With Metropolitan Baptist Church in Altadena as host and Josiah Bruny of Music Changing Lives sponsoring, twenty-one members of the Dena’s communities and three Cal-Poly students showed up get involved in dreaming the Dena’s Just Futures last Saturday. The Dena’s represent the overlapping communities of Altadena and Pasadena who lost over 9,000 structures and dozens of lives in the Eaton Fires last January.
Dena's Just Futures Initiative — a team of action researchers, designers, architects, and contractors from all over Cali — have come together to ensure the restoration and reconstruction of the Dena’s is just, sustainable, and centred in equity. Altadena is an unincorporated town so it does not have a mayor or city council to do the planning for the rebuild. The community is doing it themselves. We are engaging to help.
Adria, Mailon, Steph and Jay represented the team from C4GS-ZEDlife, who focus on zero-carbon building.
Christopher of Collective UnBound, myself Dori of Dori Tunstall, Inc., and Kiki of Lodestar represented the action research, architectural, and design team.
I loved organizing the interactive activity using fans for community to vote if they want More or Less of different housing types, community features, and funding sources.
We were all there to activate and compensate the "lived expertise" of the Dena’s community, so that the community can push back against big developers and other technical experts trying to decide what the future of the Dena’s should be.
If you are a Dena's resident, we are holding a Orientation meeting in June for those who want to sigh up for Just Communities Protocol training, care-shops to further contribute to the Dena's Plan, and learning more about alternative zero-carbon building.
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