COLLAB with Pro-Homes CT: Walk Audit of New London Housing
Hosted By
This event is part of "We Live Here New London," an exhibit examining the history and present-day realities of the housing crisis in America, presented by Connecticut College and the Center for Housing Opportunity Eastern Connecticut.
Speakers
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Pete Harrison Connecticut Director
Regional Plan Association
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Nick Kantor Director
Pro-Homes Connecticut
Pete Harrison, Connecticut Director, Regional Plan Assocation
Pete Harrison joined Regional Plan Association in February 2022 as the DesegregateCT Director, leading a statewide program to enact equitable and sustainable land use policies in Connecticut. In 2024 he became RPA’s director of Connecticut programs. Pete previously served for a year as Senior Policy Fellow for DesegregateCT crafting the 80-member coalition’s policy briefs, communications strategy, and local organizing campaigns and helped pass the first statewide zoning reform bill in over 30 years.
Prior to joining DesegregateCT, Pete worked on the intersection of housing, climate, and land use policy as a research scholar for the Buell Center of Architecture at Columbia University. He co-authored a portion of the textbook Green Reconstruction: A Curricular Toolkit for the Built Environment laying out a framework for graduate-level planning, architecture, and preservation programs to center equity and sustainability in their practices. Before that he was the senior national housing advisor for the progressive think tank, Data for Progress, where he co-authored briefs and articles on federal housing and land use policy including the Homes for All report. He also advised on the presidential campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro.
Pete has extensive political campaign experience, both as a former congressional candidate, and as a volunteer for multiple candidates including Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and New York State Senator Julia Salazar. He spent over a decade as a local housing organizer in and around New York City.
Pete grew up in Avon, CT and holds a BA in history from the College of the Holy Cross and an MUP from Columbia University. He also teaches at the City University of New York.
Nick Kantor, Director, Pro-Homes Connecticut
Anna Vallye is a scholar of modern architecture and urban planning. She is especially interested in how twentieth-century regimes of political administration and governance in Europe and America influenced the professional identities of architects and planners, their work, and the organization of the urban environment. Vallye is currently at work on a book titled Model Territories: German Architects and the Shaping of America’s Welfare State, about the American careers of émigré architects Walter Gropius, Martin Wagner, and Ludwig Hilberseimer, and their contributions to urban planning.
Hosted in partnership with
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Connecticut College
Connecticut College educates students to put the liberal arts into action as citizens in a global society. The College promotes an understanding of local, regional, national, and international peoples, groups, cultures, and issues, and encourages students to take a life-long interest in them.
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Pro-Homes Connecticut
We are a pro-homes coalition of neighbors and nonprofits fighting for better land use laws so our state is more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable
