My research interests developed out of my observations of car-centric environments and the way that automobile transportation creates alienating and fragmented urban spaces. The roads connecting the city also served to disconnect areas and create sprawling inhospitable environments for pedestrians and bikers. More than the ills of car-centrism, I was struck by the inability or unwillingness of those around me to imagine different mobility options. I realized that the struggle to imagine possible futures was a deeply spatial question. I’m motivated by pursuing a deeper understanding of the ways that different futures get concretely produced through space and the means of altering these path dependencies. My research aims to excavate the possibilities for urban life through critical engagement with the mobilities that support and shape the urban fabric. As such, my research engages with the unique temporalities of infrastructure, their specific historical production, present crises, and their role as speculative vehicles that shape the future. I am ultimately asking about the spatiality of power and the power of space. How do specific values or understandings of the world manifest in space and how do these spaces in turn act on populations?

Faculty Advisor: Veronica Jacome