Stacey Sutton

Stacey Sutton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy and the Director of Applied Research and Strategic Partnerships at UIC’s Social Justice Initiative. She is the recipient of the 2021 Edward Blakely Award given by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and the Planners of Color Interest Group, in recognition of a scholar’s dedication to the cause of social justice, particularly for communities of color. Stacey’s research and teaching are broadly within the area of community economic development, with a central focus on economic democracy and worker-owned cooperatives; the solidarity economy movement; gentrification and dispossession; neighborhood small business dynamics; and disparate effects of place-based city policy. Her frameworks for research and community engagement entail advancing “Cooperative Cities” and the solidarity economy and critiquing “Punitive Cities.” She recently completed a study of the distribution, efficacy, and equity effects of Chicago’s automated enforcement red-light and speed camera and ticket fines and fees for Black, Latinx and low-income residents. In Stacey’s newest research project, titled Real Black Utopias, she explores infrastructures, ideologies, and practices of Black-led cooperatives and solidarity economy ecosystems.