Bio
Gabriela Rendón is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development at the School of Design Strategies, Parsons School of Design, The New School. From 2017 to 2019, she co-directed the MS in Design and Urban Ecologies and the MA in Theories of Urban Practice programs and co-chaired the Urban Council at the School of Design Strategies. Rendón has instructed courses across different programs and schools at The New School and coordinated a number of long-term academic projects with community partners and non-profit organizations since 2010. Most of these projects have committed to social and spatial justice and involved students from graduate and undergraduate programs. Before teaching at The New School, Rendón taught at the European Masters in Urbanism at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
Rendón holds a BS in Architecture from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico, an MS in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning and Strategy from the same Dutch institution. Her research interests include neighborhood decline and restructuring, community planning and design, women-led urban and community practices, solidarity urban economies, housing cooperative models, as well as other collective and non-speculative housing models providing equitable development in profit-driven urban environments. She is the author and co-editor of a number of publications. Her latest research delves into Mexican immigrants’ neighborhoods, homes, and livelihoods in the increasingly gentrified borough of Brooklyn.
Rendón is also co-founder of Cohabitation Strategies, a nonprofit organization for socio-spatial research, design, and development based in Rotterdam and Brooklyn. Cohabitation Strategies’ urban practice combines action-research, planning, design, cultural production, art, and activism. Over the last 10 years, this non-profit has been engaged in projects of diverse scales and complexities commissioned by art, cultural, and academic institutions, as well as municipalities and government agencies in diverse countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Venezuela, Ecuador, Canada, and the United States. Rendón’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, the Istanbul Design Biennial 2012, the Vienna Biennale 2015, the Portugal Triennial 2016, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).