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Regents’ Lecturer Sees Unity of Purpose Among Planners and Artists

Urban planning can seem bureaucratic and risk-averse — seemingly closed off to experimentation and imagination. “But I believe that planners have a lot of creativity,” said UC Regents’ lecturer Mallory Rukhsana Nezam during a Feb. 21 presentation in the Grand Salon of Kerckhoff Hall. “I always find that planners are the most excited about their arts and culture work,” Nezam said. She has worked with many planners who are driven toward social causes and social change. “And artists are also drawn to that. So, there’s an overlap of values there.” In her consulting practice, Justice + Joy, Nezam seeks to de-silo the way cities are run and build models for interdisciplinary collaboration. “What planners are actually doing is work that pertains to a built environment, and I think that’s really ripe for this intersection with arts and culture,” she said during a presentation that included a lively Q&A session with Professor Chris Tilly of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning and audience members. Nezam’s presentation was organized around reimagining planning in three ways — structural, process and spatial. Citing examples from across the country, she outlined ways in which city planners are incorporating artists into government, including a growing number of artists-in-residence. “These residencies are embedding artists deeply as co-creators and problem-solvers,” she said. “We’re not talking about artists just painting murals, we’re actually talking about artists being at the table when we’re discussing policy.” She expressed optimism about approaches that reward innovation. “We have to imagine something different — imagine a world we haven’t created yet. And that’s where this creative, radical imagination of arts and culture can come in.”

Download an audio recording or view photos on Flickr.

Mallory Nezam Regents' Lecture

 

UCLA Hosts Its Largest Activist-in-Residence Cohort Five advocates for social change will be on campus through May to ‘turn the university inside out’

By Les Dunseith

The UCLA Activist-in-Residence program welcomed five more changemakers — the largest cohort in the program’s seven-year history — to campus with a reception Jan. 24 at DeCafe in Perloff Hall.

The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, which has selected at least one activist since 2017, is hosting community organizer Ron Collins II and revolutionary writer Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia during this academic year. 

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center, also a longtime participant in the program, is hosting writer and social justice educator Shengxiao “Sole” Yu

In its second year with the Activist-in-Residence program, cityLAB-UCLA is hosting Robert A. Clarke, a designer and educator practicing at the intersection of culture, identity and architecture. 

A new addition to the program for 2024 is the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center, which is hosting Narges Zagub B.A. Anthropology ’20, a movement worker and facilitator.

Opening remarks for the reception were provided by UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy, who created the residency program soon after arriving at UCLA as the director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

She conceptualized the program as a sabbatical for participants, allowing them time and space to reflect, envision new projects, and connect with UCLA faculty, students and staff. 

“More than ever, I am reminded, in these difficult times, that the residency is our effort to turn the university inside out,” Roy told the crowd. “At the Institute, we organize knowledge within, against and beyond the university. The Activist-in-Residence program brings to the university the movement scholars and public intellectuals who are teachers and guides for this praxis.”

Roy and other representatives of the four UCLA sponsors then introduced the individual activists, each of whom spoke briefly about their previous experiences and their plans for the next few months. 

The first activist to speak this year was Gray-Garcia, who is a formerly unhoused and incarcerated poverty scholar who prefers to keep their face covered in public. Their rousing remarks were presented in the form of spoken word poetry.

The next activist to speak was Collins, a native of South Los Angeles who is has experience as a social justice strategist and movement builder. Collins’ work advances racial and social justice with a particular focus on Black, LGBTQ and environmental justice issues.

Yu is the creator of Nectar, an online space where she provides political education and healing justice workshops. She spoke of her efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation, particularly when it targets the Chinese-speaking community such as. harmful narratives attacking affirmative action and Black-on-Asian crime tropes during the COVID pandemic.

In his work with cityLAB-UCLA, Clarke said he aims to further efforts to canonize Black aesthetics, helping to authenticate it as a lens through which to practice architecture. Clarke is co-founder of a design practice that explores ways to unearth new aesthetics specific to African American culture, experience and identity.

Narges is a UCLA alumna who gained experience in student and community organizing as an active member of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Their background as a Muslim, queer person from an immigrant family from Libya has helped shape their understanding of community. Narges has worked as a trainer and coach for the California Conference for Equality and Justice. 

Find out more about this year’s activists and their plans.

View photos from the reception on Flickr.

Activists-in-Residence 2024

Building Youth Power to Influence Policy

UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Veronica Terriquez and UCLA undergraduate Kahlila Williams wrote a Stanford Social Innovation Review article on the importance of supporting youth who are joining together to work for a more equitable future. The number of youth-organizing groups in California grew from 10 to 15 in 2010 to 171 by 2019, in part due to heightened engagement from undocumented youth and the Movement for Black Lives, the authors write. This mobilization led to calls for change that included a campaign to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, which Williams participated in as a leader in the Students Deserve group. In addition, massive voter registration and education campaigns contributed to a near tripling of youth voter turnout between 2014 and the 2018 midterm elections. “By embedding young people in relationships and activities that help them constructively respond to hardships and trauma, youth organizing can channel their energy toward building a multiracial democracy,” the authors write.


 

Climate Expert Puts the Blame on Consumer Culture in Regents’ Lecture 

Efforts to move to green technology and sustainable policies don’t stand a chance against climate change as long as one key element continues to be ignored: “We are overproducing and we are overconsuming,” said author and climate justice expert Denise Fairchild during a Feb. 2 Regents’ Lecture. “Look at the shirt that you have on,” Fairchild told the audience of about 50 faculty, staff, students and other interested parties who had gathered in the Grand Salon of UCLA’s Kerckhoff Hall. “Now think about measuring all the emissions that went into producing those things from the point of extraction. … Think of all the work that took place someplace else, and then how it was shipped to where you live,” said Fairchild, who earned her doctorate in urban planning from UCLA in 1987. “What are the emissions along that supply chain?” In her presentation, the president emeritus of the nonprofit Emerald Cities Collaborative talked about her Climate Breakthrough project, for which she received a $3 million award aimed at advancing transformative solutions to the climate crisis. In her view, it won’t be possible to solve the climate crisis without changing our culture. “We are a culture of individuals. … We don’t have a collective spirit, a spirit of communitarianism. And as a result, our ability to adapt to climate change is going to be compromised,” she said. “We have to figure out how we redesign our lifestyles to create new measures of joy and well-being. How do we reduce carbon? By changing our consumption patterns.”

Read a transcript of the lecture, listen to the audio recording or view photos on Flickr.

Regents' Lecture by Denise Fairchild


 

George Takei Delivers Keynote Address at Commencement for UCLA Luskin Graduate Students The pioneering actor, bestselling author and advocate for human rights spoke at a June 10 ceremony for the School’s master’s and doctoral students

Actor, social justice activist and bestselling author George Takei gave the keynote address at the 2022 commencement ceremony for graduate students at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

With decades of success on screen and stage, along with a natural eloquence and sharp wit, Takei has used his platform to advocate for civil rights and LGBTQ equality, and to educate his audience about U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans, where he and his family were held during World War II.

Takei’s commencement address took place inside UCLA’s Royce Hall at a ceremony beginning at 9 a.m. on Friday, June 10. Master’s and doctoral degrees were conferred on the Luskin School’s public policy, social welfare and urban planning graduates.

“George Takei is a pioneer,” said Gary Segura, dean of the Luskin School. “His life story is one of perseverance amid the darkest forces of discrimination. Not only did he prevail, he used his voice to speak out on behalf of others facing deep injustices.”

Takei, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater at UCLA in the 1960s, has appeared in more than 40 feature films and hundreds of television roles. He is best known for his role as Lt. Hikaru Sulu in “Star Trek,” the groundbreaking sci-fi series that featured a multiethnic cast and a plot centered on peace among all peoples.

Takei is also the author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir “They Called Us Enemy,” released in 2019. The book gives a wrenching account of the thousands of Japanese American families, including his own, who were uprooted from their lives and forced into internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Takei also inspired and starred in the Broadway musical “Allegiance” about his family’s experience under internment.

Long an activist in the Asian American community, Takei is chairman emeritus and a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum, and has served as cultural affairs chairman of the Japanese American Citizens League. Former President Bill Clinton appointed him to the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, and the government of Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his contribution to U.S.-Japanese relations.

A leading advocate for LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, Takei has served as the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign’s Coming Out Project. Takei and his husband, Brad Altman, made television history in 2009 when they became the first gay couple to appear on “The Newlywed Game.”

Takei has an enormous following on social media, which he uses as a platform to share his humor, weigh in on current events, and advocate for civil and human rights.

Among his current media enterprises is the web series “It Takeis Two,” which takes viewers into the personal lives of Takei and his husband. He also hosts the AARP-produced YouTube series “Takei’s Take,” exploring the world of technology, trends and pop culture, and is the subject of the documentary “To Be Takei.”

Learn more about the 2022 Commencements at UCLA Luskin.

Luskin Summit Takes On Global Climate Justice

Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Kian Goh led a dialogue about equity, grassroots activism and climate change in the Mar. 2 Luskin Summit webinar “Cities and Global Climate Justice.” Goh, who serves as associate faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, started the conversation by discussing community-based activism in Jakarta, Indonesia. Eric Chu of UC Davis spoke about competing visions of the urban built environment and the power of activist groups to reimagine what their communities will look like through a lens of justice and equity. Hugo Sarmiento of Columbia University noted that, in Colombia, the main drivers of risk are social, economic, political and oftentimes racial exclusion from the housing market. “Residents have already been displaced by war and conflict, and now they are being displaced by the city,” he explained. Idowu “Jola” Ajibade of Portland State University said issues such as environmental degradation, homelessness, joblessness, and lack of access to sanitation and health care affect the way that climate change is perceived in the Global South, where many communities are already marginalized. “The ways in which people are challenging the system also helps us think about how we might transform the urban society more equitably,” Ajibade said. Kasia Paprocki of the London School of Economics and Political Science discussed how the transition from a rural to urban economy is seen as a necessary and even positive development, which dismisses the experiences of many of the individuals being displaced. Michael Fleming of the UCLA Luskin Board of Advisors was on hand to welcome the panelists.


New Activist-in-Residence Uplifts Voices of the Unhoused

A recent Spectrum News report featured Theo Henderson, an advocate for unhoused people’s rights who was recently appointed as UCLA’s newest Activist-in-Residence. Henderson is the host of the “We the Unhoused” podcast, which aims to shed light on the experiences of those without a home. He created the podcast after years experiencing homelessness himself and now speaks at rallies highlighting social justice issues and leads a movement to create charging stations for the homeless. The Activist-in-Residence program, hosted by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, provides community activists with a paid position, office space and other resources. Henderson plans to use the platform to “bring unhoused perspectives beyond textbooks by bringing students and faculty to encampments.” A Daily Bruin article noted that Henderson also plans to create a campaign for bathrooms for public use and host a town hall where progressive politicians can engage with students and people who are unhoused. 


A New Role for a Climate Justice Expert  As associate faculty director at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, Kian Goh brings a global perspective on environmental issues

By Les Dunseith

UCLA’s Kian Goh, who studies the politics around cities’ responses to climate change, becomes an associate faculty director as of the fall quarter at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy.

She said the institute is a leader in working with and alongside movement-based organizations fighting for change.  

Goh, an assistant professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, noted that the typical presumptions of objective research in the social sciences sometimes conflicts with the desire to see the problem from the point of view of oppressed groups, in order to challenge unjust systems and promote greater equity in decision-making in cities. Overcoming this hurdle as it relates to urban responses to climate change is one of the objectives of her recently published book, “Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice.”

“This type of positional research is more attuned to how structural power actually works,” Goh said. “And it’s what I think the Institute on Inequality and Democracy does incredibly well. I’m so excited to be part of it.”

Ananya Roy, the inaugural director of the Institute which was founded in 2016, said Goh’s global perspective and her expertise in community responses to environmental problems are ideally suited to bolster the institute’s efforts to pair critical thought with social movements and activism in the interest of combating societal inequalities.

“Climate justice is of central concern to the institute’s current research priorities, from housing justice to abolition,” said Roy, professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography at UCLA. “It undergirds all of the ways in which we must understand racial capitalism and make change in the world and professor Goh is precisely the scholar whose rigorous research and capacious vision allows us to do so at the institute and beyond.”

Goh sees her new role as the next step in a progression from working architect to urban planning scholar.

While working as an architect in and around New York City in the early 2000s, Goh found her interests expanding beyond the buildings she was designing, especially regarding urban inequalities and the impacts of climate change.

“I would also be really interested in the history of that neighborhood — how it got to be in the condition that it was in,” she said. 

Goh witnessed first-hand the benefits of community involvement in recovery efforts in Brooklyn following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and that experience contributed to her decision to focus on the topic while pursuing a doctorate in urban and environmental planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her varied academic career began as an undergraduate at the College of Wooster in Ohio and continued at Yale, where she earned her Master of Architecture degree. She previously taught at Northeastern University in Boston, the University of Pennsylvania, the New School in New York and Washington University in St. Louis. 

Goh’s book focuses in part on the Rebuild by Design competition in New York City after Sandy as part of an examination of power relationships and civic activism. The book examines the conflicts that can arise when cities respond to climate change. She looks not only at initiatives in New York but also at the Rotterdam Climate Proof program in the Netherlands and the Giant Sea Wall plan in Jakarta, Indonesia, and analyzes the interconnections of ideas and influence among them.

Her scholarship is firmly grounded in participant observation. 

“When I look at environmental conflicts that are happening in Jakarta, for instance, I will look at what community activists working in the informal kampung settlements there are doing to protect their neighborhoods — from floods but also from eviction and displacement by the city, which claims that they are in overly vulnerable places that need to be cleared,” Goh explained. “This type of close, on-the-ground participatory research, plus a global lens, fits very well with how the institute sees its work.”

At the heart of Goh’s scholarship are people struggling with crisis, whether it be longer-term threats such as rising sea levels or more immediate dangers like wildfires or floods. Joining the faculty at UCLA Luskin five years ago has encouraged Goh to think about the types of environmental justice issues often seen in California, including water use. 

Goh noted the long history of proposals to revitalize the L.A. River from its current existence as a concrete channel whose primary purpose is flood control. 

“Oftentimes, we see some really ambitious ideas to make the river more ecological, more sustainable,” Goh said. Unfortunately, some of those grand ideas fail to contemplate how neighborhoods near the L.A. River would be impacted.

“So, we have projects that are ostensibly for sustainability and for climate protection,” Goh said. “But if they’re not done in a way that takes into account the voices on the ground, the communities that have previously been marginalized and pushed into some of these neighborhoods, then these people stand to be even further marginalized and potentially displaced.”

Thankfully, she is witnessing a greater acceptance among policymakers to look to community organizers and social movements for answers. 

“What I have seen in New York and also in Los Angeles is more government officials who are saying, ‘We need to look more toward what’s happening on the ground,’” Goh said. “What I think hasn’t happened enough is … how does that actually become part of the plans? There are folks who are doing all these focus groups and talking to people, trying to learn. But sometimes it just becomes a report that lies around somewhere.”

At the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, Goh sees a shared commitment to translate ideas into action. She describes her ideas about a research project around climate justice and cities:

“It revolves around two things — climate and power,” she said. “That the issue of climate change in cities is always a matter of who has the power in cities and who doesn’t.”

Goh intends to investigate how climate justice organizers build social movements in cities. She said researchers have shown that inequality matters in environmental planning — poorer people suffer most from environmental harms in cities. 

“It is not enough simply pointing out inequality without taking on the power relationships that are causing that inequality,” Goh said. She plans to work with colleagues at the institute to model a more democratic process in which urban governance decisions are made in cooperation with movement builders.

“These organizers and activists on the ground need to be seen as a necessary and integral part of how we think about planning for climate change,” she said. 

Roy Protests Olympic Injustices at ‘NOpening Ceremony’

Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare Ananya Roy was featured in a KCET article about the NOlympics LA group mobilizing to resist the 2028 Olympic Games. On the day of the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Tokyo, the NOlympics group held a “NOpening Ceremony” in Echo Park to rally support for the movement to stop the 2028 Games from coming to Los Angeles. The event was co-sponsored by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. “We are gathered here as a counterpoint to the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Games,” said Roy, director of the institute and moderator of the event. “That Olympic spectacle, that seeming dream image, is in fact a nightmare… [It] has always been a land profiteering scheme with the excuse of world harmony.” Pointing to a history of racial injustice, policing and class oppression associated with the Olympic Games, the NOlympics group aims to build transnational resistance and reject Olympics anywhere in the world.


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