Overview

Insurgent Urbanisms are often portrayed as spontaneous, grassroots responses to the inequities embedded in urban policies and—operating entirely outside state structures. But are they truly autonomous? In Insurgent Urbanisms in the Americas, Kristine Stiphany and Edna Ely-Ledesma offer a new perspective on how struggles for more inclusive and equitable cities take shape—and how they transform the very institutions and spaces they confront. From Brazil’s favelas to Ecuador’s suburbios, and Puerto Rico’s hurricane-battered shores to the gentrified centers of U.S. cities, marginalized communities have long challenged dominant models of urban development. Over time, these struggles have not only resisted the status quo but have become new modes of urbanism and sites of planning. Stiphany and Ely-Ledesma show how insurgencies connect across places while remaining deeply context-specific—tracing their origins in housing movements, their evolution through co-produced knowledge, and their reinvention in response to climate crisis. Through powerful field research and firsthand activism, contributors reveal how insurgencies not only resist but actively reshape urban orders, built environments, and public landscapes—issuing a compelling call to make urbanism matter. This volume is essential reading for students, educators, and practitioners of design and urban planning, Latin American and Latinx studies, and spatial justice—anyone seeking to understand how insurgency becomes a method for transforming cities.

Full Product Details

Author:   Kristine Stiphany ,  Edna Ely-Ledesma
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.690kg
ISBN:  

9781032553818

ISBN 10:   1032553812
Pages:   262
Publication Date:   29 September 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Foreword Preface 1. Introduction: Insurgent Urbanisms Part 1. Origins: Insurgency and Urban Housing 2. Between local initiatives and policy responses: The Chilean experience of rental housing 3. Between Minimum Space and Maximum Profitability: New Forms of Residential Precarity in Rental Housing in Chile 4. From Utopia to Vernacular: Social Housing, Informality, and Right to the City in Guayaquil, Ecuador 5. Housing struggles and organizing in the wake of financialization in Mexico 6. Other Schools: Educational Infrastructures on São Paulo’s Peripheries 7. A Brief Genealogy of Peripheral Insurgencies in São Paulo, Brazil Part 2. Transformations: Insurgency and Knowledge Co-Construction 8. Faith-Based Organizations: A Pathway to Insurgent Planning in Seattle? 9. Community counter-mapping for urban upgrading in Fortaleza, Brazil 10. Attempts at Homogenization, Hybridization, and Contestation at the México/United States borderlands 11. ‘Socially charged possibilities’: Are political-spatial formulations in São Paulo reflective of a right to the city? 12. Affordable but Unhealthy: A Partial Right to the City in South Texas informal subdivisions Part 3. Evolutions: Insurgency and Environmental Justice 13. From Environmental Criminalization to Insurgent Environmental Justice: Occupying And Holding Ground In São Paulo's Southern Periphery 14. Balancing Access and Regenerating Habitats: Towards a Socio-Ecological Integration in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo Delta 15. Designing a New City Place: Green Infrastructure on the U.S.-Mexico Border 16. From infrastructure to environmental justice: The case of a multiracial unincorporated community in North Texas 17. Resisting Colonialismo Ambiental and Colonialismo Desastre: The Case of Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico 18. Reframing Waller Creek: Landscape as an agent of urban change 19. Conclusion: American Urbanism After a Right to the City

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Author Information

Kristine Stiphany is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University at Buffalo and the Director of the Design for Resilient Environments Lab. Her work examines how the aftereffects of urban redevelopment have created new architectures, landscapes, and building cultures, with a particular focus on Latin America and the U.S.–Mexico border. Edna Ely-Ledesma is an Associate Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the Kaufman Lab for the Study and Design of Food Systems and Marketplaces. Her research, teaching, and mentoring focuses on understanding the development of the smart, green, and just 21st century city.

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