cityLAB leverages design, research, policy, and education to create more just urban futures with real impacts for communities in Los Angeles and beyond.

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Founded in 2006, cityLAB is a multidisciplinary research center within UCLA’s Architecture and Urban Design Department. Through rigorous analysis, radical methodologies, education, and practical implementation the lab actively explores urban dynamics in the postsuburban metropolis, rethinking sustainable approaches to spatial, political, and social infrastructures to promote equitable and sustainable cities.

Although based in Los Angeles, cityLAB’s impact extends well beyond the region. The lab has garnered significant national and international recognition and focuses on building creative partnerships with educational and community organizations in the US and around the world. Our team of architects, designers, planners, and humanists further disseminates new ways of approaching urban studies.

To stay updated on cityLAB’s events and news, you can join the mailing list by clicking here.

To stay updated on cityLAB’s events and news, you can join the mailing list by clicking here.

We are excited to announce our third cityLAB Activist-In-Residence, Kaya Dantzler! Kaya Dantzler is a cultural organizer from South Los Angeles dedicated to uplifting Black communities through creative placekeeping and cultivating ecosystems of solidarity and collective care. She led local and national campaigns at Color of Change, mobilizing communities to advance racial justice. As co-founder of We Love Leimert, she organizes alongside community members to nurture and sustain Leimert Park Village as a sanctuary for Black people and a thriving hub of Black culture and community. Rooted in the Black radical tradition, Kaya envisions a future where Leimert Park Village serves as a global model for a solidarity economy that fosters shared prosperity and collective liberation for people from the African diaspora.

cityLAB unveiled the “Small Lots, Big Impact” initiative at Mayor Karen Bass’ inaugural Innovation Construction Expo! In partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Housing, cityLAB is working to unlock underutilized city-owned parcels for new home ownership opportunities and “Missing Middle” housing designs for the future of Los Angeles. Though often seen as too small for more traditional housing development, these public lots can be key pieces in building a more equitable and affordable future for our city.

B-line-Rec Trek

Within the UC system, UCLA has the smallest campus and the largest university population. Instead of constructing new buildings that can be expensive and unsustainable, we need to maximize the existing space by creating more accessible and multifunctional places. The project aims to convert non-functional turf areas to programmatic spaces for recreation, leisure, and events aligns with EngageWell’s interests; creating more edible gardens and incorporating traditional ecological knowledge will align with the interests of EatWell and ResearchWell.

Promoting a healthier and happier campus

UHI-Sonic Exhibition

This exhibition culminates a quarter-long course, which combined seminar discussions and guest lectures with hands-on methods workshops. Students delved into critical urban humanities concepts including borders and commons, spatial justice and the “right to the city,” performativity and the public sphere. The students then applied these concepts and ideas to a sonic thick map project using sound scavenging and sonic production within the context of Downtown Los Angeles. These multimodal narratives tell a story of a place through the layering of sounds. With this method, each team’s map performs a unique aural argument grounded in its respective place in Downtown Los Angeles.

Urban Humanities offer an emerging paradigm to explore the lived spaces of social justice and injustice, dynamic proximities, cultural hybridities, and networked interconnections. The complexity of such spaces calls for new intellectual and practical alliances between environmental design and the humanities. Urban Humanities integrates the interpretive, historical approaches of the humanities with the material, projective practices of design, to document, elucidate, and transform the cultural object we call the city.

Urban Humanities Initiative

Urban Humanities Initiative

Sidewalking
Year: 2023-2024

The Sidewalking toolkit supports youth mobility and youth agency by sharing effective, design-based strategies for engaging young people in envisioning their own mobility futures. The toolkit provides practical guidance for collaborating with youth around issues related to mobility, sidewalks, and the public realm by highlighting effective, actionable insights drawn from our research. This research was conducted in partnership with Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), a community-based organization in Westlake that provides after-school programming to thousands of neighborhood youth.