In this episode of “Bruin to Bruin,” Professor Dana Cuff from the UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Design discusses her transformative work with cityLAB, a research center addressing social justice and urban challenges through design. From affordable housing laws to community partnerships in Los Angeles, Cuff shares how collective action and academic innovation can reshape cities and inspire impactful change.
Dana Cuff: Many students come to me saying, I have these convictions, but I don’t know how to enact them. I don’t know what my agency is, and I think our agency is always tied up with the collective. So really, when you want to effect change, that’s going to have larger impacts, you have to work together. And to me, the university is a perfect setting for doing that.
Fonda Hu: Welcome to Bruin to Bruin. My name is Fonda. I am a contributor for the podcast, and today we’re speaking with Dana Cuff, who is a professor of architecture in the School of Architecture and Urban Design here at UCLA. So, Dana, welcome. First, do you want to give a brief introduction?
DC: Sure. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be part of Bruin to Bruin and love the new format. So yes, I’m a professor in architecture and I have a joint appointment with the planning department. And the main thing I do here at UCLA is run a research center called cityLAB in the Department of Architecture in the school of the Arts and Architecture. And it’s a design research center that I founded in 2006, actually, in response to Hurricane Katrina and the ways in which it seemed to me the devastation of Ninth Ward, the Black neighborhood of New Orleans, was being dealt with, needed more architecture and urban thinking than just, kind of redesign of what that might look like.
Obviously, it was an economic disaster, an environmental disaster, a disaster of discrimination. And so with a partner, Roger Sherman, I started cityLAB, and it’s just grown ever since then until today. We’re now working with Mayor Karen Bass, looking at all of the small land that the city owns to see if we can convert that into a home ownership, affordable housing.
So it’s a kind of, from 2006 till 2024, we’ve worked in public housing, social housing, affordable housing, in public space, open space, in trying to draw out the narratives of Los Angeles and Southern California that have been repressed and in thinking about radical pedagogies. So that kind of span of design research we do, all leading to kind of action.
FH: That was an amazing and in-depth recap, and it was great to hear how the purpose of cityLAB was able to evolve over time to combat crisis over crisis. So expanding on your work with the cityLAB, which demonstrates a huge commitment to a quality driven transformation of urban spaces, what initially inspired you to connect architectural practice with social justice? I know you mentioned Hurricane Katrina as the starting point of such a program, but was there any conversation that you had or story that you had heard in particular that really inspired you to contribute your perspective towards this broad social effort?
DC: Well, just starting with Katrina, when you watched it unfold on the television, it was so racialized and so literally violent and deadly and so much about the built environment, the, infrastructural environment. And there was so little we were doing in architecture at the time that really thought through those aspects, life and death and community building and stability and justice oriented aspects, that it was kind of like getting hit by a ton of bricks.
It just seemed like there was so much we could be contributing. And yet our field had never pulled that together to be a kind of coherent movement or struggle to contribute in ways that I found most of my students were really anxious to do. You know, most students come to architecture with these beautiful essays, you know, they want to change the world.
It’s one of the reasons that I got involved in architecture – because I’m like, I was studying cognitive psychology, painting, and geography. You know, I didn’t really see how I could make a difference. I don’t think I thought about it enough because, of course, those fields could make a difference. But when I realized that with architecture, we could actually, literally change the world – like, physically change the world.
I thought, okay, this involves art, this involves politics. This involves, you know, material manipulations. This involves cities. All the things that really had direct impacts on everyday lives. So I thought, okay, that’s perfect. And then this is what all students think when they come to architecture. They’re going to make the world a better place. And I wanted to figure out how to offer one alternative within an educational structure where students could see how to do that most directly, where they could build their convictions toward action, and see a group of other students and former students working together to make that happen.
You know, we do research. We lift up what the university’s best at, but then we turn that into real impacts, which is what I think architecture is uniquely capable of doing.
FH: That is absolutely wonderful to hear, especially with the integration of usually disparate spheres of research and academia and then direct community engagement, being able to place yourself at the nexus of such changes is really impactful. So I know that you didn’t attend UCLA for undergrad, but you came here to work as a professor. What inspired you to come to UCLA, and how has your time here contributed to the evolution of your work and your perspective on the field of architecture?
DC: Well, I grew up near the Mexican border in California. I grew up on an orange and avocado grove, so a kind of early California model. It was my grandfather’s very small postage stamp sized orange grove, and I went to public schools in California throughout my whole life. Even in college, I started at UC Santa Barbara. Then I went to UC Santa Cruz, then I went to UC Berkeley, then I taught at UC San Diego, and from UC San Diego I came to UCLA.
There were, like, variations. I went off and did, you know, other states and other systems. But basically, I felt like the public university in California and the public education system were a treasure and that there couldn’t be any higher contribution for me than to be part of that. And also, I love Los Angeles because, from an urbanist point of view and an architectural point of view, Los Angeles exists as a kind of uncodified form of the city.
So if you go to New York for instance, or even San Francisco, it’s got this historical layer of 19th century grid of the way cities grow from the center to the edges. Los Angeles … people don’t feel that way about it. I mean, it has a very clear history, but the narrative around that has been one that’s contested, and there’s no better place in my mind to be rethinking what the future of, just city might be than working from a place where there’s no real clarity about what the city is at the moment.
So it demands kind of its next evolution. So really, that’s why Los Angeles – being in Los Angeles – was an ideal city for me. And then being at a premier public university was, like, too good to be true.
FH: And I wanted to use this opportunity to highlight some of the work that you’re doing within the city itself, which is part of the establishment of the Co-Lab in the MacArthur Park and Westlake region. So, do you mind sharing your perspective on what inspired you to establish this Co-Lab and how you believe it will drive the change you want to see in redefining the city of LA, which typically hasn’t had a very cohesive narrative?
DC: Right – well, you know, UCLA sits at the far privileged edge of our urban geography, which is pretty luxurious if what you do is work in a library or in an archive. And I really value that kind of work also. But for the work that we were trying to do at cityLAB, which was really engaged and impactful, it was a barrier not to be more integrated with the everyday life of the city.
And we had a couple of really great community partners in that area, in particular a group called Heart of Los Angeles, which is an afterschool program in Lafayette Park, which is the one just west of MacArthur Park. And they offered us space when we said we needed to get a satellite outside of the Westwood campus so that we were more involved in the city.
So we have a little office there in Lafayette Park with our partners at Ola, and we have other community partners around there, and we do … we’re always doing projects with them, in part because it takes both sets of expertise – people whose everyday lives are wrapped up with the urban spaces that are, you know, tied there.
Like, what does it mean for kids to walk to and from school in, West Lake, MacArthur Park? It’s something we’ve studied and worked with kids and their parents for the last three years, and we kind of have an understanding. We got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to make sidewalks more vibrant and safe for the kids who are taking their first walks independently in the city.
That’s a super cool way of thinking about how to open our city to its people, like the 11 and 15 year olds that love their independence but might be scared of what they have to like, navigate every day. Turns out they’re not very scared. They’re actually pretty pro at it. But in any case, we learned all that. That was part of our urban humanities program, which is a Mellon-funded project that brought students from planning, architecture and the humanities together to work on kind of global urbanism and real world problems and cities from all those different perspectives.
So, you know, that’s continuing in different ways. We have a project that’s run by Gustavo Leclerc, who is working on indigenous immigrant narratives in the city, out of our satellite office in Lafayette Park. Big public arts and public engagement project kind of followed on the city council horrifying tapes where council members were talking and with such derogatory terms about our indigenous neighbors and residents.
So that project called markings, is going to lift up the voices of the tens of thousands of indigenous immigrants who’ve come to Los Angeles and made our city more vital. I guess the other thing that I’d say we’ve really accomplished at cityLAB is to work from Los Angeles all the way up to the state, and it’s one of the things I really want our students, the students that we’re mentoring, to see, is that if you bring a team of people together and dedicate yourself to the study and, conviction that we need, say, more affordable housing, you can change things at very high levels.
So we coauthored two state laws to make more affordable housing in California possible. And that feels like – I don’t know – it’s not the kind of thing you think is possible until you begin to do that work. And then you see it’s actually not as hard as it seems if you put in the labor and the thought and bring the partners together to do it.
So we wrote the ADU law, which is Backyard Homes, and then we’ve written Education Workforce Housing Law, which allows all school land to be developed for workforce housing for educators, teachers, staff, janitors, cafeteria workers, so that we have a dignified place for our teachers and education staff to live.
FH: Right. And I do love the complementarity of the work that you’re doing, in the sense of combating issues from the ground up, going to the community, working with them and listening to their perspectives in order to enact change, but also addressing a lot of the systemic barriers.
DC: And one of the things that many students come to me saying is I have these convictions, but I don’t know how to enact them. I don’t know what my agency is, basically. And I think our agency is always tied up with the collective. So really, when you want to effect change, that’s going to have larger impacts. You have to work together.
And to me, the university is a perfect setting for doing that. It’s far more of a shared space than most other kinds of sites of labor in the city today. So it’s not as transactional as most other places. It’s a place where people can actually think creatively. If you find the right collective, it’s a pretty powerful machine.
FH: Right, as long as you have a robust network, and I’d love to expand on that a bit further. So the Urban Humanities Initiative does represent a pretty novel, cross-disciplinary approach. You mentioned the academic institution as being one of the best hubs for such approaches to proliferate, but how do you believe specifically that breaking traditional academic boundaries can create such … more meaningful social impact?
DC: Right. Well, you know, I think so many students now are trying to find dual majors. It’s the same impetus, basically, that the most pressing and most interesting issues we face as a society are not stuck in a disciplinary boundary. They cross disciplines. And, you know, that’s really what the grand challenge efforts were about at UCLA. I feel like it’s … the city is in and of itself, a transdisciplinary entity, which is why it’s such a great laboratory for me.
But then how do you teach that? How do you bring students along to think like that when everyone needs a major and you’ve got to apply to graduate school in a field and, I think we’re stuck at a transitional time or maybe a transformational time in the university where there’s a deep desire for interdisciplinarity, but very few structures for it.
So the double major is a pretty small mechanism. And usually in the double major, one of your fields never talks to the other of your field. The only doubling happens in your head. Well, we should be helping with that more. And the urban humanities was really a demonstration of how powerful that can be. It’s also resource intensive because it often means that two professors have to teach at the same time and students from different disciplines have to work together, like in teams together, when they’ve got other disciplines that they’re responsible for.
And I think until the transformational moment when our universities find they can dedicate resources to these kinds of efforts – efforts that now mostly stand in as rhetorical models of interdisciplinary work – we’re not going to get very far. So the urban humanities is pretty much on its last gasps at the moment because we don’t have any additional funds to help support the program. And, you know, that’s sad. We’ve been eking it along for, I think, 14 years now. It’s been an amazing demonstration, but it may not survive.
FH: That’s a little sad to hear. I mean, it’s amazing to hear about the transformative work that you’ve been able to do in the past 14 years. But it’s unfortunate that the legacy might end soon.
DC: That’s the way things work. And, you know, this is true with all commitments that you make beyond the conventional mode, is that you take a risk and you jump into a kind of void. And I had incredible colleagues, Matsubara from Spanish and Portuguese, Todd Presner from Jewish studies and Germanic studies. Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris looked at two scenarios from planning.
The four of us shaped the urban humanities together, and I learned a huge amount, and so did the now more than 250 students who went through that program and got certificates. They’ll carry it on. You know, the students who are the alums will carry it on in their different universities and places of work, but it may not have much life left at UCLA.
Dean Alex Stern in the humanities is working hard to give it some life after this year, and I’m very much supporting her and hoping that that’ll be a successful effort. We’ll see.
FH: Yeah, it’s amazing to hear that there’s some hope on the horizon. And I love your point that oftentimes the life of the program resides not in the system itself, but in the collective that is associated with it.
DC: That’s right.
FH: Expanding on that further, just given that we still have such a strong desire among the UCLA community to enact social change, without proper systems in place, what would you recommend for these students in order to forge their own path on their own?
DC: Well, that’s the million dollar question, of course, and there’s no more important time than now, after the election, to figure out how to move forward and to live with agency and conviction about social justice and about environmental justice.
I mean, we have two huge domains under threat, that are under greater threat now. One is social justice. And, you know, in my work that often comes out to affordable housing and use of public space, development of a public sphere. And the other is, global warming and the climate crisis and environmental sustainability. And in my mind now, if I were a student, I would find my shared identities with other people who felt a conviction in at least one of those realms and find ways to act together.
I can recommend an excellent book about environmental collective action. Caroline Levine is the professor, and she talks a lot about how collective action works toward what she calls collective continuance as our goal. Basically, if we’re going to survive as a society, as a democracy, as a species on the planet, we should be lifting up what she calls collective continuance, which is actually a term that could apply to social justice causes as well as environmental causes and really highlights the importance of our struggles together. You know, she says, for instance, that when you recycle the cardboard boxes your Amazon deliveries come in, you feel the futility of that and the contradictions in that, and that can’t be enough. But we have to find ways, then, to work together. And though we may not always be successful – maybe I felt in the last election that my collective efforts didn’t lead to the result I had in mind – but then I need to find and regather my collective to determine where I can be most effective moving forward.
And cityLAB is exactly that for me. It’s the way to bring a collective together, where we collaboratively move in directions where we think we have agency and can be effective. And so far that’s been true and only continues to grow like our levels of effectiveness and impact have been increasing over the years and the group has grown.
I teach about it in my classes. We have graduate students and undergraduate students that we pay as part of our team, and we all work together to think through how we can actually make impacts that will matter moving forward. And I suspect there are many little hubs of that sort around campus that students can find, and even better, in the community itself.
I always think starting local after a big national crisis is the way to go, and there’s so much work to do locally, never a shortage of opportunities, really, for students to join an effort that taps into something they care about,
FH: Right. I love to hear that in terms of the network of resilience that you really need to find and build.
Given the length of your work in housing and sort of, the salience that housing has maintained within the LA sphere for these past few decades, how do you find the energy to continue working for such a long time?
DC: Yes, that’s a good question. Also, Fonda, I am blessed with a tremendous amount of energy. Like, literally, I feel like taking care of my body and my sense of well-being and my intellectual and activist life all fit together.
I run in the mornings. I have a very close knit family that brings a lot back to me. Then I have this larger family in the university, and with my students and my team. And then I have, you know, a network of political activist friends, some here at UCLA, some beyond that and all of that I find very nurturing.
I haven’t tired out yet, and I think I probably don’t do the kind of self-care that I asked my students to be thoughtful about, but maybe I do it in different ways, like being outdoors, for instance. Just simple things like that really matter. I always have two or three novels going at once, so I have a life independent also of the things that I’m obsessed with, and maybe that’s good, also, to break away from one’s obsessions. But, I don’t know, what do you do?
FH: I’d love to hear your reading recs because I am also going through two to three novels at once. I am currently reading The Fraud by Zadie Smith.
DC: Oh, great book, yes. I just started a book called The Vegetarian by a Korean author. Her name is Han Kang. You’ll like it. It’s a short book, but it’s a crazy book. Yeah, I like to read women of color’s takes on the world, in part because it’s a perspective that expands your thinking. I remember when I first got involved with feminist groups, there were some male mathematicians who were in our big feminist think tank, and I said, “Hi, guys.” You know, “What’s your interest?” They said, “We feel like feminist theory is one way to step out of the boundaries that our field imposes on us, and we can’t even see where those boundaries lie. But every time we engage in feminist theory and thinking, we become more aware of our own limits.” And it was such an insight for me. I feel the same about women of color novelists.
FH: Fully agree, and I think it’s important to always be open to embracing a new perspective in that sense, because it really does challenge the way that you think about every aspect of the work that you do. So it’s good to hear that, that sort of openness does not fade over time. The reason why I asked this question is because I did notice a sense of almost exhaustion after the elections. And I think that oftentimes when you’re faced with obstacles, it’s hard to bounce back.
DC: Yes. And I’ve learned over time, mainly from my colleagues, that sometimes my sense of immediate response isn’t appropriate. And I feel like this last election is one of those where we can sit back and try to figure out what’s the best direction to work now, given the amount of energy and opportunity that we have. We have an Activist-in-Residence program that we participate in at cityLAB, and the first Activist-in-Residence we brought to campus was a public artist from the community where Ola is in Lafayette, Westlake, Marlené Nancy Lopez, who now works with us at cityLAB. Her project was a Grieving Sun Mural.
And I thought initially like, “Oh, wow, we’re not going to grieve together, are we?” And she taught me so much about the importance of grieving and taking stock of the emotions. And I think a lot of us are grieving at the moment, and it’s better not to wash that away. It’s not about wallowing in it. And I think one thing that Marlené also demonstrated is that you need to have a collective and public life, that we can … grieving isn’t something you have to do, you know, late at night with your head on a pillow. It’s actually something that’s part of a collective sensibility, and it’s where you start to find your power to return. So.
FH: Yeah, being open to all emotions that you experience without invalidating any along the way.
DC: You know, just saying that, in a way, Fonda is really interesting to me. This, to me, seems like the transformation of the university as I have known it. Another group that I participate in and really value is the one led by Wendy Slusser about the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative. And in that group, I have said in other contexts, it’s the first time I ever heard the term harmony mentioned at the university and that we should have a feeling of harmony.
And, you know, we breathe together before we start a meeting. You know, there’s a way in which the whole lives of students and staff and faculty are becoming part of our understanding. You know, when I was in school, we didn’t talk about our emotions. That wasn’t right. And that was a missed opportunity in the whole experience of becoming a lifelong learner, however, we think about ourselves.
FH: Yeah, I think there was such a glimmer of positivity to end on in terms of the trajectory the university is going and how people are also viewing their personal growth. It’s not something that should be constrained by the systems that are in place, but something that they should openly take lead over along the way. So, yeah.
DC: You know, there’s plenty to complain about in the university. Big colonial project. There’s lots of ways in which criticism is well deserved. And the analytic frameworks for that are very clear. For me, the hardest part is finding ways to move through that, to make change. And, you know, lots of people feel like there are ways to do that. And I hope cityLAB is a model for people to see.
FH: Right, and cityLAB’s tenacity, and yours as well, is always something that is so inspiring for students of my generation. So thank you for that.
DC: That’s very nice of you to say. I do think tenacity is the operative term.
FH: Well with that, thank you very much for your time.
DC: Yes of course, take care.
FH: And that’s a wrap on today’s conversation with the incredible Professor Dana Cuff from the School of Architecture. If you’re curious to dive deeper into her work with cityLAB, you can check out their website at citylab.ucla.edu. It’s packed with fascinating projects and ideas.
Now, before we sign off, I’ve got a few book recommendations from today’s discussion that you may want to add to your reading list. First up is Caroline Levine’s The Activist Humanist, followed by Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. And of course, don’t forget Dana’s own Architectures of Spatial Justice. You can find all of these insightful reads at the UCLA Library if you’re local.
Thanks for tuning in to Bruin to Bruin. We’ll be back soon with more inspiring conversations from the UCLA community. Catch you next time!
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