Clara Irazábal

Clara Irazábal is the Director of the Urban Studies and Planning Program (URSP) at the University of Maryland (UMD), where she researches and teaches about the interactions of culture, politics, and placemaking and their impact on community development and socio-spatial justice. Her work departs from a normative premise: Planning should be emancipatory—lead to outcomes that liberate communities from oppressive socio-spatial conditions. Her research exposes the many guises under which planning fails to deliver on its emancipatory promise and points to ways of overcoming this paradox. 
 

Research Interests:

• Community development and planning in Latin America, in/with US POC, Latinx, and immigrant communities
• Urban studies and planning theory
   

Affiliations:

Faculty Affiliations at UMD

• National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education (NCSG)
• Historic Preservation Program (HISP)
• Department of American Studies (AMST)
• The U.S. Latina/o Studies Program (USLT)
• Latin American Studies Center (LASC)
   

Professional Affiliations

Current Professional Affiliations

• Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP, international network, USA-based) and its groups, 2002-: Faculty Women Interest Group (FWIG); Planners of Color Interest Group (POCIG); Global Planning Educators Interest Group (GPEIG); Global Planning Education Committee (GPEG)
• American Planning Association (APA, international network, USA-based) ID# 144408), its editorial board, and its group, 2002-: Latinos and Planning Interest Group
• Urban Affairs Association (UAA, international network, USA-based), 2021-
• Latin American Studies Association (LASA, international network, USA-based), 2002-
• Planners Network (PN, international network, USA-based) and its editorial board, 2000-
• Fixed-Term Graduate Faculty at University of Missouri, Kansas City (for dissertation advice), 2025-
   

Past Professional Affiliations

• International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE, international network, USA-based) and its editorial board, 1994-2021.
• The Urban History Association
• Gender and Race Intersections in Planning Lab (GRIP Lab, www.griplab.org) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Venezuelan Architects Association (CAV) and Venezuelan Society of Engineers, Architects and Related Professions (CIV)
• Fixed-Term Graduate Faculty at University of North Carolina (for dissertation advice)