My name is Aphrodite and I love cities, neighborhoods and urban life. This blog will reflect some of my ongoing journey as an urbanist. I will share experiences, thoughts, resources, research and questions from cities or metropolitan areas where I have lived, studied, worked or visited, including Milwaukee, Chicago, Washington DC, Athens, Thessaloniki, and now Vancouver.
This is why I call this blog Urban Aphrodite.
I cannot ignore the fact that for many the name brings to mind the mythical Greek goddess Aphrodite who is associated with love and beauty. (Story of my life.) I could write that, in a way, this blog is about love, beauty and relationships, because I love cities and I am interested in how we build strong communities and healthy relationships in urban areas. It turns out there is a lesser known aspect of this goddess that reflects the spirit of this blog more directly. It is worth sharing here so that more people are aware of this interpretation of her. Aphrodite Pandemos was worshiped for uniting people in civic harmony, into one social or political body of citizens. Pandemos translates to “of all the people”.
See Rachel Rosenzweig’s work for more on this:
Rosenzweig, Rachel (2004). Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
I am not an expert on Greek mythology, and that is not my focus, so that is all on the goddess Aphrodite for now.
Currently, as a graduate student at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in the Vancouver metropolitan region, I am researching the role of social infrastructure in community and urban resilience.
Before coming to Canada, I lived in Greece for several years. I launched Ashoka Greece, helping shape the emerging ecosystem around social innovation and entrepreneurship, and played a key role in the City of Thessaloniki joining the 100 Resilient Cities network and launching the country’s first long-range city resilience strategy. I have served as an expert practitioner in urban policy programs with city and community leaders from multiple cities in the U.S. and Europe.
On this blog, I plan to share resources and write about urban policy, city and community resilience, disaster risk reduction, social infrastructure, social innovation, alternative models of urban economic development, and futures thinking. I am also interested in how cities learn from each other or collaborate and how they impact national and international affairs.