My thesis project engages with future world building through an exploration of food sovereignty, bringing together traditional Indigenous environmental design principles and modern technology to foster collective care, autonomy, mutual aid, and resilience on Lenape lands (New York). Focusing on New York's Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights neighborhoods, it addresses food deserts, displacement, gentrification, and over-policing by centering cultural preservation and Indigenous knowledge.

Central to my work is community collaboration: Through craft making, storytelling, skill sharing, and mutual aid, neighbors co-create solutions that reflect their lived experiences. With my project, I aim to amplify care networks, honor cultural knowledge, and demonstrate ways the built environment can embody collective strength and joy. Grounded in abolitionist frameworks, my thesis emphasizes local collaboration, resource sharing, and relationship building.

By integrating Indigenous principles—such as working with local materials and the natural world—and modern tools like urban farming and renewable energy, the project offers adaptive, sustainable strategies for both immediate needs and long-term resilience. It maps resource gaps, outlines small-scale interventions, and explores regenerative design and resource distribution.

Employing a timeline of 2025–2050, the project traces the way these shifts in perspective and process take root, grow, and become foundational. Small interventions in food production, resource sharing, and governance evolve into lasting systems of care and autonomy.

Ultimately, this project reflects a vision of a future in which collective care and cultural preservation guide responses to systemic challenges. By blending past wisdom with present-day tools, my thesis affirms that community-driven solutions are essential to building thriving, equitable neighborhoods.