Sustainable urbanism in the U.S. and the developing world; environmental justice; environmental behaviors and governance; water and sanitation infrastructure; food systems planning and food security, political economy of poverty reduction and access to basic services; social equity and participatory decision making; public participation GIS and spatial analysis.

Charisma Acey is an associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Her background includes work, research and travel to countries in West Africa, southern Africa and Central America. Her work focuses on local and regional environmental sustainability, with a focus on poverty reduction, urban governance, environmental justice, food justice and access to basic services. Her work relies on both quantitative and qualitative, community-based research approaches. Current and past research projects, teaching and service learning courses have focused on addressing barriers to sustainable development such as human-environment interactions at multiple scales in urban areas around the world, poverty and participation and voice in local governance and development, the financing and sustainability of publicly provided services and utilities such as water and sanitation, sustainability of local and regional food systems, and environmental justice domestically and globally.

Recent and ongoing research includes fieldwork in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda exploring sustainable household scale alternative energy solutions and access to basic services such as water and sanitation. She also has worked on participatory re-zoning for local healthy food systems, urban agriculture, and sustainability planning in the San Francisco East Bay, Columbus, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Professor Acey was an assistant professor of city and regional planning in the Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University, with a joint appointment with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity where she worked on global food justice issues and mapping geographic differences in resources and opportunities at the metropolitan scale. For more than 20 years, Charisma has supported communities, non-profits, local governments, academia and industry develop interventions that improve equitable social and environmental outcomes for vulnerable, marginalized populations. Her background includes six years of international work as a senior manager for relief and development NGOs working in countries in West Africa, southern Africa and Central and South America. She has also served as a U.S. State Department Fellow in Malawi and an American Marshall Memorial Fellow to Europe.

CP 251 Environmental Planning and Regulation

CP 254 Sustainable Communities

CP 290: Special Topics: The Human Right to Water

CP 119 Planning for Sustainability

CP 291: Graduate Studio - Infrastructure Imaginaries: Informal Urbanism, Creativity and Ecology in Lagos, Nigeria

CP 291: Graduate Studio - Critical Race Consciousness, Place-Based Storytelling & Research Justice In Community Partnerships

Acey, C. 2020. Amid COVID-19, environmental injustice must be recognized, rectified

Acey, C., Kisiangani, J, Ronoh, P, Delaire, C,  Makena, E, Norman, G, Levine, D, Khush, R, and Peletz, R. 2019. Cross-subsidies for improved sanitation in low income settlements: Assessing the willingness to pay of water utility customers in Kenyan cities. World Development 115, 160-177

Acey, C. 2019. Heritage Preservation as Survival: Mediating Social and Ecological Risk and Resilience at the Slave Port of Badagry, Nigeria. In Routledge Companion to Global Heritage Conservation, edited by Vinayak Bharne and Trudi Sandmeier.

Acey, C. 2018. Silence and Voice in Nigeria's Hybrid Urban Water Markets: Implications for Local Governance of Public Goods International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12715

Acey, C. 2018. Rise of the synthetic city: Eko Atlantic and practices of dispossession and repossession in Nigeria. In Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities, edited by Elizabeth Sweet.

A Siegner, J Sowerwine, C Acey. 2018. Does Urban Agriculture Improve Food Security? Examining the Nexus of Food Access and Distribution of Urban Produced Foods in the United States: A Systematic Review. Sustainability 10 (9), 2988, pp. 1-27

Joyce Kisiangani, Clara MacLeod, C Acey, D Levine, P Ronoh, E Makena, Guy Norman, Ranjiv Khush, C Delaire, Rachel Peletz. 2018. Are Kenyan water customers willing to pay a pro-poor sanitation surcharge? In Shaw, R.J. (ed). Transformation towards sustainable and resilient WASH services: Proceedings of the 41st WEDC International Conference, Nakuru, Kenya, 9-13 July 2018, Paper 2905, Loughborough University

Hybrid Governance and the Human Right to Water. Berkeley Planning Journal. Vol. 28, Issue 1, pp.10-39, 2017, 

Managing wickedness in the Niger Delta: Can a new approach to multi-stakeholder governance increase voice and sustainability? Landscape and Urban Planning, April 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.03.014.

Sustainability from the Bottom-Up: Women as Change Agents in the Niger Delta. In Women's emancipation and civil society organisations: Challenging or maintaining the status quo? eds. Schwabenland, C., Lange, C., Onyx, J. and Nakagawa, S. (2016) Bristol: Policy Press.

Nigeria – The Right to Water:  The Role of the Private Sector in Urban Water Sector Reform. In International Planning Case Studies (IPCS) project. University of Michigan and University of Colorado Denver. eds. Hoey, L., Rumbach, A., Shake, J. (2016).

Sustainable Futures for Linden Village: A model for increasing social capital and the quality of life in an urban neighborhood. Sustainable Cities and Society, 14, 359-373. 2015. With Chen, Q. and Lara, J. J.

Measuring Urban Sustainability: Evaluating the APA’s New Sustainability Accreditation Criteria. Institute of Urban and Regional Development (Blog)

Plan-it Sustainably: Testing APA’s Sustainability Accreditation Criteria on 11 Bay Area cities. Northern News. American Planning Association, California Chapter, Northern. July/August 2014. With S. Edmondson.

Green Jobs, Livelihoods and the Post-Carbon Economy in African Cities. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, pp. 1-20. 2013. With T. Culhane.

A Review of “Spatial Literacy: Contemporary Asante Women's Place-Making.” Epifania Akosua Amoo-Adare. (2013). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. 173 pages.
Journal of the American Planning Association, Summer 2013 79 (3): 5.

Forbidden Waters: Colonial Intervention and the Evolution of Water Supply in Benin City, Nigeria. Water History 4 (3) pp. 215-229. 2012.

Sustainable Futures for Linden Village: A Model for Rehabilitation and Sustainable Development of Urban Neighborhoods. ICSDEC 2012: pp. 163-170. 2012. With Q. Chen and J. Lara.

The Challenge to Delivery of Public Goods in Rapidly Expanding Cities in Africa: Financing and Implementing Water and Sanitation Policies in Lagos, Nigeria. Prepared for the 4th European Conference on African Studies, 15-18 June 2011.

Urban Farmscapes: For Communities, Markets and New Ecologies - Precedent Studies for Weinland Park. Edited by: Jones, Kay Bea. Knowlton School of Architecture/Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission. 2011. With J. Boswell, K. Bennett, K. Jones, R. Kemper, R. Seyedsadry, and S. Bongiorno.

Revisioning Weinland Park: Volume 2 Design for the Local Food in the Public Realm. Vol. 2. Edited by: Jones, Kay Bea. OSU Knowlton School of Architecture and International Poverty Solutions Collaborative. 2011. With K. Bennett, J. Boswell, K. Jones, R. Kemper, R. Love, J. Orban, M. Sabini, and E. Van Til.

Gender and Community Mobilization for Urban Water Infrastructure Investment in Southern Nigeria. Gender & Development 18 (1) March, pp. 11-26. 2010.

The Changing Face of Black America. Kirwan Update. July/August 2010.

Social justice as the path to sustainable development. Race Talk, a project of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. May 27. 2010.

Africa’s urban transformation: Signs of opportunity and hope. Huffington Post. February 23. 2010.

Mitigating unnatural disasters: Transformative change and rebirth after the Haiti earthquake. Race Talk, a Project of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Jan 22. 2010.

Book Review: Alam, M. (Ed.) Municipal Infrastructure Financing: Innovative Practices from Developing Countries. Commonwealth Secretariat Local Government Reform Series Number 2. London, England: Commonwealth Secretariat. 142 pp. Public Works Management & Policy, 15(2), pp. 137-141. 2010.

Neighborhood Effects and Household Responses to Water Supply Problems in Nigerian Cities. The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa 4 (1) July, pp. 123-156. 2008.

Space vs. Race: A Historical Exploration of Spatial Injustice and Unequal Access to Water in Lagos, Nigeria. Critical Planning 14, Summer: pp. 49-70. 2007.

Acey, C. 2007. Advocating for Africa’s Urban Poor: Access to Water in Nigerian Cities. The Nigerian Lawyer, September, Fall: pp. 4-5, 23.