The MAS Survey on Livability – Thu. 10/21, 9:50am

Mary W. Rowe has recently returned to the northeast after several years working in the philanthropy, most recently coordinating the New Orleans Institute for Resilience and Innovation, a loose alliance of initiatives that emerged in response to the systemic collapses of 2005. Her initial engagement was as part of a fellowship awarded to her by the blue moon fund of Charlottesville, Virginia, to focus on self-organization in cities as the underpinning of urban and regional social, economic and environmental resilience. With the support of the fund, Mary developed a community investment program to support various self-organizing initiatives that crossed race, class, neighborhoods and sectors.

New Orleans and its region are addressing challenges and opportunities common to cities around the continent and beyond, where urban practitioners are building communities of practice in resilience across the country. Her work in New Orleans included supporting a broad array of local, connected initiatives that include building the local economy, creating more open governance and data collection and sharing, fostering entrepreneurship, creating a culture of planning that supports transparent decision making and land-use, the emerging role of social media, and creating peer-to-peer learning in the emerging civil society-led innovation in the Region. As Director of the Urban Program at blue moon, Mary also oversaw investments in holistic community revitalization in other cities, including Common Ground’s pioneering work in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Earlier this year Mary was awarded a Bellagio residency from the Rockefeller Foundation, to develop her writing on self-organization in cities and in October 2010 she became associated with MAS as Urban Fellow. She is a contributor to several volumes on urban life, most recently having written the Epilogue to What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs (New Village Press). Prior to joining the blue moon fun, Mary coordinated a variety of multi-stakeholder projects in Canada and the US, including Ideas that Matter, a convening and publishing program based on the work of Jane Jacobs.