Isabelle Anguelovski

Director

Isabelle is an ICREA Research Professor, Principal Investigator, and former Head of the Gender, Diversity, and Wellbeing Committee at ICTA-UAB. She currently coordinates BCNUEJ, a Catalan-funded SGR research group. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Studies from Sciences Po Lille, a Master’s in International Development from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Harvard University, and a PhD in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT. She returned to Europe in 2011 with a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship.

Her research examines how environmental injustices are produced, experienced, and contested across urban and territorial contexts. First, she analyzes the politics of the “green city” as a dominant planning paradigm, focusing on how sustainability, climate neutrality, and nature-based solutions are framed, governed, and unevenly implemented. Second, she investigates the social, racial, and spatial dynamics of green and climate gentrification, examining how environmental and climate interventions reshape housing markets, displacement pressures, and everyday life in historically marginalized communities. Third, she advances a justice-oriented approach to health and wellbeing, linking urban environments, climate exposures, and unequal access to nature and care infrastructures. Fourth, she studies tactical urbanism and sustainable mobility as key arenas of urban transformation, analyzing how experimental interventions and mobility reforms generate contestation, uneven impacts, and struggles over legitimacy, participation, and democratic governance in sustainability transitions.

Between 2016 and 2025, she was the Principal Investigator of two ERC projects: GreenLULUs (Starting Grant), which examined green inequalities across 40 cities in Europe, the United States, and Canada, and ClimateJusticeReady (Proof of Concept), which focused on predicting and preventing green gentrification. She currently co-leads Rehousin, a Horizon Europe project addressing housing inequalities in the context of the green transition.

CV  Google Scholar

Keywords

  • Comparative urbanism
  • Urban planning
  • Environmental justice
  • Environmental Gentrification
  • Political Economy of Urban Development
  • Sustainability Planning
  • Vulnerability and Resilience in Climate Adaptation Planning
  • Urban Health Inequalities

Affiliated Projects

Selected Publications

  • Anguelovski, I., Kotsila, P., Lees, L. et al. From heat racism and heat gentrification to urban heat justice in the USA and Europe. Nat Cities 2, 8–16 (2025).

  • Planas-Carbonell, A., Anguelovski, I., Oscilowicz, E., Perez de Pulgar, C., & Shokry, G. 2023. From greening the climate-adaptive city to green climate gentrification? Short-lived benefits and mixed social effects in Boston, Philadelphia, Amsterdam and Barcelona. Urban Climate.     

  • Anguelovski, I., Corbera, E. 2023. Integrating justice in Nature-Based Solutions to avoid nature-enabled dispossession. Ambio. 1-9.
  • Anguelovski, I. and Connolly J. JT. 2024. Segregating by greening: What do we mean by green gentrification. Journal of Planning Literature.
  • Oscilowicz, E., Anguelovski, I.., García-Lamarca​, M., Cole, H. V., Shokry, G., Perez-del-Pulgar, C., . . . Connolly, J. J. 2023. Grassroots mobilization for a just, green urban future: Building community infrastructure against green gentrification and displacement. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1-34.
  • Anguelovski, I.., Honey-Rosés, J., & Marquet, O. 2023. Equity concerns in transformative planning: Barcelona’s Superblocks under scrutiny. Cities & Health, 1-9. 
  • Shokry, G., Anguelovski, I., & Connolly, J. J. 2023. (Mis-) belonging to the climate-resilient city: Making place in multi-risk communities of racialized urban America. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1-21.
  • Amorim‐Maia, A. T., Anguelovski, I., Chu, E., & Connolly, J. 2023. Governing intersectional climate justice: Tactics and lessons from Barcelona. Environmental policy and governance. 
  • Calderón-Argelich, A., Anguelovski, I., Connolly, J. J., & Baró, F. 2023. Greening plans as (re) presentation of the city: Toward an inclusive and gender-sensitive approach to urban greenspaces. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 127984.
  • Kotsila, P. & Anguelovski, I. 2023. Justice should be at the centre of assessments of climate change impacts on health. The Lancet public health, 8 (1).
  • Garcia-Lamarca, M., Anguelovski, I., Venner, K. 2022. Challenging the financial capture of urban greening. Nature Communications.