Exploring Urban Environmental Futures
I designed and led a project examining how urban environmental futures are shaped in Cartagena de Indias, a city marked by deep socio-spatial inequalities, infrastructural fragmentation, and ecological pressure. The research explored how questions of space, agency, and climate justice are negotiated in everyday life, with particular attention to processes of social belonging, racialized urban politics, and forms of infrastructural belonging emerging around water, sanitation, and uneven service provision.
Combining ethnographic research with urban analysis, the project examined how environmental challenges are lived and contested across different parts of the city, focusing in particular on the Centro Histórico and Comuna 6, bordering the Ciénaga de la Virgen, Cartagena’s largest urban water body. It traced how residents engage with, adapt to, and rework fragile urban environments, showing how claims to the city are articulated through everyday practices, material infrastructures, and situated forms of knowledge.
The project was carried out in collaboration with the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá and funded by the Leading House Latin America, University of St. Gallen (2022–2023).
