NEW YORK, February 9, 2012—To celebrate the launch of its two new graduate programs focused on urban transformation, Parsons The New School for Design has organized In the Urban Crisis, a lecture series featuring leading voices shaping the global dialogue about city development. Organized by Miguel Robles-Duran, the series highlights core themes of the MS in Design and Urban Ecologies and MA in Theories of Urban Practice, both launching fall 2012, which explore the ways cities are shaped and reshaped through planning, public policy, development, and architecture.

In the Urban Crisis is a free public event series running at 6 p.m. on select Thursday evenings throughout the spring. Speakers include:

Frank Morales (Feb. 9), New York City housing activist
Paula Z. Segal (Feb. 23), a lawyer and activist collaborating on the Occupy Wall Street project #whoOWNSspace
Tom Angotti (March 1), professor in the Hunter College Department of Urban Affairs and Planning
Don Mitchell (March 8), distinguished professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University
Ana Méndez de Andés (March 29), a Madrid-based urban activist
Andrew Ross (April 5), a writer and professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University
Erik Swyngedouw (April 19), a professor of Geography at the University of Manchester's School of Environment and Development
Jeanne van Heeswijk (April 26), a Dutch artist and winner of Creative Time's 2011 Lenore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change
Pelin Tan (May 3), an Istanbul-based sociologist and art historian

All events will be held at 6 p.m. in the Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue, and is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit the SDS blog.

The first graduate program of its kind in the United States, the Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies, led by Robles-Duran, is a practice-oriented, studio-based program that trains students to become agents of change, working with the communities and institutions that shape cities. The Master of Arts in Theories of Urban Practice, led by Aseem Inam, is a research-driven program that reframes the study of urbanism and urban design as transformative practices that draw on an expanding body knowledge, research and action. Both are based in the School of Design Strategies (SDS) at Parsons, which encompasses programs that apply design thinking to study the intersection of cities, services and ecosystems. Together with the recently launched BS in Urban Design and BA in Urban Studies, the programs round out a New School curriculum dedicated to training tomorrow's urban leaders.