Isabel Brain

Background

About Isabel Brain

I am an urban sociologist. I hold a PhD in Development Planning from UCL and a Master's in Public Administration from Harvard. I have extensive experience in academic and applied research through consultancy projects. My research aims at contributing to both the academic debate on the patterns of urban growth in southern regions and urban policymaking, leading initiatives on housing and urban policies, and collaborating with professionals from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. Throughout my career, I've sharpened my skills in comparative urban policy analysis covering North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, focusing on the relationship between the land market, housing policies, and urban social segregation. I have also run academic research and policy analysis on citizen participation, land readjustment in post-disaster recovery, inclusionary housing, multilevel governance of urban affairs, and the geography of opportunity and its impact on people's life chances- My PhD research focused on the academic debate on urban regeneration and repopulation of inner city areas in the Global South, taking the city of Santiago de Chile as a case study. My research represents an effort to look differently at these processes by bringing forward the concept of hybridity. The need to analyse inner cities' change in the South from a different perspective has been claimed by scholars studying cities worldwide who have raised the problem of north-south theory transposition/imposition. The main argument supporting this assertion is that using concepts and theories from north-western cities to understand urban change in southern cities generates a theory-reality mismatch. This mismatch conceals relevant aspects of cities' change in the South and, by so doing, inhibits a proper understanding of urban dynamics happening outside the realm of cities in the North.