Design Justice Studio
A collaborative space where architects, artists, urban designers, and community leaders co-create equitable urban design solutions.
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Design Justice Studio benefits from the diverse talent, perspectives, and knowledge of the studio members who are engaged in true collaborative research, development, and execution of the mission and vision of
The Center for Transformative Urban Design.
We drive change by bringing together community members, architects, artists, urban designers, landscape architects, business leaders, researchers, educators, engineers, human/social service professionals, economists, policy experts, environmentalists, and others.
Design is a social not a physical construct. Our physical environment, the buildings that shelter us, the roads we travel, the parks we play in are all created by people. Therefore, design is not pure, it is a contributor to all the inequalities and injustices that society can and does inflict on each other. Throughout history design has been a tool for injustice.
“Improving the built environment doesn’t necessarily improve relations between neighbors or between communities and dehumanizing institutions.”
Jason Coburn, Cities for Life
In America the homestead act, redlining, the interstate highway system, racism in home lending, and suburban development are all systems and policies that have created spaces and places that are exclusive, inequitable and unjust. The built environment in our country was founded and built on injustice which continues to have a negative impact on everyone but disproportionately on indigenous and communities of color.
Space is the container that we all exist in. The spaces that we live in can have negative or positive impacts on everything that we do. Foucault said that the intersection of space, knowledge and power can be both oppressive and enabling.
Through radical imagination and transformative design, we help leaders create equitable cities that address spatial injustices, setting new standards for urban planning and development.
