Gabriela Rendón
Gabriela Rendón (she/her/la/ella) is a Mexican-born urban planner, researcher, author, and educator based in New York City. She is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development and the Founding Director of the Parsons Housing Justice Lab at the New School. At the lab, she leads the Housing Justice Oral History Project which intersects oral history, critical cartography, community organizing and advocacy. Rendón’s expertise and research interests include community and spatial planning, housing and urban policy, socio-spatial restructuring, revitalization 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.
Rendón is co-founder and active member of Urban Front, a transnational consultancy advising and working with progressive governments committed to social and environmental justice. She is also co-founder of Cohabitation Strategies, a nonprofit that facilitates community-led local efforts through participatory frameworks leading to urban and social transformation. Over the last 20 years, Rendón has worked on long-term urban and community-based projects commissioned by nonprofits, public agencies, municipalities, and national governments in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. While working internationally, Rendon remains deeply engaged at the local level, taking on different roles within the New York City’s housing and social movements. She is co-founder of The Shape of Cities to Come Institute, committed to movement building across neighborhoods, and serves on the board of directors of the Cooper Square Community Land Trust. Her 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.
Rob Robinson
Rob Robinson was a co-founder and member of the Leadership Committee of the Take Back the Land
Movement and is currently a Senior Advisor at Partners for Dignity and Rights (formerly known as NESRI). After losing his job in 2001, he spent two years homeless on the streets of Miami and ten months in a New York City shelter. He eventually overcame homelessness and has been in the housing movement based in New York City since 2007. In the fall of 2009, Rob was chosen to be the New York City chairperson— for the first ever; official mission to the US; of a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. He was a member of an advance team coordinated by the US Human Rights Network in early 2010; traveling to Geneva Switzerland several times to prepare for the United States initial appearance in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Rob has worked with homeless populations in Budapest Hungary and Berlin Germany and is connected with housing and land movements in South Africa and Brazil. He has worked with the European Squatters Collective, International Alliance of Inhabitants (IAI); the Landless Worker’s Movement (MST), the Movement of People Affected by Dams in Brazil (MAB) and the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages in Spain (PAH). He currently serves as the coordinator of the USA Canada Alliance of Inhabitants on behalf of International Alliance of Inhabitants. He is a regular guest lecturer at the City University of New York Graduate Center and several University Law Schools throughout the US and Canada. He was appointed an adjunct professor of Urbanism at New School in September 2021.
Miguel Robles-Durán
Miguel Robles-Durán, born in Mexico City, is an urbanist, theorist, designer, educator, and podcaster recognized for his transdisciplinary, anti-capitalist approach to urbanization. His work integrates Marxist political economy, urban political ecology, critical human geography, and progressive urban policy to challenge capitalist urbanization and advance socio-spatial justice. In 2008, he co-founded Cohabitation Strategies, a non-profit cooperative dedicated to socio-spatial development and countering neoliberal urbanization. In 2019, he co-founded Urban Front, an international consultancy that collaborates with progressive governments around the world to advocate for the Right to the City. Additionally, alongside Marxist geographer David Harvey, he co-founded Politics In Motion, a media platform addressing capitalist urban contradictions and envisioning alternative futures.
Robles-Durán is a tenured Associate Professor of Urbanism at The New School / Parsons School of Design in New York City. Before joining The New School in 2010, he taught at TU Delft, The Berlage Institute, and Zürich University of the Arts. His academic work is deeply engaged with bridging theory and practice in urban struggles worldwide. His work has been exhibited at internationally renowned institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), MAK Vienna, MAXXI Rome, and La Biennale di Venezia, as well as at biennials in Istanbul, Shenzhen, Chicago, Rotterdam, and Lisbon. Through his teaching, activism, urban and media projects, Robles-Durán continues to advance critical discourse on urbanization, advocating for transformative strategies that reclaim cities from speculative forces and center collective ownership, environmental justice, and social equity.