Talk Abstract: In an ordinary city planning book, the infrastructure of the city would follow specializations in urban planning: economic development (jobs), housing (shelter), transportation (mobility), land-use and design, environment and sustainability, and some analysis of social policies that think through whether each of the above are accessible, sustainable, inclusively planned and exclusively “citizen-engaged” (Young, 2012). In contest to these more visible "structures," I turn to queer, Black, feminist, trans, migrant, criminalized, non-citizen scholars, and subjects to examine the more informal and no less critical structures of the city and how they are navigated and sometimes defied. 

While there are numerous undocumented and informal structures that compose the foundation of The Unauthorized City (forthcoming from UC Press), I illuminate five as illustrative of how the unauthorized city is planned, survived, and re-created by residents into a more functional city for all, even as bodily risk to individuals, families, and many vulnerable people are heightened by the surveillance state and more formal systems of engagement and civic participation. These five structures reflect concepts and themes that underscore variant navigational strategies that unauthorized immigrants pursue across informal and formal systems: Flexibility, Mobility, Informality, Fantasy, and Futurity. Each navigational strategy that is important in the Unauthorized City is grounded in a case study that explores the relationship to immigrant policing, immigrant resistance to regulation, and the potential of informality as a limited creative and productive tool, even as it is integral to the success of the larger economy (Centeno and Portes, 2006) and the City as a whole.

This kind of power-building in place, as opposed to “place-making” evokes Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “fabulation” (2008) as one counter to dominant historical narrative, where fabulation helps utilize affective knowledge, family lore, or bodily stories, as having just as much authority and meaning. For instance, the method of body-mapping which translates embodied knowledges from drawings by participants, emphasizes the corporeal as an embedded story, as Sweet & Escalate (2017) and other Latine (Jesus De Lara, 2018; James Rojas) and indigenous feminist planning scholars have posited. In short, the body itself tells a story about the places that it has been. Body mapping and story mapping are consistently employed throughout this book as methods through various encounters with immigrant bodies of all ages, genders, ethnicities, cities and suburban spaces—and whether there is mobility, or a lack of it, a new knowledge of place and its powers (as well as the power of residents) are revealed. In this talk, I'll review the conceptual framework for the book, but focus on the story and body mapping methodologies as a tool for participatory community-engaged data collection.

About the Speaker

Dr. AJ Kim (2025–26 Stanford Humanities Center Fellow) is a queer trans scholar and community organizer, and a kid of immigrants. They have worked with immigrant rights and environmental justice organizations nationally and internationally for over twenty years. They have a PhD in Urban Planning (UCLA) and a Master’s degree in Ethnic Studies (UCSD). They have led participatory planning activities in immigrant-dense suburbs of Los Angeles, Atlanta, and San Diego, specifically focused on the informal and formal efforts of unauthorized immigrants and refugees working to create safer communities for all across multiple levels of scale and governance. They are an Associate Professor of City Planning in the School of Public Affairs, with affiliations in the Graduate School of Public Health and LGBTQ+ Studies at San Diego State University. AJ Kim is the Project Director and PI of "Geospatial Mapping for Alternative Health Assets", funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2024–27) and direct community-led research teams for im/migrant health equity with project partners based in Oakland, El Paso, New Orleans, and New York City.

AJ Kim's book The Unauthorized City is forthcoming from University of California Press. This book examines how undocumented/unauthorized immigrants flexibly navigate various urban and suburban structures, from the ethnic enclave to the ethnoburb, in three different cities: Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York. Immigrant and refugees' skilled navigation of various city planning processes and mechanisms, as well as social and public health services, is documented as form(s) of survivance and critical futures-planning. Learn more about their current projects and funded research at https://www.unauthorizedcity.com.