The Oakland-based Archive of Urban Futures (AUF) is a collaboration between the nonprofit housing advocacy organization—Moms 4 Housing—and a collective of scholars led by Dr. Brandi T. Summers. AUF focuses on questions of history, value, the right to place, memory, and erasure in Oakland. The work of AUF responds to the traditional concept of an archive as a static set of objects and documents, organized and stored for use by those with access, which reinforces divisions of power. Instead, AUF’s counter model offers an archive of Oakland that actively engages with history, grounded in the collective power and the potential for a new Black future in Oakland.
AUF investigates the meaning of place and seeks to cultivate ways for Black Oakland residents to reposition themselves within the urban landscape and historical narrative. In addition to functioning as a community-based record, the archive is presented as a method: a means for remembering, reckoning, and reimagining Black existence in Oakland.
This site was designed and built by Bí Oke and Sage Vousé