About the speakers

Fitzroy Christian is a leader of the tenant-organizing movement CASA (Community Action for Safe Apartments) who has been living and mobilizing for social justice in the Southwest Bronx for five decades.

Gabriela Rendón is an urban planner, researcher, author and educator committed to social and spatial justice based in New York City. She is the co-founder of Urban Front, a transnational consultancy that advises progressive governments, institutions, and communities committed to advance just urban futures rooted in the fair distribution of prosperity, rights, and power across all social, gender, and class groups in society.

She is also Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development and the founder director of the Parsons Housing Justice Lab at The New School. Over the last twenty years, she has worked in urban, housing, and community-based projects commissioned by art and cultural institutions, as well as municipalities and public agencies in diverse cities in Western Europe, North America, and South America. 

Rendón holds a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning and Strategy and an M.S. in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. She is the author and co-editor of various publications. She is currently completing her first solo book Defiant Neighborhoods: Rise, Revitalization, and Gentrification of Immigrant Communities in Latinx Brooklyn (NYU Press), and co-authoring the book Cohabitation Strategies: Thoughts and Visions for the Co-Production of Social Space (ORO Editions), both slated to be published in late 2026.  In addition, she is co-editing the De Gruyter Handbook of Housing Justice alongside Silvia Emanuelli, coordinator of Habitat International Coalition–Latin America.