Just | Change Fellowship
Just | Change: A Framework for Equitable Design
Explore the Tools: An Equity Guide + A Resource Book: “Mapping Equity”
“The burdens and risks of climate change are not falling equally on everyone.
The poor and communities of color, who have typically contributed the least towards climate change, are shouldering a disproportionate share of the impacts of extreme heat, severe storms, flooding, and wildfires. This imbalance between who benefits and who suffers is similar to the patterns observed by those concerned with issues of environmental justice, where these same communities are often those with highest exposure to environmental hazards: air pollution, contaminated soils, toxic wastes.”
- Excerpt from EskewDumez Ripple 2023 Just | Change Fellowship Brief
Fellowship Process
Aïda Ayuk joined EskewDumezRipple as the 2023-2024 Research Fellow, focusing on climate and environmental justice in our dual office cities of New Orleans and Washington D.C., where she grew up.
“Traditional design practices often overlook the nuanced needs and opportunities within communities, leading to solutions that miss critical local issues and existing perpetuate disparities. To address this, throughout my fellowship, I engaged directly with local stakeholders through interviews, supporting ongoing initiatives, and building relationships.
This approach consistently revealed that communities facing significant challenges develop creative, authentic solutions. These grassroots efforts in turn provide valuable lessons that can enhance and extend the impact of design, making them core to our practice.”
- Excerpt from Resource Book: “Mapping Equity”
15 Community Voices Whose Stories and Knowledge Shaped This Research
The Organizations: The Urban Conservancy, Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative, Recirculating Farms, Edible Schoolyard New Orleans, Youth Empowerment Project, Louvis Services, unCommon Construction, STEM NOLA, Louisiana Center for Children's Rights, Innocence Project New Orleans, Claiborne Avenue Alliance, Colloqate Design
Equity Guide
The Equity Guide is a resource for designers seeking to identify equity opportunities in projects. It provides a structured framework for evaluating project sites, by organizing research and insights into six key equity categories.
Download the Equity Guide tool here.
Resource Book
The Just | Change Resource Fellowship Book, '“Mapping Equity” is the compiled research of EskewDumezRipple's 2023-2024 fellowship, focused on climate and environmental justice. Through community engagement and real-world examples, the book offers a framework for connecting equity issues to opportunities.
“Equality and freedom have always been at the center of the American story. Yet, to be both “the land of the free” and a land made prosperous through displacement and the holding of human beings in slavery required that we build ways of “not seeing”, discounting or rationalizing this injustice.
When inequality was codified by law and policy in previous generations—from Jim Crow to redlining—it established “facts on the ground,” stark gaps in education, wealth, and access that constitute an uneven playing field. The persistence of these mental structures, reflected in implicit bias, is why we somehow accept a society where some reap the benefits of an industrial society, and others disproportionately bear the brunt of pollution or climate change.
What can designers do? We can start by learning to see what’s truly around us, measuring and mapping it, understanding how we got here, and actively engaging in community-based efforts to make things better. This has been the focus of 2023-2024 Research Fellowship at EskewDumezRipple, “Just | Change”. Research Fellows Elisa Castañeda and Aïda Ayuk built connections with community groups working on environmental and climate justice issues.
The work that follows, authored by Aïda Ayuk, compiles some of what’s been learned over the course of this year. We hope readers find this a helpful first step in their own initiatives. Change starts with learning to look and learning to listen. Where we take it is up to us.”
- Excerpt from Resource Book: “Mapping Equity”
How This Book Works
The book is divided into six chapters:
Environmental Impact, Quantity of People, Unmet Community Needs, Intersectionality, Target Area Vulnerabilities, Yes to Engagement
This book is intended to teach readers how to connect equity issues to opportunities.
The structure encourages readers to think differently, analyze site contexts critically, and evaluate project sites for equity-based opportunities, ensuring a more equitable impact.
Each Chapter Overview is followed by an Assessment Metric, outlining the relevant submetrics to enhance understanding of the chapter. Following the Assessment Metric, the book explores ways to translate collected stories, data, and research into tangible applications by examining submetrics through a repeated series:
Narrative: Key takeaways from interviews with community stakeholders.
Deep Dive: Supplemental in-depth analyses of key assessment submetrics.
Spatial Mapping: Simplified visuals illustrating ways to interpret EJ Screening data.
Case Study: Design projects examined through the lens of key assessment submetrics.
How to Connect:
“Let’s create spaces that are responsive to the communities that they serve.”
Aïda Ayuk, Research Fellow
EskewDumezRipple
Aïda Ayuk, our former research fellow for the 2023-2024 year and current Sustainability Design Coordinator, joined our firm after completing her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Aïda was charged with exploring this topic as a part of our research fellowship program. Read more about the role of the fellow here.
Connect: aayuk@eskewdumezripple.com.