Locally-led housing action needed to accelerate the UN’s urban SDG
Blog, 13 July 2023
Camila Cociña
Researcher (housing justice), Human Settlements research group
Camila Cociña is a development planner and architect, whose work focuses on housing, urban equality, gender, informality and participatory urban governance. She has worked on collaborative projects with researchers, communities, international agencies and public organisations in Latin America, West Africa and Southeast Asia, seeking for fairer ways of mobilising knowledge from a social justice perspective.
Expertise
Housing justice; urban equality; gender; informality; participation; local governments.
Before IIED
- Research fellow, Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality (KNOW) programme, University College London
- Teaching fellow, the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London
Education
- PhD development planning, University College London
- MSc building and urban design in development, University College London
- Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Current work
Camila is currently co-convening IIED’s work on housing justice, working across several projects. These include the action-research project 'Civic media for housing rights: lessons from struggles against evictions in São Paulo and Lagos', several collaborations with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) around the role of local governments in advancing the right to housing, and research about the human development value of improving housing in informal settlements.
Camila is currently based in Santiago de Chile, working closely with local initiatives and networks. She is particularly interested in questions around how housing knowledge is produced, mobilised and actioned, from a social justice and feminist perspective.
