Lisa’s research and teaching interests are at the nexus of community development and urban design. She focuses on community organizing and social movements in the context of neighborhood change, including processes like gentrification, displacement, redevelopment and disaster recovery. This research engages with communities to understand the policy obstacles that disenfranchise some groups from reestablishing their homes and important community places in times of crisis and change, and how these communities resist exclusionary planning practices. An important component of this work is understanding how communities develop their own ways of planning through social mobilization and informal economic and design strategies, considering these practices integral to the workings of cities. Drawing on the perspectives of politically marginalized urban populations, her work aims to share narratives of communities that are often left out of planning processes, and disproportionately pathologized and treated as objects ripe for policy intervention.
