Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I go by Nana Andoh (Nah-Nah Awn-doh). I’m originally from Ghana. I moved to Brooklyn as a teenager, so that’s where I did my high school years, and then went to college at Notre Dame and did architecture. I worked for quite a while, then went back [to Notre Dame] for my master’s. I wanted to get into policy, so I came to U-M for my Ph.D., and now I am here. I have three kids who take up most of my time, but I also enjoy what I like to call “being in manicured nature,” which is a fancy way of saying a golf course — being able to go out and golf and do something fun and active.
Why did you transition away from architecture?
With my classical training at Notre Dame, you come out working for high-end firms, designing fancy estates and golf courses — really beautiful, expensive stuff. With the financial crisis of 2008, I just realized that what I had been working on either contributed to that, or [it] opened my eyes to the inequity of things. That made me start to volunteer with community design centers and go to neighborhoods to listen to issues and start to advocate. It dawned on me that policy dictates how we build, and how we build dictates how we live. I wanted to understand the policy side of things, which made me come back for the Ph.D.
What interests you about urban studies and policy?
When you look around what I call the “built environment,” policy dictates everything. When you wake up and take a bus to school, or drive, or walk, policy dictates the distribution of buildings to create our built environment, right? What I realized is that people who are in marginalized communities or live in poverty are not being advocated for as much when it comes to policy. The built environment doesn’t really help sustain them, or it’s not of the best quality, if you will. So I really got into policy to understand how to better advocate for people who are not being advocated for and bring their stories to light, so that people who maybe read my work can realize that we are overlooking that segment of the population and that we need to create better policies to improve their quality of life.
What made you want to teach?
I think most people want to have some impact. If I go into an office or work as a consultant, my impact is project-specific, place-specific. Still, if I'm able to pass down knowledge to 20 students per class over the course of however many years, that impact is amplified. And this, to me, is work that needs to be amplified. Being able to teach and pass that knowledge — and hopefully that motivation and passion — down to students will resonate more and have a bigger impact than just me with my knowledge working on projects.
What’s your vision for urban studies within DAAS?
When you look at the demographics, the people who are most impacted by policies not necessarily designed for them tend to be people of color, especially in this country. For example, “Single-Family Zoning.” These are zoning laws that restrict the types of residences allowed to be built to detached, single-family homes on relatively large lots, and prohibit multi-family housing such as duplexes or apartment buildings. These zoning laws were historically used — and still function — to exclude low-income households and racial minorities. So, having students in DAAS understand the process by which these environments come into existence, and having the knowledge and vocabulary to advocate for themselves, depending on what industry they go into, that’s what I see my role here as. To shed some light on what we see around us and gain that critical knowledge and voice to be able to advocate for positive change.
What do you hope to accomplish here?
I hope to make an impact with regard to students I encounter going on to do really impactful work, or being able to generate some kind of publication that resonates enough to make a positive impact. As an academic, you are doing research and publishing, but your audience is much smaller than, say, a practitioner who is doing the actual work on the ground. So what we hope for is that our work goes outside of our academic circles and into practitioners’ hands or policy-makers’ hands, and then that is able to make a positive impact.
As an urban studies scholar, what is your favorite city?
My favorite city is Malmö, Sweden. This was once a declining port city in the 1980s, until local leaders reimagined the city with investments in education, sustainable infrastructure, and urban design. While it does have issues of social and spatial inequality, the city of Malmö continues to work on socially progressive and transformative policies, such as the inclusion and integration of the migrant populations into comprehensive city plans. My visit to Malmö in 2016 was eye-opening and continues to serve as a great example of what is possible in countless other places, if there is the political will to create a more just and inclusive society.
