What didn't kill us made us stronger

In 2005, Mindy Fullilove’s book “Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It” came out. It included in its examination the rending of the lower Hill District in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

She describes root shock as “the traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or part of one’s emotional ecosystems.”

Her analysis of the depth and breadth of the toll of such destruction is sobering.

This dynamic and moving writer and speaker — a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at at Columbia University — comes to Pittsburgh with a bit of regularity, for which we are lucky.  She will be here June 18 to speak at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, 980 Liberty Ave.,  Downtown.

Her 6p lecture, soonsored by The Design Center, is titled “The Meaning of Things: Pittsburgh’s 21st Century Triumph Over 20th Century Urban Renewal.”

There is a segment early in “Root Shock” that sticks with me, about how your feet find the short-cut you always used to take to a friend’s house: “The cues from place dive under conscious thought and awaken our sinews and bones...” She wrote that the buildings and streets of our places are not independent of us but rather like our Siamese twins and that our emotions flow through them.

Admission to the lecture is free, but you call or email to reserve your chair — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 412.391.4144..

The event is being co-sponsored by GTECH Strategies, the Hill District Community Development Corp., the Hill HouseAssociation, the Kingsley Association, Leadership Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, Pop City, the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development, the Remaking Cities Institute, Sustainable Pittsburgh, the University Center for Social Urban Research, the University of Pittsburgh’s’ Graduate School of Public Health, the Urban Redevelopment Authority and Vibrant Pittsburgh.