All NYC Planning Schools Virtual Open House

Nicholas Dagen Bloom

Professor

Nicholas Dagen Bloom is a Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College. His research analyzes long-term planning outcomes in essential urban systems such as subsidized housing and mass transportation. He is the author of Suburban Alchemy (OSU, 2001), Merchant of Illusion (OSU, 2004), Public Housing That Worked (Penn, 2008), The Metropolitan Airport (Penn, 2015), and How States Shaped Postwar America (Chicago, 2019). He is coeditor of four edited collections, including the prize-winning Public Housing Myths (Cornell, 2015) and Affordable Housing in New York (Princeton, 2015). His new book, The Great American Transit Disaster: Austerity, Autocentric Planning, and White Flight (University of Chicago Press), was published in May of 2023

Bloom has been quoted extensively on housing and other topics in media outlets, including WNYC and The New York Times. As a cocurator of housing exhibitions at Hunter College and the Skyscraper Museum, he has highlighted overlooked dimensions of community life. Bloom frequently joins panel discussions on issues of concern to planners, historians, architects, and the general public. He has taught urban affairs courses to thousands of students in previous positions at NYIT, NYU, and Tulane.

Natasha Iskander

Professor

Natasha N. Iskander, James Weldon Johnson Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service, conducts research on the relationship between migration and economic development. She looks at the ways that immigration and the movement of people across borders can provide the basis for the creation of new knowledge and of new pathways for political change. She has published widely on these questions, looking specifically at immigration, skill, economic development, infrastructure, and worker rights, with more than 40 articles and book chapters on these topics. Her first book, Creative State: Forty Years of Migration and Development Policy in Morocco and Mexico (Cornell University Press, ILR imprint, 2010), looked at the ways that migrant workers transformed the economic development policies of their countries of origin. It received the International Studies Association — Distinguished Book Award in the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Track and was a Social Science Research Council — Featured Publication. Her most recent book, Does Skill Make Us Human?: Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 2021), examines the use of skill categories to define political personhood, in ways that have become increasingly salient with the hardening borders and the pressures of climate change. It received the 2022 American Sociological Association — Sociology of Development Best Book Award, the 2022 American Sociological Association — Labor and Labor Movements Best Book Award, and the 2022 American Collegiate Schools of Planning John Friedmann Book Award.

Her current project focuses on concrete — the second most used substance on the planet (second only to water) and responsible for close to a tenth of all carbon dioxide emissions globally — as a material lens to examine the relationship between climate change, migration, urbanization, and the future of work.
Iskander's research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Qatar National Research Foundation, and others. She has held positions as a fellow-in-residence at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, the Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility at the New School for Social Research, the Center for Advanced Studies of the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and at the Global Research Institute at University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She is currently a 2022–2023 fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies.

Iskander received her Ph.D. in Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She also holds a Master in City Planning (MCP) from MIT and a BA in Cultural Studies from Stanford University. In addition to her research, she engages in development and organizing work with partners ranging from the World Bank to unions and NGOs, internationally and in the United States, on issues of urban development, migration and development policy, and migrant worker rights.

Sophie Oldfield

Chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning, Professor

Sophie Oldfield is internationally recognized for her research on cities in the Global South through her theoretical and primary research. From 2016 to 2021, she held the University of Cape Town and the University of Basel Professorship in urban studies. Passionate about fieldwork, theory, and practice, Oldfield's work is grounded in empirical and epistemological questions to engage debates on informality, planning, and governance in African cities. She has a track record of excellence in pedagogy and collaborative research practice, challenging how academics work in and between "university" and "community." Commitment to this collaborative approach lies at the heart of her research and writing on cities of the Global South. She holds degrees in geography from Syracuse University and the University of Minnesota.

Juan Camilo Osorio

Associate Professor

Juan Camilo Osorio is an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment. He was appointed to the New York City Planning Commission by Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to leverage 16 years of professional experience working as an architect and urban planner in collaboration with grassroots leaders across New York City. His work explores the tension between cities and the political economy of climate action and disaster recovery, where socio-economic and environmental inequality exacerbate each other at all stages of the planning process. This includes research, policy design, technical assistance, and advocacy campaigns on community-based planning, environmental justice, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. He holds a bachelor's in architecture from the National University of Colombia, a master's in Regional Planning from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, and he is a doctoral candidate in Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.

Gabriela Rendón

Associate Professor

Gabriela Rendón is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development and Founding Director of Parsons Housing Justice Lab at The New School. She currently co-coordinates the Graduate Minor in Design and Urban Justice and is a Faculty Fellow at the Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought (2022–2023). Rendón's 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. She is a board member of the Cooper Square Community Land Trust and the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association. She has previously served other community-based organizations and boards, including the Left Forum in New York City.

Rendón is cofounder of Urban Front, a transnational consultancy offering localized knowledge to public and third-sector organizations that work for social and environmental justice, and of Cohabitation Strategies, a nonprofit that facilitates community-led local efforts through participatory frameworks leading to urban and social transformation. She has worked on urban and community-based projects commissioned by nonprofits, public agencies, municipalities, and national governments across cities in Western Europe and South and North America. Rendón's work has been exhibited at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), the Portugal Triennial 2016, the Vienna Biennale 2015, the Istanbul Design Biennial 2012, and the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. She has authored and coedited publications on housing, cooperative urban practices, and neighborhood restructuring. She is working on two books, Defiant Neighborhoods: Rise, Revitalization, and Gentrification of Immigrant Communities in Latinx Brooklyn and Cohabitation Strategies: Thoughts and Actions for the Co-Production of Social Space.

Rendón earned a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning and Strategy and an MS in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and a B.S. in Architecture from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico. Prior to teaching at The New School, she taught at the European Masters in Urbanism at Delft University of Technology. Rendón was born and raised in Mexico and worked at the Tijuana/San Diego border region where she developed a passion for immigrant and housing justice. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

Julio Salcedo-Fernandez

Associate Professor

Julio Salcedo-Fernandez is a renowned and passionate advocate of transformative designs across scales targeting environmental and social justice. He is the Director of Urban Design and former Chair at CCNY. Born in Madrid, he holds a B.A. in Architecture from Rice University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University. He has previously taught at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse University, and Cornell University. In addition to the book Generic Specific Continuum, he has been widely published internationally. He has garnered accolades for his transformative solutions and environmental designs such as the International First Prize for the development of Hamar, Norway, and the Lasso House, which won the Architectural League's Award.

Salcedo-Fernandez is deeply committed to social and environmental justice in urban design. In 2020, as a response to multiple pandemics, he participated in Neighborhoods Now — an Urban Design Forum and Van Allen Institute-sponsored revitalization through community engagement of underserved New York City communities.

He cochaired the ACSA / COAM international conference "New Instrumentalities" for cities in crises. In association with his late colleague Michael Sorkin, his design advocacy has been featured in the media, including PBS and NY1. He has been a juror for international and national competitions, including the AIA awards, the Kay e Sante nan Ayiti Housing Competition in Haiti, and DNADD in Lima, Peru.

Linda Shi

Assistant Professor

Linda Shi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Her research concerns how to plan for urban climate adaptation in ways that improve environmental sustainability and social justice. She studies how aspects of urban land governance — including the fiscalization of land use, property rights regimes, and metropolitan regional institutions — shape climate vulnerability and adaptation responses. An urban environmental planner by training, Shi has worked for AECOM, the Institute for International Urban Development, and the Rocky Mountain Institute, and consulted for the World Bank and American Institute of Architects on projects and research in the U.S., Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Shi received a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, a master's in urban planning from Harvard GSD, and a bachelor's and master's in environmental management from Yale University.

Mi Shih

Associate Professor

Mi Shih joined the faculty of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy in 2014. She is an Associate Professor and is the current Director of the Urban Planning and Policy Development Program. Prior to this appointment, she served as an Assistant Professor in the Human Geography and Planning Program at the University of Alberta, Canada. Between 2011 and 2013, she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the China Research Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. She received her Ph.D. in Planning and Public Policy from Rutgers University in 2010. Her research involves two major areas. Building on ethnographic fieldwork methods, she examines Chinese urbanization, particularly focusing on the role of the state, shifting urban-rural boundaries, displacement, people's livelihood changes, and social conflicts over land development. Employing mixed research methods, her second research area focuses on planning regulation, land development rights, land assembly instruments, and discursive and institutional practices of value capture in urban development in Taiwan. She has published articles in scholarly and professional journals.

Weiping Wu

Vice Provost for Academic Programs, Professor

Weiping Wu is Vice Provost for Academic Programs at Columbia University, Professor in Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Director of the M.S. Urban Planning program. She also is on the faculty of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia Population Research Center. Before joining Columbia in 2016, she was Professor and Chair in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. Trained in architecture and urban planning, she has focused her research and teaching on understanding urban dynamics in developing countries in general and China in particular. She is an internationally acclaimed urban and planning scholar working on global urbanization with a specific expertise in issues of migration, housing, and infrastructure of Chinese cities. Her nine books include China Urbanizing and The Chinese City.

Namon Freeman

NYU Wagner '16

Namon Freeman is passionate about the equitable and sustainable development of cities. At Bloomberg Associates, Freeman is the global lead on Housing Affordability, supporting cities in the development of comprehensive housing strategies and implementing specific programs such as Emergency Rental Assistance or Inclusionary Housing.

Emily Junker

Columbia GSAPP '20

Emily Junker holds dual Master in Urban Planning and Historic Preservation from Columbia GSAPP and a Bachelor of Arts from New York University Tisch. She currently works at BFJ Planning, a private planning consulting firm in New York City, where her work focuses on comprehensive plans for municipalities in the New York City tristate region. Before joining BFJ Planning, Junker was the Assistant Director of Columbia's Urban Planning Program. Prior to graduate school, she worked for six years in management and marketing positions related to planning and architecture.

Jorge Santos

Rutgers '13

Jorge Santos joined the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) in December 2019 as Chief-of-Staff and became Chief Real Estate Development Officer in 2022. In this role, he oversees the Authority's various real estate development-oriented programs as well as directs construction efforts. Prior to NJEDA, Santos served as Senior Vice President for Economic Development at the Newark Alliance and before that as Vice President for Planning and Policy at the Newark Community Economic Development Corporation. There he worked on day-to-day economic development issues as well as transformative projects such as the Newark Riverfront Park expansion and the Amazon HQ2 bid. Prior to his work in economic development, he worked in politics and government in New Jersey.

Santos holds a BA from Rutgers University as well as a Master of City & Regional Planning and Master of Public Policy from Rutgers, The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. He is also an alum of the Eagleton Institute of Politics

Alex Sommer

Pratt '12

Alex Sommer is the Director of the Brooklyn Office at the NYC Department of City Planning and has been with the agency since 2011 working across the borough's diverse neighborhoods, projects, and planning initiatives, including the East New York and Gowanus neighborhood plans. Prior to joining DCP, he worked at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, helping expand the Gateway Business Improvement District and at the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council in Rhode Island and developing a comprehensive regional plan for sustainable tourism and community-driven destination development. He graduated from Pratt Institute's MS City and Regional Planning program, has taught a number of studios at CUNY's Hunter Graduate UPP program, and has guest lectured at both NYU and Pratt.