ABOUT

Worldwide, Urban Front works to make cities more equitable by connecting grassroots knowledge and infrastructures to our own committed areas of expertise, by being a bridge between progressive governments and organizations in charge of implementing public measures.

Members of Urban Front have decades of experience addressing critical issues including housing rights, environmental justice, public health, cultural action, urban planning, and political strategy. They are internationally renowned practitioners and have held high-level positions in public office or progressive public funded organizations. Our strength lies in our ability to bring together this expertise to create a unique transnational and transdisciplinary group that offers new highly localized knowledge to the many public and third-sector organizations that work for socio-spatial and environmental justice.

What we do

The strength of Urban Front is in the transdisciplinarity of their members who combined experience aim to rethink, redesign and transform urban life towards the eradication of inequalities through the promotion and facilitation of participatory and plural governance, spatial and environmental justice, and political and cultural strategy.

We engage honestly with community members to assist them in determining the future of their surroundings. Our services are based in a grassroots approach that emphasizes listening and advocacy on behalf of those most deeply impacted. Potential strategies include forming teams made up of a diversity of people from across social sectors, the municipality, and the location where we are working. Together, this team visualizes the complexity and turns political and economic desires into realistic change.

Cities are complex ecologies where all social, economic, cultural, environmental, spatial, and political issues are interconnected. We approach every urban issue with this holistic vision and help progressive governments reveal the many hidden interconnections that can make all the difference when making important decisions. The members of Urban Front are globally recognized pioneers in the development of transdisciplinary strategies, we have decades of experience helping public and social sectors take action to achieve the transformative outcomes they desire.

We work to advance just economic structures founded in democratic principles and respect for the environment. Urban Front provides municipal governments support for the development of cooperatives that are embedded in the local territory, drawing upon the resources already present. These have the potential to strengthen community ties, develop fair and dignified working relationships, and protect the local environment.

In light of increasing uneven development, new policy frameworks and implementation instruments able to lead and regulate the ongoing restructuring and growth of cities are needed. Equitable development requires a redistribution of local and global investment for the benefit of all people.

We offer alternative political-economic strategies built to sustain the success of community and environment. These economic services are rooted in cooperation, democratic processes, and the common good. Our network includes experts in systems change and we work closely with clients to propose models that speak to local conditions.

Our team is skilled in designing public policy for cooperative affordable housing. Our strategy entails advocating for a right to housing, avoiding real estate financialization, and proposing other forms of property without compromising tenure security. We follow a legal framework that optimizes public resources earmarked for housing that anticipates the permanence of the target populations to be housed.. This approach is rooted in affordable housing financed by the State, with the active participation of residents that creates both economic savings and a strong sense of belonging. The resulting community property shields against real estate speculation while guaranteeing a valid form of housing security.

Citizens hold valuable local knowledge about their community and territory but often have little access to the external forces that shape their living environments and need support leveraging their expertise to lead local development. Urban Front is committed to work with communities to design and implement participatory and pedagogical tools that allow communities to self-diagnose and plan according to their own needs, priorities, and visions.

Developmental strategies and practices that ensure livable, self-sustaining communities over the long term are essential to all cities. Urban Front advocates for implementing policies to lower consumption of natural resources and reduce overall impact on the environment. We understand the impacts of climate change and incorporate sustainable plans for clean air and water, renewable energy, and land use.

Fair and sustainable mobility involves freeing cities from cars as they are responsible for such harmful effects as spatial injustice, urban sprawl, noise and air pollution, and global warming. For this, it is necessary to implement policies that can cultivate compact cities which favor an active (walking or pedaling) and collective (public transport) mobility.

The challenge of environmental and social justice needs comprehensive strategies, that combine innovative impact responses and community engagement processes. New approaches to reduce social and physical vulnerability and the collision of human interventions with the environment. In Urban Front we combine scientific, technical and social capabilities to give effective answers with high replicability potential.

Cities must guarantee the well-being of cities’ social fabric by meeting the physiological and emotional needs of vulnerable bodies, namely children, the elderly, the sick, or the disabled. We recognize that care work and maintenance tends to be gendered labor. Therefore, cities must equip themselves with networks of public or socially co-produced services that democratize both access to care and its execution.

A comprehensive strategy against gentrification requires defending housing and retail businesses from the increase in rental prices, adulteration of uses, and speculative emptying. To do so, public policies must civilize the real estate market, strengthen the stock of affordable housing and commercial premises, and foster the social co-production of empowering responses such as cooperativism.

Women-identifying, gender-non conforming and minority groups, such as immigrants and people of color, have demonstrated being active leaders in the transformation of their communities. Acknowledging the power of local organizing, Urban Front is dedicated to working with women and minority groups to build capacity, eliminate barriers to urban and community development, and increase access to information and opportunities to build leadership.

The ways of enacting politics are undergoing radical changes. It is necessary to prioritize affection and empathy when engaging in politics, as well as having the ability to clearly transmit the horizon towards which policies are aimed. Urban Front offers support in the construction of inclusive urban models, application of bottom-up methodologies, listening methods, construction of discourse, and the generation of consensus.

Artists have always been at the forefront of movements for change. They are among our most flexible and innovative thinkers, often suggesting entirely new ways to encounter the world thrIn light of increasing uneven development, new policy frameworks and implementation instruments able to lead and regulate the ongoing restructuring and growth of cities are needed. Equitable development requires a redistribution of local and global investment for the benefit of all people. ough their work. Some artists have focused their entire working practice on addressing social, economic, environmental, and artistic issues and the power of their work can be leveraged to confront stubborn, systemic challenges towards a more just society. Urban Front is committed to engaging artists, their projects, and ideas to radically shift the ways in which we approach all variety of contemporary ills, particularly within the context of reimagining the ways in which we live, work, and govern outside of the limits of neo-liberal, capitalist models.

Our urban spaces are full of imagination and new plans but for whom are they intended? At Urban Front, we aim to facilitate community and municipalities in a transformative process to re-imagine their own environments, to create different images of what success looks like. To think about collective spatial practice, we need to shift from participation to co-design/co-authorship. This process must remain transparent and iterative.