekaete Udoh and Aysha Gondal

Web site 732 urban studies course research projects: https://allforonepr.home.blog/

Loisaida Festival 2019 Mobile Carts  Urban Experiential Learning Workshop

Urban Studies Department Student Mobile Carts Do It Yourself Experiential Learning Performance 2019 Loisaida Festival

Web site 732 urban studies course research projects: https://allforonepr.home.blog/

Joaly Burgos, Cassildra Aguilera Students/Board Game: Envisioning a Puerto Rico by The People

This project focuses on the experience of Puerto Ricans that have been affected by Hurricane Maria that reside in Puerto Rico and in the United States. The project will allow Puerto Ricans to discuss the fragile infrastructure that Puerto Rico had in place prior to Hurricane allowing for each participant to provide feedback in a resilient community. The project and research will be facilitated through personal interviews, research around infrastructure for supportive services such as hospitals, schools, etc. that are currently up and running and the need for additional community supports. The end result will produce a model that replicates San Juan prompting participants to Envision a resilient Puerto Rico.

Constance Hosannah: The project a series of pictures and answers to these questions: Cities against displacement.

This project aims to give a platform to the young people of Puerto Rico, specifically millennials who will be most active in shaping Puerto Rico in the coming decades. The project is simple: Short, empathic interviews with people of Puerto Rican decent at Queens College. Students are asked where in Puerto Rico they have origins and how the hurricane effected them and their family, if at all. Finally, they are asked what the perceived problem(s) in Puerto Rico is/are to them with concern to the islands infrastructure and socio-economic needs. The project takes form into a colorful creative design, which will be a series of pictures and the answers to these questions. The project will be displayed on a bulletin board at the Loisada Festival.

J. Perrone, Aracelia Cook, K. Elder: Loiza and Lower East Side neighborhoods Creative Destruction Comparison

Our research project consists of three parts. The first part will be on the history of Puerto Rico. The second part will be on the community of Loiza in Peurto Rico after Hurricane Maria and how this community transformed a local baseball field and restaurant with the help of a few celebrities. The third part will summarize the past, present, and future of the Lower East Side and Puerto Rico. We will include our hands-on approach with the Lower East Side community in regards to, interviews, videos, vision board, and surveys. We will conclude our research by participating in the local Loisaida Parade on May 26, 2019, to bring public awareness to the land vacancies in the area with our research and collect more data from our surveys. The group intends to give this data to the Loisaida Center for public change. We hope to show the resiliency of the Lower Esat Side Community and Puerto Rico.

Urban Studies Department Student Mobile Carts Do It Yourself Experiential Learning Workshop 2019 Loisaida Festival