All of the Above
Janette Komoda Kim
My work addresses climate justice by empowering communities to realize a more equitable distribution of land and resources. To address such complex issues, I often collaborate with community-based organizations and municipal agencies, and I combine tools of urban, architectural, and multimedia design.
Over the years, I’ve been drawn to approaches that I believe get to the roots of systemic change. One—decision-making tools—deals with the process of community empowerment. The other—property reform—shapes the space of community life.
My decision-making tools help community members explore, imagine, and debate potential responses to complex urban issues in a healthy, playful way. For example, I designed three board games, called In It Together, Bartertown, and Mix & Match, which play out more just and equitable responses to wildfires and rising seas. I also wrote a book called The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform, which exposes the politics behind sustainable design, and I co-produced a podcast series called Safari, which gives subway riders a tour of urban animal life just outside their windows. I reflect on such methods by writing about public engagement. I advocate for more direct, collaborative governance by those who are most impacted by design.
I also reimagine the space of property ownership. My goal is to foster regenerative economies and a more reciprocal relationship between people and land. In the Resilient by Design Challenge, for example, our team designed collectively-owned housing to protect communities from displacement due to sea level rise and gentrification. I also designed a hotel in Sichuan, China and a farmhouse in Sonoma, CA, where people can engage with bamboo and chapparal landscapes around them. I also research and write about exceptional community-based initiatives. I am currently writing a book called Property Playbook, which illustrates how activists and architects can co-opt property ownership to foster ecological vitality and repair the dispossession of land from workers and BIPOC people.
These projects (and a few others) are also linked below. Please be in touch!
Books
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Resilient by Design Challenge:
The Estuary Commons
2017-18
Resilient by Design (RBD) was a year-long collaborative design challenge organized by Bay Area agencies. 10 interdisciplinary teams were selected by an international jury to work with local residents and public officials, and design urban adaptation to sea level rise. Our team, the All Bay Collective, produced a research report and design proposal for Alameda Island and Deep East Oakland along the San Leandro Bay, and led a collaborative design process with city agencies and community-based organizations.
This proposal asks how to address the urgency of social inequality alongside long-term environmental risks. We offered 3 primary design strategies: Resilient Equity Hubs, which would build alliances for sharing wealth, Resilient Corridors, which would connect transit, people and animals on interwoven pathways, and Tidal Cities, which would create flood tolerant, buoyant neighborhoods on tidal lagoons.
More InformationPlease visit the Urban Works Agency website here and here.
Design team
All Bay Collective: AECOM, CMG Landscape Architecture, CCA Urban Works Agency (Primary Investigators: Janette Kim and Neeraj Bhatia; Research Assistants: Liz Lessig and Cesar Lopez, Resilience Fellows; Namhi Kwun and Carlos Serrano, Research Assistants); UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design; with David Baker Architects, Silvestrum, Skeo, and Moll de Monchaux.
Community PartnersEast Oakland Collective, Oakland Climate Action Coalition, Scraper Bike Team, Merritt College Brower Dellums Institute for Sustainable Policy Studies, Planting Justice, HOPE Collaborative, East Oakland Building Health Communities, and Repaired Nations. Municipal partners: Oakland Planning, City of Alameda, BART, the Port of Oakland, East Bay Regional Park District, and East Bay Municipal Utility District.
Grants$250,000 from Resilient by Design Challenge to the All Bay Collective; $40,000 to Urban Works Agency. RBD was in turn supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
All Bay Collective team: AECOM, CMG Landscape Architecture, CCA Urban Works Agency (principal investigators: Janette Komoda Kim and Neeraj Bhatia), UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design; with David Baker Architects, Silvestrum, Skeo, and Moll de Monchaux.
RecognitionSelected by an international jury: Lauren Alexander Augustine, National Academy of Sciences; Sarah Ichioka, Desire Lines; Roberto Moris, Research Centre for an Integrated Risk MAnagement; Liz Ogbu, Studio O; Henk Ovink, International Water Afairs, Netherlands; Shelley Poticha, NRDC; Denise Reed, The Water Institute of the Gulf; Jerry Schubel, Aquarium of the Pacific; Cynthia Smith, Cooper Hewittt Smithsonian Design Museum; Helle Soholt, Gehl Architects; and David Waggoner, Waggoner and Ball.
Exhibition
Global Climate Action Summit (2018), San Francisco Public Library (2018), Rock Wall Wine Company (2018), SF Jazz (2018), CCA Hubbell Street (2017).
Authored Writing
Architecture from Public to Commons (forthcoming), Scenario Journal (2020), Metropolis Magazine (2018), The Estuary Commons: People, Place and a Path Forward (2018).
Published Reviews
Resilient by Design (2019), Landscape Journal (2019), Price School of Public Policy dissertation (2019), Estuary News (2018), San Francisco Chronicle (2018), The Architects Newspaper (2017, 2018), Glance (2018), Archdaily (2018), Fast Co. Design (2017), UrbanNext (2018), KQED Science blog (2017, 2018), Landscape Architecture Magazine (2018), NextCity (2017).
Image Credits Top image: CMG with the All Bay Collective. All other images: Janette Kim with the All Bay Collective.