Grand Theft Eco: Environmental Futures of Los Angeles is a creative film project that repurposes the game engine and design of the video game Grand Theft Auto V to explore possible eco-futures of Los Angeles in the year 2050.
In Season 3 of the podcast of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, we speak to activists, experts, and artists working toward just futures for California’s Imperial Valley, Indigenous communities…
In 2021, LENS partnered with the Labyrinth Project, a collaborative urban anthropological inquiry into nature in Los Angeles, to produce a series of episodes based on the Labyrinth team’s fieldwork…
The new podcast from UCLA's Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies shares stories of environmental justice and imagination in California and beyond.
Season 1 of LENS.cast features two episodes about environmental justice in Los Angeles. In episode 1, we explore the history and future of Los Angeles’s remarkable trees. California is more than…
With support from voters, Los Angeles County is investing billions of dollars from Measures W, H, A, and M in clean, safe water, housing and homeless services, parks and open…
California state parks are a tremendous, potentially underutilized resource to promote youth health. More than half of young people under 18 in California live within the “visitorshed” of one or…
In 2014, California voters approved a $7.5 billion bond measure to fund water quality, supply, and infrastructure improvements. Prop 1 included significant provisions to prioritize investments in disadvantaged communities. For…
LENS Magazine, hosted on Medium.com, is home to essays, photography & art, criticism, stories, theory & practice and interviews curated by the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS). Medium.com is…
“Nimble Foods for Climate Chaos” is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between environmental artist and NYU faculty member Marina Zurkow, Los Angeles chef duo Hank and Bean, and LENS faculty director Allison…
Although the last year brought much needed rainfall, California is still facing a long-term drought. In many parts of the state, crops and farmland remain under stress and the state’s…
Global climate disruption is affecting the planet in ways never experienced in human history. LENS is collaborating with the UC Office of the President to produce a series of six…
In 2006, California voters approved Proposition 84, a bond measure authorizing $5.4 billion in spending on projects to improve parks, natural resource protection, and water quality, safety, and supply. Most…
Los Angeles has one of the worst reputations in the country when it comes to parks in metropolitan regions. But that could change on November 8, if voters approve Measure…
Holoscenes is a multi-platform artwork colliding the human body with water. The work includes performance installation, video, photographic, and print components. The Anthropocene Suite is a quartet of projections featuring…
Current rates of species extinction exceed the evolutionary background rate, and some biologists claim we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction in the history of life on Earth. Imagining Extinction…
Cities have recently begun to attract the attention of ecologists and biologists as ecosystems whose functioning is not as yet well understood. Urban ecosystems combine ecological processes with social practices…
This ongoing project catalogues the many stories in circulation today about patented, transgenic seeds as well as the apparent alternative of open source, public seed collections. By “stories,” the project…
When large parks are built in historically marginalized urban areas, they can contribute to “green gentrification,” a process involving increases in housing prices and the influx of new, wealthier and…