Stacey Sutton
Associate Professor
Director, Solidarity Economy Research, Policy & Law Project
Dept. of Urban Planning and Policy
Pronouns: she/they
Contact
Building & Room:
CUPPA Hall, MC 348
Address:
412 S Peoria St., Room 233
Office Phone:
Email:
CV Link:
About
Stacey Sutton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago, and the Director of the Solidarity Economy Research, Policy & Law Project, which aims to advance interdisciplinary research, critical analysis, and enabling policies; foster education, training and technical assistance; and illuminate the transformative potential of cooperative economies at the intersection of social movements and prefigurative politics.
Prof. Sutton’s scholarship, teaching, and community engagement center two interrelated frameworks: first, advancing “cooperative cities,” focusing on economic democracy, solidarity economies, cooperative ownership, democratic decision-making, and prefiguration; and second, critiquing “punitive cities” or place-based policies and institutional practices that reproduce spatial, racial, and gendered inequities. Her current research initiative, Building Real Black Utopias, is a multi-city exploration of Black-centered solidarity economy ecosystems in the U.S., focusing on their infrastructures, ideologies, and practices.
She is honored to receive a 2025 Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award. She is also the recipient of the 2021 Edward Blakely Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning for her commitment to scholar-activism and was a Kendeda Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership at Rutgers University. Her research has been supported by the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, Mellon Foundation, and Kauffman Foundation, as well as by the City of Chicago’s Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice, Department of Planning and Development, and Department of Transportation.
Prof. Sutton’s work appears in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Urban Affairs, Economic Development Quarterly, and Urban Affairs Review, as well as in popular magazines and public media. She serves on the Board of Directors of Woods Fund Chicago and the Democracy at Work Institute, is a member of the UIC Social Justice Initiative Advisory Committee and advises multiple solidarity economy projects across Chicago. She holds a BA from Loyola University Maryland, an MBA from New York University, and a joint Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Sociology from Rutgers University.
Selected Grants
Marguerite Casey Foundation, 2025 Freedom Scholar Award, grantee
2022-2024, Principal Investigator, City of Chicago Mayor's Office of Racial and Economic Justice & Dept. of Planning and Development, Community Wealth Building Ecosystem Hub for Chicago Worker Co-ops, CLTs, Housing Co-ops, & CIVs, (award: $730,000)
2022 - 2024, Principal Investigator, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, "Real Black Utopias" book project, (award: $250,000)
2021-2022, Faculty Fellow, Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University, Kendeda Fellowship, Research Black-led worker cooperatives
2020-2021, Principal Investigator, Chicago Department of Transportation, Camera Tickets, Fines & Fees: Analyzing the Impact of Chicago’s Automated Enforcement Program Through an Equity and Safety Lens, (award: $172,000)
2018 – 2020, Principal Investigator, Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, “Urban Edges - Dreams, Divisions, and Infrastructures: Comparative Cross-Disciplinary Dialogues about 21st Century American Cities, (award: $224,963)
2016 - 2018 Principal Investigator, Kauffman Foundation, “How Place-Based Policies and Neighborhood Conditions Influence the Urban Enterprise Ecosystem”, (award: $66,027)
Selected Publications
Stacey Sutton and Renee Hatcher (November 2025) Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem: Research Report
Stacey Sutton (Dec. 6, 2023) Seeding Solidarity Economies: What’s Behind the Emerging Ecosystems. Nonprofit Quarterly
Stacey Sutton and Nebiyou Tilahun. 2022. Red-Light and Speed Cameras: Analyzing the Equity and Efficacy of Chicago’s Automated Camera Enforcement Program Full Report & Executive Summary
Kate Lowe, Stacey Sutton, Nebiyou Tilahun (July 19, 2022) Debate over speeding tickets misses larger point about traffic safety Chicago Sun Times (op-ed)
Stacey Sutton and Jessica Gordon-Nembhard (January 15, 2022) “The Promise of African American Worker Cooperatives”
Stacey Sutton. 2019. Cooperative Cities: Municipal Support for Worker Cooperatives in the United States. Journal of Urban Affairs
Stacey Sutton. 2018. “Gentrification and the Increasing Significance of Racial Transition in New York City 1970-2010” Urban Affairs Review
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Stacey Sutton. Building Real Black Utopias: Liberatory Ideologies, Infrastructures, and Practices at the Radical Edge of Economy
Stacey Sutton. Punitive Cities: The Social, Spatial and Economic Burden of Automated Red Light and Speed Camera Tickets in Chicago
Service to Community
Board Member, Woods Fund Chicago (2022-present)
Board Member, Democracy at Work Institute (2024-present)
Advisory Council, City of Chicago Community Wealth Building Initiative, Chicago Mayor's Office of Racial and Economic Justice (2021 - 2023)
Board Member, New Economies Coalition (2022-2024)
Board Member, In These Times magazine (2020 - 2022)
Advisory Board, UIC’s Social Justice Initiative (2019 - present)
Organizing Committee, Chicagoland Cooperative Ecosystem Coalition (CCEC)
Professional Leadership
Ad Hoc Committee Member, Urban Affairs Association conference (2018-2020)
Institutional Governance Committee, ACSP (2021-2023)
Research Advisor, Small Business Anti-Displacement Network, University of Maryland (2020-2023)
Education
PhD, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ)
MS, The New School for Social Research (New York, NY)
MBA, New York University (New York, NY)
BA, Loyola University (Baltimore, MD)