Episode 024: Ridhi D'Cruz - Repairing the City's Social Fabric

In this episode we dive into the social aspects of using design to repair the fragmented social fabric of the urban landscape. The City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon has been working for a quarter century on making places within the city that help to bring together communities and establish new rituals and celebrations around community empowerment. The results are beautiful and artistic public spaces woven throughout the city, created by residents, and a change in the feel and functionality of neighborhoods towards safer and more cohesive communities. Rhidi explains how the qualities of the village are being brought back into a city grid that was designed for the extraction of capital and not the encouragement of life and health of communities. Ridhi's links: https://cityrepair.org/ https://oregonhumanities.org/programs/conversation-project/catalog/exploring-power-and-privilege-with-courage-creativity-and-compassion/ Ridhi full bio: Ridhi D’Cruz is a placemaking consultant, sociocultural anthropologist, and permaculture educator living in Portland. They work to foster place-based empowerment within diverse communities, including people facing housing insecurity and governmental agencies, by drawing on diversity, equity, and inclusion, cultural sustainability, social permaculture, and placemaking and asset-based community development. They also enthusiastically participate in life affirming practices involving urban wildcrafting, plant medicine, natural building, and participatory technology. Ridhi is currently a co-executive director of City Repair Project, a grassroots placemaking nonprofit organizations in Portland.