About

Dana Cuff is a professor at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design who engages in spatial justice and cultural studies of architecture as a teacher, scholar, practitioner, and activist. Her leadership in urban innovation is widely recognized both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2006, she founded cityLAB, a research and design center that initiates experimental projects to explore metropolitan possibilities. In 2019, cityLAB expanded its social and political engagement by creating coLAB in the Westlake/MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, in long-term partnership with community organizations. Cuff's work with cityLAB has included representing the United States at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, and her research demonstrates that affordable, well-designed housing and neighborhoods are attainable foundations of equitable cities. She has developed sustainable, high-performance, low-cost housing prototypes for infill sites ranging from backyards to schoolyards. Cuff co-authored California State legislation in 2017 that effectively opened 8.1 million single-family lots for secondary rental units. Since 2013, she has led a cross-disciplinary team at UCLA with a substantial multi-year award from The Mellon Foundation for the 'Urban Humanities Initiative,' offering students a platform for impactful urban scholarship and action. She has authored numerous books, including 'Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City,' and publishes extensively on topics such as the modern American metropolis, architectural agency, affordable housing, and architecture’s potential for creating more just cities. Her work has earned her several prestigious awards, including Women in Architecture Activist of the Year (2019), Researcher of the Year (2019), and Educator of the Year (2020).

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Humanities
• Civil engineering
• Geography
• Engineering
• Archaeology
• Media studies
• Art
• Environmental ethics
• Visual arts
• Law

Selected publications

• A Consensus Statement for Ecological Medicine: Moving Toward Connection-Based Medicine

  EcoHealth · 2025-10-25 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Mounting evidence across multiple disciplines supports the health benefits of connection to nature. Although this trend suggests that the human-nature relationship is integral to health, its importance is often overlooked in clinical practice due, in part, to lack of consensus on its scope, limits, and terminology. To fill a needed gap, we developed a consensus statement on an inter-connectivity based view of health termed Ecological Medicine. The study recruited an expert working group and used modified Delphi technique and focus groups. The Ecological Medicine Working Group was directed toward Ecological Medicine consensus goals that included: (1) a consensus definition and framework, (2) priorities for practice, research, education, and policy, and (3) Ecological Medicine's implications. A consensus definition and framework for Ecological Medicine was reached, focusing on the importance of human inter-connections (to self, others, non-human species, and natural environment) in informing health understanding. Ecological Medicine suggests that healthcare should shift toward inter-connectivity, relationality, and health practices involving connection-based interventions, especially nature-based interventions. This framework may benefit research, practice, education, policy and other domains of healthcare by focusing on the importance and benefits of connectivity-based health interventions and on the inseparability of human health and planetary health.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The social life of the sidewalk: tracing the mobility experiences of youth in Westlake, Los Angeles

  Mobilities · 2025-06-14 · 4 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Conversation: Sovereignty and Social Practice

  CriticalProductive · 2024-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Suburbs are a climate disaster, but they can be redeemed

  Nature · 2023-04-25

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Can architecture survive our global housing crisis?

  2023-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Architectures of Spatial Justice

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2023 · 11 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  A field-defining work that demonstrates how architects are breaking with professional conventions to advance spatial justice and design more equitable buildings and cities. As state violence, the pandemic, and environmental collapse have exposed systemic inequities, architects and urbanists have been pushed to confront how their actions contribute to racism and climate crisis—and how they can effect change. Establishing an ethics of spatial justice to lead architecture forward, Dana Cuff shows why the discipline requires critical examination—in relation to not only buildings and the capital required to realize them but privilege, power, aesthetics, and sociality. That is, it requires a reevaluation of architecture's fundamental tenets. Organized around projects and topics, Architectures of Spatial Justice is a compelling blend of theory, history, and applied practice that focuses on two foundational conditions of architecture: its relation to the public and its dependence on capital. The book draws on studies of architectural projects from around the world, with instructive case studies from Chile, Mexico, Japan, and the United States that focus in particular on urban centers, where architecture is most directly engaged with social justice issues. Emerging from more than two decades of the author's own project-based research, Architectures of Spatial Justice examines ethically driven practices that break with professional conventions to correct long-standing inequities in the built environment, uncovering architecture's limits—and its potential.

  PublisherDOI

• Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City

  2020 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Original, action-oriented humanist practices for interpreting and intervening in the city: a new methodology at the intersection of the humanities, design, and urban studies.Urban humanities is an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, urban planning, and design. It offers a new approach not only for understanding cities in a global context but for intervening in them, interpreting their histories, engaging with them in the present, and speculating about their futures. This book introduces both the theory and practice of urban humanities, tracing the evolution of the concept, presenting methods and practices with a wide range of research applications, describing changes in teaching and curricula, and offering case studies of urban humanities practices in the field.Urban humanities views the city through a lens of spatial justice, and its inquiries are centered on the microsettings of everyday life. The book's case studies report on real-world projects in mega-cities in the Pacific Rim?Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Los Angeles?with several projects described in detail, including playful spaces for children in car-oriented Mexico City, a commons in a Tokyo neighborhood, and a rolling story-telling box to promote ?literary justice? in Los Angeles.

  Publisher

• Urban Humanities

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2020 · 26 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Sociology
  • Humanities

  Original, action-oriented humanist practices for interpreting and intervening in the city: a new methodology at the intersection of the humanities, design, and urban studies. Urban humanities is an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, urban planning, and design. It offers a new approach not only for understanding cities in a global context but for intervening in them, interpreting their histories, engaging with them in the present, and speculating about their futures. This book introduces both the theory and practice of urban humanities, tracing the evolution of the concept, presenting methods and practices with a wide range of research applications, describing changes in teaching and curricula, and offering case studies of urban humanities practices in the field. Urban humanities views the city through a lens of spatial justice, and its inquiries are centered on the microsettings of everyday life. The book's case studies report on real-world projects in mega-cities in the Pacific Rim—Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Los Angeles—with several projects described in detail, including playful spaces for children in car-oriented Mexico City, a commons in a Tokyo neighborhood, and a rolling story-telling box to promote “literary justice” in Los Angeles.

  PublisherDOI

• Space is Not Evenly Distributed

  Ardeth · 2020-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  “Il futuro e gia qui. Solo che non e distribuito in modo molto equo.” William Gibson Questo numero di Ardeth e cominciato in un tempo di viaggi, incontri pubblici, e nel mezzo di una crescente crisi residenziale, allorche abbiamo chiesto agli autori di riflettere sui loro temi di ricerca attraverso la lente della contingenza. La produzione del numero si chiude in tempi di contingenza, quando niente puo offrire certezza e la contingenza, piuttosto che una lente, e nell’aria che respiriamo quot...

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “Downtown Is Not the Heart of the City”:

  University of Georgia Press eBooks · 2019-11-15

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Anastasia Loukaitou‐Sideris

  6 shared

• Jerry Kang

  5 shared

• Devés Obra

  Textron Systems (United Kingdom)

  4 shared

• Joe Kerr

  4 shared

• Editado Por

  Textron Systems (United Kingdom)

  4 shared

• Jane Rendell

  4 shared

• Alicia Pivaro

  4 shared

• Iain Borden

  4 shared

Labs

• cityLAB-UCLAPI

  cityLAB is a research lab at UCLA that focuses on urban design and planning.

Education

• PhD, Architecture

  UC Berkeley

Awards & honors

• Women in Architecture Activist of the Year (2019, Architectu…
• Researcher of the Year (2019, Architectural Research Centers…
• Educator of the Year (2020, American Institute of Architects…
• Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy, "The Future of World Ci…
• Venice Architecture Biennale, American Pavilion (2010)