87 | Experiments in Resilience Amid the Backloop

Stephanie Wakefield is an Urban Studies Foundation Research Fellow at Florida International University in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies. Her work, developed over the past decade of teaching and research in New York City, explores the diverse practices and technologies of resilient urbanism as both technical phenomenon and catalysts of new kinds of life in the Anthropocene.

Her upcoming book, Living in the Back Loop: Experimentation in Unsafe Operating Space, explores the transformative possibilities offered by the ‘back loop’ and urban experimentation as a mode of dwelling within it. She is also working on a second project titled Miami Forever: Urbanism in the Back Loop, investigating experimental practices for living with water in Miami, Florida and through this the potential emergence of a new paradigm of ‘back loop urbanism.’

She publishes her work in academic journals including Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, and Geography Compass, and in popular and artistic venues such as Brooklyn Rail, Miami New Times, and May.

Before relocating to Miami, she taught Urban Studies and Environmental Studies as Visiting Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at The New School and Instructor at Queens College, and was the founder of resilience network located in Queens which included a regional farm share and skills workshops including fire making, water purification, disaster response, computer security, and pickling.

We were able to speak with Ms. Wakefield on Social Design Insights, where she offered an optimistic vision of an experimental future.