Gabriela Rendón

Gabriela Rendón
—Founder and Director

Gabriela is a Mexican-born urban planner, researcher, and educator committed to social and spatial justice. She is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development and a Faculty Fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School. Gabriela is a founding and active member of The Shape of Cities to Come Institute, Urban Front, and Cohabitation Strategies. Over the last twenty years, she has worked in urban, housing, and community-based projects commissioned by art and cultural institutions, as well as municipalities and public agencies in diverse cities in Western Europe, North America, and South America. Gabriela currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Cooper Square Community Land Trust and the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association II.

Gabriela holds a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning and Strategy and an MS in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and a BS in Architecture from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico. Her expertise and research interests include community planning and design, socio-spatial restructuring of immigrant neighborhoods, rise and settlement of Latinx urban communities, housing and tenants rights, gentrification and displacement, cooperative housing models, as well as other collective and non-speculative housing development schemes providing equitable development in profit-driven urban environments. Gabriela is the author and co-editor of a number of publications, including Cooperative Cities (Journal of Design Strategies), Social Property and the Need of a New Urban Practice (Taylor & Francis), and Cities For or Against Citizens? Socio-spatial Restructuring and the Paradox of Citizen Participation in Low-income Neighborhoods (A+BE Series). She is currently working on a book tentatively titled Defiant Neighborhoods: Rise, Revitalization, and Gentrification of Immigrant Communities in Latinx Brooklyn. Gabriela was born and raised in Mexico and worked in the Tijuana/San Diego border region, where she developed a passion for housing and immigrant justice.