Jota Samper

About

Professor Jota Samper is an Assistant Professor in the Program in Environmental Design at the University of Colorado Boulder. His work includes a focus on planning and urban design, exemplified by his involvement in the Medellin Global Seminar: Colombian Displaced Communities: Planning and Urban Design. This seminar is a five-week abroad program in Medellin, Colombia, which provides hands-on planning studio experience and collaborates directly with the community of Manantiales to develop community development plans that facilitate engagement with state officials. Professor Samper's contributions have been recognized with the 2019-20 Faculty Outreach Award for this work, highlighting his commitment to community-engaged planning and urban design.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Economics
• Political Science
• Economic growth
• Geography
• Pathology
• Intensive care medicine
• Archaeology
• Medicine
• Environmental planning

Selected publications

• Mapping repertoires of collective action facing the COVID-19 pandemic in informal settlements in Latin American cities

  Environment and Urbanization · 2020 · 83 citations

  How are civil society organizations responding to COVID-19’s impacts on informal settlements? In Latin America, civil society organizations have developed a repertoire of collective action, seeking to provide immediate and medium-term responses to the emergency. This paper aims to map these initiatives and identify strategic approaches to tackle the issues, given the strengths of those undertaking the initiative, and the scope, purpose and sphere of intervention. Using direct contact, a survey,…

  PublisherDOI

• The Paradox of Informal Settlements Revealed in an ATLAS of Informality: Findings from Mapping Growth in the Most Common Yet Unmapped Forms of Urbanization

  Sustainability · 2020 · 66 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Informal settlements are the most common form of urbanization on the planet, accounting for one-third of the total urban form. It is expected that by the mid twenty-first century, up to three billion people will live in informal urban environments. However, we lack a consistent mapping method to pinpoint where that informality is located or how it expands. This paper presents the findings from a collection of standardized measurements of 260 informal settlements across the world. The main resear…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Global Estimate of the Size and Location of Informal Settlements

  Urban Science · 2024-03-05 · 39 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Slums are a structural feature of urbanization, and shifting urbanization trends underline their significance for the cities of tomorrow. Despite their importance, data and knowledge on slums are very limited. In consideration of the current data landscape, it is not possible to answer one of the most essential questions: Where are slums located? The goal of this study is to provide a more nuanced understanding of the geography of slums and their growth trajectories. The methods rely on the comb…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Eroded resilience, Informal settlements predictable urban growth implications for self-governance in the context of urban violence in Medellin, Colombia.

  DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2017-08-30 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Scholars have vastly explored incremental growth of informal settlements as one of their defining features. Most of this work has focused on the family unit scale, concentrating on housing asset growth as related to the family historical narrative, legal status, social image, and financing. However, little has been explored about how this relates to the neighborhood scale and, more importantly, how the type of density growth impacts urban form, governance structures, and community social ties, w…

  PublisherDOI

• Testing the Informal Development Stages Framework Globally: Exploring Self-Build Densification and Growth in Informal Settlements

  Urban Science · 2023-05-09 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article challenges the narrow definition of informal settlements as solely lacking a formal framework, which overlooks the dynamic city-making and urban design processes within these areas. Communities’ self-building processes and areas’ constant growth are indeed informal settlements’ most salient morphological features. The study builds upon the informal development stages (IDS) framework and explores how it applies globally. The research follows a sample of fifty informal settlements wit…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Erika Andrade

  University of Colorado System

  4 shared

• José Javier Mediavilla Bravo

  3 shared

• M. Seguí Díaz

  Departamento de Salud

  3 shared

• Francisco Barrera

  3 shared

• A. Barquilla García

  Complejo Hospitalario de Cáceres

  3 shared

• Juan Francisco Merino-Torres

  Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe

  2 shared

• Núria Plana

  Institut d'Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili

  2 shared

• José Antonio Rubio

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D. Doctor of Philosophy in Urban and Regional Planning, DUSP

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2014

Awards & honors

• 2019-20 Faculty Outreach Award for the Medellin Global Semin…

Similar researchers at University of Colorado Boulder

• Kevin J. Krizekh-45
• Shawhin Roudbarih-6
• Susannah Drakeh-1