How we use land reflects the values of our society and their culture.  Land always holds multiple histories and multiple futures.  But the narratives created about land are not always complete.  In the article, The Crucial Difference Between Story and Narrative, the author writes, “If story is “an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment,” narrative is the choice of which events to relate and in what order. Put simply, narrative is how we choose to tell a story. We apply different narratives to the same story all the time”.

This is particularly true of the neighborhoods still recovering from the legacy of urban renewal, urban erasure and chronic disinvestment. Land Narratives & Protopian Futures:  From Fictions to the Just City, Toni L. Griffin will share insights on the importance of uncovering the layers of land histories -  cultural, political, economic and social - as essential to designing more restorative, reparative and just cities for and with the people most harmed by exclusion, extraction, and erasure.

About Toni L. Griffin:

Toni L. Griffin is founder of urban American city (urbanAC LLC), a planning and design practice working with public, private, and nonprofit partners to reimage, reshape, and rebuild more just cities and communities. urbanAC leads transformative urban planning and design projects rooted in addressing historic and current disparities involving race, class, and culture. They have collaborated with cities on the cusp of just social and economic recovery including Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Rochester, and St. Louis. Ms. Griffin is also Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is founding director of the Just City Lab, a research platform that investigates how design’s impact on social and spatial justice in cities.