I am an ICREA Research Professor trained in urban and environmental planning (PhD, MIT, 2011). My research is situated at the intersection of urban planning and policy, social inequality, and development studies. I also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Studies from Science Po Lille (2000) and obtained a Master’s in International Development at the Université de Paris-1 Sorbonne (2001). In addition, I pursued a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management at Harvard University (2004). I work to make my research meaningful for and engaged with local environmental justice activists and municipalities, as before starting my PhD in 2006, I held several positions in international development NGOs. I spent 10 years of my professional life in the United States (Boston) before returning to Europe in 2011 with a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship. 

I am currently the coordinator of the ICTA research line "Cities and Environmental Justice" and direct the ERC-funded project GREENLULUS (June 2016- May 2021). I also direct the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, a groundbreaking research laboratory carrying comparative and interdisciplinary research, developing new teaching methods and courses, and promoting learning on justice and inclusion for planning sustainable, green, and healthy cities. I am based at IMIM, the Hospital del Mar Institute for Medical Research, where I also mentor the research group "Healthy Cities and Environmental Justice," for which I was the research coordinator until 2020. Among others,  I am one of the initiators of POLLEN, the umbrella organization of political ecology researchers, groups, projects, networks, and "nodes" across the globe

Research interests

Most of my research is centered on studying processes and dynamics that lead to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, bringing together theory from urban planning, public policy, urban and environmental sociology, and urban geography.  My projects examine the extent to which urban plans and policy decisions contribute to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, and how community groups in distressed neighborhoods contest the existence, creation, or exacerbation of environmental inequities as a result of urban (re)development processes and policies.

My current research in divided in three streams. First, I examine processes of environmental gentrification in formerly depressed neighborhoods and the ways in which such processes pose new challenges and paradoxes for community residents and environmental justice activists, and seem to transform them into new forms of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs).

Second, in collaboration with researchers from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, colleagues from the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development at the University of Amsterdam and from the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, and students at ICTA, I explore the variety of approaches that cities engaged in adaptation planning take to protect the lives, housing, and livelihoods of historically marginalized groups exposed to climate risks and impacts. This research specifically looks at how municipalities approach issues of socio-spatial vulnerability, adaptive capacity, inclusion, equity, and resilience. Particular attention is paid to the equity impacts of land use planning interventions for climate adaptation.

Last, I am engaged as UAB-PI in a collaborative H2020 European project NATURVATION, which takes a transdisciplinary, internationally comparative approach to 1) advance assessment approaches to capturing the mutiple impacts and values of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in cities to deliver a robust evidence base for decision-making, 2) enable innovation to identify the most promising governance, business/finance, and participation models and overcome the systemic conditions that currently limit their use to support systemic integration, and 3) generate momentum to realize the potential of NBS through co-design, co-development, and co-implementation of new partnerships, knowledge, recommendations, processes and tools required to build capacity, enable replication, and foster cultural change. 

Key Words

• Comparative urban planning.
• Environmental policy and planning.
• Urban environmental and spatial justice.
• Environmental gentrification
• Political economy of urban development and sustainability planning
• The re-politicization of sustainability.
• Environmental and social movements.
• Vulnerability and resilience in climate adaptation planning.
• Food justice and sustainable urban food systems.
• Healthy cities and healthy communities

Curriculum Vitae