Stacey Sutton

Stacey Sutton serves as Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Policy for the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. Sutton is also the director of applied research and strategic partnerships at UIC’s Social Justice Initiative. Her scholarship and teaching are in community economic development with a central focus on racial and economic justice; economic democracy and worker-owned cooperatives; movement building and the solidarity economy; gentrification and dispossession; neighborhood small business dynamics; and disparate effects of punitive city policy.

Her frameworks for research and community engagement entail advancing “cooperative cities” and the solidarity economy and critiquing “punitive cities.” In a recent study of cooperative cities, Sutton examines how local governments in 12 cities are creating enabling environments for worker cooperatives and community wealth building by supporting the development and sustainability of worker-owned enterprises and deepening the cooperative ecosystem. Through the Real Black Utopias Project, Sutton’s latest cooperative city research, she explores infrastructures, ideologies, and practices of Black-led cooperatives and solidarity economy ecosystems.

The College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs has named Stacey as recipient of the 2021 Edward Blakely Award, bestowed by the Planners of Color Interest Group of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

Click here to learn more about Stacey and her award.