Robert Beckley
Architect/Planner/Educator/Policy Maker
Ann Arbor, U.S.

Link: Gennessee Institute Website
Link: Flint Gallery
Link: Midwess Distress Journal
Link: "Flint Michigan and the Cowboy Economy: Deconstructing Flint"

Submission: From “Sheltering America’s Have-Nots”

In many countries, squatting on property belonging to someone else is a common strategy for appropriating space and shelter. It is not so common in the U.S. but it does occur. Flint, Michigan has thousands of abandoned properties and generates its own supply of stories regarding squatting. Winters in Flint are cold and dark. Heat and light are seen as qualities as essential as keeping out the rain and snow. Not uncommon is a boarded up house with a partially hidden extension cord reaching from the basement of an “unoccupied” house to a neighbor’s that is “occupied” and paying the utilities for both. Some squatters have the temerity to call the local utility to have the power turned on under another’s name. Sometimes that “other” is a government body that assumed the property through tax foreclosure. Abandoned properties can also provide shelter for small business opportunities. A tale, true, is of a house occupied by an elderly male that was “invaded” and taken over by a family of thugs who used the house not only as shelter but as an address for drug dealing and prostitution.



Bio:

Bob Beckley serves as a planning consultant to the Genesee County Land Bank and as Executive Vice President of the Genesee Institute in Flint, Michigan. The Institute is a 501(c)(3) corporation that provides planning, technical assistance and research fellowships related to urban revitalization.

He is Dean and Professor Emeritus of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Bob retired from teaching and academic administration in June 2002 to devote full time to consulting in architecture, urban design and planning and his own writing and photography projects.

Beckley was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended the University of Cincinnati and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior to moving to Michigan in 1987 to take the position of Dean, he taught and served as Chair and Acting Dean in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a program he helped establish in 1969.

In 1980 Beckley founded the firm Beckley/Myers Architects with colleague Sherrill Myers. Under Beckley’s direction the firm completed urban design plans for the Milwaukee RiverWalk, the Milwaukee Theater District and the Bellevue Downtown Park in Bellevue Washington as well as numerous architectural commissions. Beckley left the firm in 1992 to devote full time to academic administration.

Since stepping down as Dean in 1997, after ten years of service, Beckley resumed his professional activity. He has participated in designs for a downtown park in Lake Oswego, OR and the development of urban design guidelines for the State Street Redevelopment Project in Ann Arbor, MI.

Beckley was made a fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1985 and the Urban Design Institute in 1990. His service includes time as both President and Treasurer of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and an officer on the National Architectural Accrediting Board. He has worked on research grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Transportation. He also served as Urban Research Scientist while at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has received recognition and awards for design, research and service from the NEA, Progressive Architecture Magazine, the American Institute of Architects, the City of Milwaukee and the Urban Land Institute as well as the Graham Foundation.



"GM in Flint, Michigan. 1980s: 80,000 employees. 2006: 20,000"
Ed Iwata, “Plant closure a blow to Flint, Mich.,” USATODAY.com, November 22, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-11-22-gm-flint-usat_x.htm (accessed July 15, 2006).