About

Clara Irazábal is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of American Studies and an Affiliate Faculty member at the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center and the Urban Studies and Planning Program at the University of Maryland. Her research expertise encompasses community development, environmental justice, immigration, Latinx studies, urban studies, and US Latinx issues. She is based in College Park, MD, and can be contacted via her university email or phone. Her work focuses on issues related to urban communities, social justice, and Latinx populations, contributing to academic discussions and community development initiatives within these fields.

Research topics

• Political science
• Sociology
• Geography
• Humanities
• Environmental planning

Selected publications

• A Trauma-Informed Planning Framework (TIPF) for Immigrant Belonging

  Journal of the American Planning Association · 2026-01-28

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <scp>CARE INFRASTRUCTURES IN CHILE DURING THE PANDEMIC</scp>: Communitarian Weavings, Spaces and the Production of Common Goods

  International Journal of Urban and Regional Research · 2025-04-24 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The article addresses the role that communities played in managing the social and health crisis generated by the Covid‐19 pandemic in two Chilean cities. Chile is an interesting case study owing to its intense and prolonged confinement measures, which focused heavily on individuals and households. Using key concepts such as communitarian weavings and care infrastructures, this research delves into the experiences of two neighborhoods in Talca and Concepción, employing qualitative methods, participant observation techniques and interviews with key actors to explore the everyday nature of community care ties and infrastructures. The findings reveal that, despite state restrictions, people experienced confinement in close physical proximity within their neighborhoods. Four key observations emerged: first, people adapted their actions to respond flexibly to existing and new needs; second, physical spaces such as streets, squares and local businesses became vital interaction venues; third, communitarian weavings were partially (re)constructed virtually; and fourth, these weavings adjusted their actions to meet contextual demands, generating new common goods that addressed community needs. Lastly, care infrastructures complemented or replaced the state's inaction and the formal market. This illustrates that communitarian weavings demonstrated the flexibility to function effectively in diverse scenarios, both with and without state support.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Urban labyrinths: informal settlements, architecture, and social change in Latin America

  Journal of Urban Design · 2025-07-04

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Decolonizing planning studio pedagogy: grappling with tensions and dissonances

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2025-10-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Transbordering illegalized development: The secret lives of global urbanisms Jennifer Tucker, <i>Outlaw Capital: Everyday Illegalities and the Making of Uneven Development</i> . University of Georgia Press, 2023. $29.95 (paperback price). ISBN 978-0-8203-6448-3.

  Dialogues in Human Geography · 2025-09-19

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Latin American Perspectives on the Urban Century: Planning Challenges and Opportunities

  Latin American Perspectives · 2024-03-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• All in a Day’s Work: Impacts of On-Demand Platform Delivery Work on Immigrant Riders in Barcelona

  Economic geography · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Planning in Select Other Nations

  2024-05-16

  book-chapter

  Upon completing this chapter, you will be able to: Compare and contrast planning practices in the United States and Western Europe. Describe major planning issues in Eastern Europe. Describe major planning issues in Latin America. Describe major planning issues in Asian countries.

  PublisherDOI

• “What Do We Want? Housing! When Do We Want It? Now!” Building a Social Movement in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and Housing Injustice

  Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Homelessness and housing insecurity are often isolating experiences in the United States, where housing and well-being are constructed as individual responsibilities. In this context, mobilization around housing injustice can be challenging. The authors argue that the intersection of the Black Lives Matter protests, the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, and housing injustice created a powder keg for social action that was capitalized upon by a local tenant union and social movement organization called Kansas City Tenants. Through a real-time analysis of Kansas City Tenants, a grassroots organization with national reach, the authors explore how it managed to recruit diverse members to the organization, direct sustainable and impactful action toward the needs of those in crisis, and lay the groundwork for future policy and revolutionary initiatives both institutionally and extrainstitutionally.

  PublisherDOI

• &lt;p&gt;Urban Planning and Heterodox Economics in the United States: Progressive Partners to Reduce Inequalities&lt;/p&gt;

  2023-02-09

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  As humanity becomes ever more urbanized, the urban environment is an ever more effective area in which to intervene in order to reduce inequalities. However, many of the urban policy interventions with the intended result of reducing inequalities are paradoxically perpetuating them. We discuss how this is the case in the context of US housing policy—particularly as it pertains to the role of underlying racial-ethnic and socio-spatial inequality in generating uneven housing outcomes—where the very policies claiming to be progressive expand existing group-based and place-based inequalities. We explore methods of overcoming this paradox by illustrating how heterodox economics and urban planning in practice could synergistically reinforce their respective disciplinary aspirations to speed up a transition to a more equitable world. In doing so, we highlight how calls for a Jobs Guarantee program, derived from heterodox economics, together with the support of locally based planning initiatives and a Homes Guarantee program, could bring us much further than we have come before toward reducing inequalities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Luis Troncoso

  Catholic University of the Maule

  6 shared

• Isabelle Anguelovski

  Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

  4 shared

• Verónica Tapia

  Hospital Son Llatzer

  4 shared

• Núria Benach

  4 shared

• James J. Connolly

  4 shared

• Macarena Gómez‐Barris

  Providence College

  3 shared

• Jordan Ayala

  Bard College

  3 shared

• John Foley

  Baxter (United States)

  3 shared

Education

• PhD Architecture/Planning, College of Environmental Design

  University of California Berkeley

  2002