Past Projects

Critical Campus Environmentalisms (2023) Institutions of higher education tend to privilege mainstream approaches to environmentalism that reinforce race, class and gender hierarchies around who and what constitutes an environmentalist or environmentalism. As a result, students of color and students from other marginalized backgrounds–who often experience environmental degradation and catastrophe firsthand–may not see their experiences reflected…

Missing the Housing for the Trees (2022) Climate change and social inequality are two defining crises of our time. While both of these problems are global in scope, attempted solutions are frequently urban in scale: planners and policymakers increasingly place their hope in cities as places where more just and sustainable ways of living can…

No Place Like Home (2018) No Place Like Home is a community-initiated, student-engaged research project on the affordable housing crisis in Santa Cruz County. Based at UC Santa Cruz, the project grew out of two ongoing research initiatives: Critical Sustainabilities, led by Miriam Greenberg, and Working for Dignity, led by Steve McKay. Community partners working with low-income residents…

Democratizing the Green City Conference (2017) This conference examines a paradox: urban sustainability initiatives that are so vital in countering climate change can, through their improvements, contribute to driving up rents and driving out residents, and in the process, exacerbate sprawl, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change itself. Our speakers examine this growing link between environmental improvement…

Critical Sustainabilities Project (2013) The Critical Sustainabilities project originated in 2012–2013 as a series of workshops attended by students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and the University of San Francisco, and supported by the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). It continues today, in expanded form, through this website. Our…