Clara Irazábal-Zurita

Irazábal-Zurita has spent more than two decades exploring social and spatial justice through the lens of urban planning and design. In her research and teaching, she explores the interactions of culture, politics, and placemaking, and their impact on community development and socio-spatial justice in Latin American cities and U.S. Latinx, immigrant, and minority communities. She is the author of "City Making and Urban Governance in the Americas: Curitiba and Portland," which illustrates the government-community synergy in two cities successfully navigating rapid growth, and has written and spoken extensively on the cultural, economic, political and racial issues that shape urban enclaves.

Irazábal-Zurita has worked as consultant, researcher, and/or professor in countries of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She is a lecturer at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, where she annually teaches a course in a European Erasmus Mundus program. She has taught award-winning planning and multidisciplinary studios internationally in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Trinidad and Tobago; and domestically in Latinx, Black, and immigrant/refugee communities.