The year 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Architects’ Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) which was started to serve the planning and urban design needs of Harlem residents. It was formed by planners and architects to ensure residents were the ones shaping their community's future and was once led by J. Max Bond, former dean of the architecture school at City College. ARCH at Sixty: Bridging Past Visions with Present Realities uses several of ARCH’s projects—ARCH itself as a model for community design centers everywhere, its advocacy and organizing work on housing and tenant's rights, and visions for 125th Street that countered the plan for the State Office Building—as starting points for conversations about Harlem’s transformation physically and demographically amidst ongoing development, including the need for more affordable housing, and the fight for neighborhood autonomy.

Seumalu Elora Lee Raymond is an urban planner and assistant professor in the school of city and regional planning in the college of design at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is interested in the financialization of housing and property in land, displacement, and dispossession through housing systems, housing and disasters, housing justice, race, segregation, and the transnational Pacific Islander community. Raymond has explored widening housing wealth inequality following the real estate and financial crises of the 2000s, and the relationship between financialization of rental housing and eviction-led displacement. She has studied the effect of the foreclosure and affordability crises on Pacific Islander communities in Los Angeles, and the financialization of customary land in Samoa. Raymond has ongoing projects on housing, displacement and disasters, including work on eviction and migration following disasters. Raymond has testified before the House Committee on Ways and Means, the House Committee on Financial Services, and has presented for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s PD&R Quarterly. She has published articles in Human Progress in Geography, Urban Geography, Cityscape, JPER, Housing Studies, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Community and Economic Development Discussion Paper Series. Her research has been awarded best paper award from Housing Policy Debate, and best conference paper from the Journal of Urban Affairs. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, The Economist, Bloomberg’s Businessweek, NPR’s Morning Edition, ABC's Good Morning America, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Telemundo, Univision, the Samoa Observer, and Radio New Zealand, among other news outlets.

Shawn Rickenbacker is associate professor and director of the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures, at the City College of New York where he leads a multidisciplinary team of design researchers, professionals, and community members dedicated to identifying, and solving some of the unique challenges of urbanization. Previously he was Favrot Chair of Architecture at Tulane University, Gensler Distinguished Professor at Cornell University, and lead researcher at Futures Lab at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Rickenbacker is a published and award-winning designer, entrepreneur, and educator in the design, technology, and real estate fields. His work concentrates on the research, design, and use of urban data to facilitate the development of more equitable and just environments that productively enhance human and social interaction and advancement. Rickenbacker earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Syracuse University School of Architecture and his master’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia School of Architecture.

Lizzie MacWillie is an architect, registered in Texas and New York, an interdisciplinary artist, and an urban designer. She is currently the assistant director of the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures at the City College of New York. MacWillie was previously a director at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP ([bc]), a nonprofit architecture and planning firm, where she also oversaw the Dallas office. Before joining [bc], MacWillie was a part of OMA/AMO in Rotterdam where she was an editor of The Elements of Architecture (Marsilio, 2014). She has taught at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Arlington, and the Boston Architectural College. She received a master’s of architecture in urban design and a master’s of design studies in art, design, and the public domain from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a bachelor’s of architecture from Carnegie Mellon University. MacWillie serves as project manager for this effort.

Jesse McCormick is a designer, researcher, and educator in New York where he is faculty at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York. His research has been shown at the Istanbul Design Biennale, Oslo Architecture Triennale, and Storefront for Art and Architecture, among others. As a designer, he has built work in the United States and Mexico. He received a master’s of architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. McCormick supports research and content development for this project.

The J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures is a City College of New York (CCNY) Applied Research Center within the Spitzer School of Architecture in Harlem. Building on the legacy of architect and activist J. Max Bond, Jr.—dean of the CCNY School of Architecture 1985–92—the Bond Center aspires to create equitable and just urban futures that foster individual and communal success, in Harlem and beyond. Working towards a just future means confronting existing inequity in the built environment that has resulted from numerous intersecting injustices. The complexity of these challenges necessitates that Bond Center staff, faculty, students, and affiliates forge close community partnerships and cross-disciplinary collaborations. What results are actionable and scalable innovations designed to ensure successful urban futures for all. The Center has existed in its current iteration since 2011. Before then it was known as the City College Architecture Center, which was founded in 1995.