Equity and Inclusion

THUR-C08: Climate Resilient Rural Self-sufficiency: Lessons from California's Only Black Freedom Colony

Thursday, September 17, 2026

2:15 PM - 3:30 PM PT

1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW

Speaker(s)

Alison B. Hirsch, ASLA (she/her/hers)

Professor
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Dezaraye Bagalayos (she/her/hers)

Co-Associate Executive Director
Allensworth Progressive Association
Visalia, California
Tekoah A. Kadara

Co- Associate Executive Director
Allensworth Progressive Association
Delano, California

Founded in 1908 as California’s first Black town, Allensworth now confronts severe environmental and climate injustice. Co-led with the Allensworth Progressive Association, this session examines equity-driven rural planning/design centered on community governance, cultural history, water justice, regenerative agriculture, infrastructural security. Learn how landscape architects can partner to repair systemic harm.

Learning Outcomes:

Describe how rural industrial agricultural landscapes produce environmental inequities and how landscape architecture can address those conditions through justice-centered planning and design.
Apply strategies for shifting decision-making power toward community-based organizations in participatory rural planning processes.
Identify replicable design and policy tools—such as water security planning, regenerative agriculture, and cultural planning measures—that align climate resilience with equity goals.
Apply practical methods for building trust, sustaining engagement, and navigating funding systems in under-resourced rural communities.