UDESIGN JUSTICE FOCUS AREAS
Reimagining spaces through collective design, community-led creativity, and architectural inclusivity.
How We BeganThe UDesign Justice Initiative is a platform that directly addresses community issues through design.
The initiative seeks to reframe how we understand oppressions and exclusions, and co-create more equitable, just, and inclusive spaces, policies, and practices.
COMMUNITY RESEARCH AND DATA LAB
Build a community-led research program that closes evidence gaps, pairs storytelling with data, and shares results accessibly for practice and policy.
COMMUNITY HUB AND ENGAGEMENT
Sustain a safe, responsive space for relationship building, participatory codesign, and ongoing reciprocity, ensuring people most impacted are central to decisions and delivery.
EDUCATION AND FACUTY PARTNERSHIPS
Align courses, studios, and faculty research with design-justice objectives; co-create toolkits and workshops; train students and practitioners to apply equity, inclusion, and accessibility in real projects.
TRANSDICIPLINARY COLLABORATION NETWORK
Operate as a hub where community partners, researchers, students, and industry collaborate across disciplines to tackle complex built environment challenges.
PRACTICE AND INNOVATION CLINIC
A hands-on clinic to test and evaluate real-world design-justice interventions, generating case studies and implementation guides.
POLICY AND ADVOCACY STUDIO
Translate community insights into policy and design recommendations, equity-centered monitoring frameworks, and advocacy campaigns that embed justice in planning and delivery.
KNOWLEDGE AND CAPACITY EXCHANGE
Host open resources, events, and learning sessions to mobilize research, share methods, and strengthen community and practitioner capacity across sectors.
FUNDING AND SUSTAINABILITY
Secure values-aligned grants and in-kind support to sustain community driven work; coordinate “fund-navigator” scans and help partners resource projects responsibly.
ROADMAP TO ACTION
0-6 MONTHS
UDJI will formally launch the Housing Justice and Education & Curriculum working groups, publish our How We Engage framework and values, map partners and funding opportunities, and begin pilot projects emerging from Housing Justice in Action, alongside initial community research and reporting.
6-12 MONTHS
Building on this foundation, UDJI will expand community research lab activities and reports, launch a quarterly newsletter, deepen partnerships with government, community, and industry, advance planning for a Youth Summer Design Justice Camp, and secure values-aligned funding through an expanded fund-navigator function to sustain and scale this work.
12+ MONTHS
Over the longer term, UDJI aims to develop a physical or hybrid hub, launch design justice short courses and micro-credentials, and co-develop practice-based toolkits with community and industry partners. We will build a citywide transdisciplinary collaboration network, scale pilot projects into ongoing community–university-practice partnerships, and grow a sustainable funding ecosystem (grants, in-kind support, and partnerships) so that UDJI becomes a recognized model for community-led design justice in Canada.
WHAT WE DO
CONVENE
Host inclusive co-design workshops, action dialogues, and working groups that move from ideas to pilots.
RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE
Community-led research, community-engagement, verbatim capture, data analysis, “what we heard” reporting, and practical toolkits.
DESIGN + PROTOTYPING
Small pilots, design builds, pop-ups, storytelling/visual synthesis.
EDUCATION + CAPACITY-BUILDING
raining, short courses/credentials (exploratory), curriculum development , mentorship, partner incubator/light support for community projects.
POLICY + PRACTICE TRANSLATION
Turn inputs into policy-ready recommendations, data layers, and implementation guides.