Diane E. Davis

Diane E. Davis is Professor of Regional Development and Urbanism and former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). She also is the director of the Mexican Cities Initiative at the GSD, Co-Director of the CIFAR program, Humanity’s Urban Future, and faculty chair of the committee on Mexico at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. Trained as a sociologist with an interest in cities in Latin America Davis’ research interests include the relations between urbanization and national development, urban governance, urban social movements, and informality, with a special emphasis on Mexico. Her current research focuses on spatial strategies to minimize risk and foster resilience in the face of climate-related vulnerabilities and other precarities. Books include Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (2011) and Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (1994).