Gabriela Rendón
HOUSING POLICY, COOPERATIVE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT, and Neighborhood Initiatives
Community planning, equitable development, solidarity economies, community land trusts, women-led community practices, urban pedagogies, action research
Rendón (Mexico/New York, USA) is a researcher and urban planner committed to social and spatial justice. Her expertise spans housing policy —development, rehabiliation and preservation— as well as community planning, community land trusts and cooperative housing development.
She co-founded Cohabitation Strategies, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering communities through action-research and long-term, community-driven projects. As a precursor of Urban Front, Cohabitation Strategies carried out projects commissioned by nonprofit foundations, public agencies, municipalities, and national governments across cities in Western Europe, South America, and North America.
Rendón has worked closely with immigrant women and low-income community groups building capacity, creating alliances, developing community plans, and implementing housing and neighborhood initiatives. Some of her policy-focused projects include developing land legislation to introduce Community Land Trusts in the Republic of Ecuador and designing a rent stabilization program for Mexico City aimed at curbing rising rents and mitigating gentrification in central neighborhoods.
Other projects include Cooperative Housing Trusts: A Hybrid Tenure Model for New York City, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, and Playgrounds for Useful Knowledge, commissioned by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. Her work has been exhibited at 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, 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).
Rendón is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development at The New School in New York City, where she is the founding director of the Housing Justice Lab, a platform for dialog, research and strategic design that advocates for equitable neighborhood development.
She has authored and co-edited publications on housing, cooperative urban practices, and neighborhood restructuring, the latest include Social Property and the Need of a New Urban Practice (Co-author, Taylor & Francis), and Cooperative Cities (Co-editor, Journal of Design Strategies). She is about to publish the co-authored bookThoughts and Actions for the Co-Production of Social Space (ORO Editions, expected in 2026). And she is currently working on the book Defiant Neighborhoods: Rise, Revitalization, and Gentrification of Immigrant Communities in Latinx Brooklyn (NYU Press, expected in 2026), and co-editing alongside Silvia Emanelli De Gruyter Handbook for Housing Justice (De Gruyter, expected in 2027).