Faculty Affiliates
Access to water, sanitation, and other basic services, local and regional environmental sustainability, public participation and collaborative governance
Public policy and urban governance processes, organization theory, public administration, political sociology and network analysis, Western Europe
U.S. local and state politics, public sector unions, women in politics, public employee pensions
Multi-hazard stressors on geotechnical engineering infrastructure; lifeline response to natural disasters; designing, monitoring and reinforcing lifelines; advanced sensing; vibrations from pile driving in dense urban environments
Sai Balakrishnan is an Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning, in a joint appointment with DCRP and GMS (Global Metropolitan Studies). Her research and teaching broadly pivot around global urban inequalities, with a particular focus on urbanization and planning institutions in the global south, and on the spatial politics of land-use and property. She has worked as an urban planner in the United States, India, and the United Arab Emirates, and as a consultant to the UN-HABITAT, Nairobi. Her book, Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations along Urban Corridors in India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) explores new forms of urbanization along infrastructural / economic corridors in liberalizing India. Balakrishnan is currently working on two books: i) global-comparative research on the transfer of development rights (TDRs), a new land (and air) commodification instrument, in Mumbai, New York and São Paulo, and ii) in collaboration with historian Arindam Dutta (MIT), a spatial mapping of infrastructural inequalities and the new geographies of uneven development in post-liberalization India.
Modelling and control of distributed parameters systems: large scale infrastructure systems, transportation, water distribution
Anna Livia Brand is an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. Her research focuses on the historical urban and environmental development and contemporary planning and landscape design challenges in Black mecca neighborhoods in the American North and South. Anna’s work examined how redevelopment paradigms in the 21st century reflect ongoing racialization and the compounding landscapes of racial capitalism. In her scholarship and creative work, she also gives focus to reparative and abolitionist imaginaries that counter racial oppression. Her work on post-Katrina New Orleans examines how racial geographies have been reconstructed after the storm through disciplines like urban planning.
Comparative urban studies, social theory, ethnography and qualitative methodology, Brazil, democratization, cultural movements
Environmental and reparative justice, green infrastructure and stormwater management, anti-racism in engineering education, food-energy-water systems, community engagement and development
Literature and philosophy, aesthetic theory, the novel, early modern Europe
Population stressors for gestation, maternal health
(Emeritus)
Transportation Planning; Transportation and Land Use; Infrastructure Planning; Growth Management planning; International Development
(Emerita)
Housing, community and economic development, regional planning, residential and commercial/industrial displacement
Social theory, political economy, development, agrarian studies, labor and work, racial/sexual capitalism, Black radical tradition, biopolitical struggle, oceanic humanities, photography, South Asia, South Africa, Indian Ocean
Land use and development policies, public transportation services, travel patterns and residential choices of immigrants to the U.S.
(Emerita)
Intergovernmental Relations, Evaluation, Housing Policy, Organizational Theory, Planning Theory
climate emergency; political economy; eco-apartheid; inequalities of race and class; urban studies; political sociology
Soviet urban planning and post-Soviet urban and social welfare transformation; infrastructure and politics; neoliberalism and governmental rationality; emergency government in the United States; urban vulnerability and resilience; climate change
Urban spatial politics, activism and cultural identity, queer culture, neoliberal globalization, nationalism, collective violence
(Emerita)
Transportation policy, planning and analysis; land use policy and planning; legal and regulatory issues; institutions and organizations; energy and the environment, new technologies
Urbanization, remote sensing, spatial analysis, urban heat exposure, green infrastructure, resilience, restoration, wetland and urban landscape ecology
(Emeritus)
Globalization, Labor Movements, States, Development
Children, health inequality, immigrant health, nutrition, public health
I am an economic geographer and critical urban scholar, and I study how financial processes and digital technologies are shifting the terrain of the housing question in the 21st century. In addition to teaching in Global Metropolitan Studies and my home department of Geography, I am also a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation and an editor at the journal Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.
Graduate courses: GMS200: Histories, Theories, and Methods of Global Metropolitan Studies; GEOG247: Digital Transformations in Land, Housing, and Property
Personal website: https://www.desireefields.org/
Applied microeconomics, development economics, political economy
Social-cultural anthropology, media, music and sound, photography and cinema, Australia
Transportation policy and planning, Major infrastructure projects, American politics and conservative views about planning
Architecture and city planning in the Italian colonies
Drinking water treatment, innovation, social placement of technology, systems thinking, energy efficiency, global impact, developing world
Race and ethnic politics, urban politics, bureaucratic politics, policing, criminal justice reform, quantitative methods
Urban sciences, Social networks, People and the built and natural environment
Development economics, urban economics, subway infrastructure, rural land titling, road infrastructure, crime, and political economy
Natural materials innovation, resilient buildings, multiscale design
Environmental planning; climate planning; sustainability and resilience; environmental and climate justice; geographic and spatial analysis; urban policy and political economy; environmental governance; community engagement
(Emeritus)
Modeling individual choice behavior, demand forecasting, conservation, environmental regulation and economic valuation
Transportation economics, policy and planning, air transportation, public transportation
Poverty, inequality, causal inference, mixed methods, incarceration and prisoner reentry, education, neighborhood effects, urban communities, adolescence
Molecular virology, pathogenesis, immunology, epidemiology, scientific capacity building in developing countries
America since 1607: 19th Century, urban, cultural
Cities and citizenship, political theory, democracy and law, planning and architecture, urban ethnography, Brazil, the Americas
Energy, climate, civil infrastructure, engineering, project management
Political economy of development in East Asia, power and space, cultural and environmental politics, urbanization, China
Renewable energy systems, health and environmental impacts of energy generation and use, international R&D policy, climate change, energy forecasting and risk analysis
Transportation planning and systems analysis, air transportation
Trusted and reliable network computing, smart cities, data science, smart buildings, smart grids
Cities and hydrology, river-city relations, urban river revitalization, fluvial geomorphology, environmental planning
Information technology, the American Metropolis, globalization, global governance, diasporic communities, multiculturalism, urban neighborhoods in US, France, Berlin and London
Urban climate change adaptation, flooding, urban design for climate justice, affordable housing, shared equity housing
Politics, criminal justice, privatization, public opinion, and political behavior
Inequality, discrimination, education, tracking, college entry, effectively maintained inequality theory, research methods, sample design, causality, epistemologies, agent-based modeling, and research statistics
Urban design, history of urban form, sustainable urban form, street and public space design, waterfront promenades
Structural determinants of environmental health disparities, air pollution and perinatal outcomes, environmental justice, social movements, science, and environmental health policy-making
Water, transport, monuments, urban China (early empires, 11th century, contemporary)
Southeast Asia, China, modernity, cities, governance, science, technology and society studies, contemporary art
Post was hired through the Global Metropolitan Studies initiative to enhance the university’s strength in comparative urban studies. Her research lies at the intersection of comparative urban politics and comparative political economy, focusing on Latin America and the developing world more broadly. It examines the political and institutional factors affecting vital urban services such as water and sanitation, mass transit, and electricity. She has received U.C. Berkeley’s campus-wide Carol D. Soc award for mentoring graduate students. She is one of the primary instructors for the core courses for the Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies (GMS 200 and GMS201).
Equity, affordability and access to water in low-income regions, gender, sanitation
Environmental planning, community development, environmental justice, stormwater management, urban design
Public transportation, urban sustainability, urban health, environment and health impacts of traveler behaviors
Poverty, gangs, crime, violence, race and ethnic relations
Sustainable building design, energy efficiency, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, energy simulation, post-occupancy evaluation
Transportation, wireless communications and inertial navigation for vehicle systems
Infrastructure sensing, geotechnical structures, ground engineering, soil and granular mechanics, deep geomechanics, energy and engineering sustainability, soil-bio interaction, geoenvironmental engineering
(Emeritus)
Morphology of the post-industrial city; street design and regulation; design of public space; analysis, design, and management of large scale urban environmental quality; user needs assessment; children’s conception and use of the city
Climate change, coastal erosion, critical infrastructure resiliency, fluid dynamics
Chinese elite society (9th to 11th century), Late Tang capital cities, Song-Liao border during the 11th century, death and death rituals
urban economics, development economics, economic geography, applied microeconomics
Political sociology, social movements, religion, Islam and the Middle East, culture, poverty and class, social theory, ethnography
“Urban inequality and marginality, incarnation and habitus, the penal state, ethnoracial domination, politics of reason, classical and contemporary social theory “
Urban economics, land use and transportation, urban simulation, urban informatics, visualization
Walker was hired through the Global Metropolitan Studies initiative to enhance the university’s strength in urban infrastructure systems. Her research focuses on transportation systems, with a particular focus on behavioral modeling. She works to improve the models that are used for transportation planning, policy, and operations. Walker currently serves as a Co-Director of GMS, and she is one of the primary instructors for the core courses for the Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies (GMS 200 and GMS201).
(Ermeritus)
Human geography, political economy, global capitalism
(Emerita)
Sustainable urbanism, urban design and public health, homeless and human service delivery, animal-society relations
Labor and creativity, modern and contemporary art, intellectual property, China, consumer cultures, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen
Asian history, East Asian studies, Qing and Modern China, Shanghai