Cecilia Lucas and Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia

The Politics of Knowledge Production: A Reparations Framework for Academics and Planners
Cecilia Lucas and Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia
Lecturers, University of California Berkeley

In The Politics of Knowledge Production: A Reparations Framework for Academics and Planners, Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia and Cecilia Cissell Lucas discuss their experiences collaborating across class, race, and formal education backgrounds. They share possibilities for moving beyond traditional models of university-community partnerships and shallow notions of “participation,” to developing justice-driven practices rooted in respect, humility, solidarity and redistribution of power and resources. While this talk will be of interest/benefit to all socially engaged academics, planners will be particularly interested in learning about Homefulness: a homeless people’s self-determined solution to homelessness and gentrification, located in Huichin territory (Deep East Oakland), and their Revolutionary Building Circle, in which planners, architects, day laborers, unhoused and formerly unhoused youth, adults and elders in poverty (aka “poverty scholars”) engage in knowledge exchange, relationship-building, and collaborative decision-making. The Homefulness project is a revolutionary act of “Planning,” as it is was dreamed and manifested by the people most impacted by zoning, planning and housing (and the lack thereof), i.e. by homeless and formerly homeless people in collaboration with 1st Nations elders of this territory. It is a model rooted in interdependence, care-giving, and reparations in action.

The Lectures in Planning Series (LiPS) is an initiative of the Urban Planning program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

All lectures are free and open to the public. For more information or to make program suggestions, email lipscolumbiaplanning@gmail.com.