September 25, 2022  

After World War II, President Truman signed the 1949 Housing Act, which authorized the demolition and reconstruction of urban neighborhoods that were considered slums. This policy — quote unquote “redevelopment” — specifically targeted neighborhoods that were low income and not-white. In the 1960s, the Fillmore became a focus of San Francisco’s urban renewal, one of the largest projects of its kind on the West Coast. It impacted nearly 20,000 people. And by the time new housing and storefronts were finally completed in the 1980s, most of the former Fillmore residents couldn't afford to move back in.

We see its legacy today in the chronic number of people living on the streets, and in controversies over housing development projects like Plaza East in the Western Addition, and the plan to replace its 193 units of public housing with a larger 755-apartment, mixed-income complex. Is there too much focus on how to build more buildings, and not enough on how to create thriving and resilient communities?

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect specializing in community-led design and sustainable architecture, and Managing Director at Mumbai-based Community Design Agency, which works alongside communities on the margins, addressing cultural and societal inequalities through the built environment through building trust, participatory planning, community-led action, and human-centered design.

 In this conversation with Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, they talk about innovations in housing and community building, and what we in the housing-crunched Bay Area can learn from her inspiring work in India. 

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give.   

About the Guest 

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect with 12 years of experience in community-led design and sustainable architecture. Managing Director at Community Design Agency, she is working with a diverse group of disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers to address inequities in the built environment. Licensed and educated in India, Sandhya is also a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a TEDIndia Fellow. Her previous work spans multiple countries, in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors – including landscape architecture and design for a Singapore-based interdisciplinary design firm, and post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti for a US Based non-profit. 

About the Moderator 

The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.    

About  The  Forum  

The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.  gracecathedral.org/the-forum.