Mexican Cities Initiative: 2026 Symposium

Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism in the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Davis served as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design from 2015-2019. Before to moving to the GSD in 2011, Davis was the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also had a term as Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. Trained as a sociologist, Davis’ research interests include the relations between urbanization and national development, comparative urban governance, sociospatial practice in conflict cities, urban violence, and new territorial manifestations of sovereignty. Her books include Transforming Urban Transport (with Alan Altshuler, Oxford University Press, 2018), Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (Indiana University Press, 2011), Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America(Cambridge University Press, 2004; named the American Sociological Association’s Best Book in Political Sociology in 2005), Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press, 1994).

A prior recipient of research fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the United States Institute for Peace, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Davis recently authored a study of Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence, prepared for United States Agency for International Development, which examines the coping and adapting strategies adopted by citizens and authorities to push back against violence in seven cities around the world. She has just completed two separate initiatives, for which she was Principal Investigator: a three year project funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations focused on the role of political leadership in transforming urban transport and a three year project funded by Mexico’s national workers’ housing agency (INFONAVIT) oriented toward developing more sustainable social housing policies for Mexican cities. Founder and curator of the Mexican Cities Initiative at the GSD, Davis is Chair of the David Rockefeller Center’s Faculty Committee on Mexico, member of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Executive Committee, and a contributing editor for the Library of Congress, Handbook of Latin American Studies. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, City and Community, and the Journal of Latin American Studies.

Lorena Bello Gómez is Design Critic in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Through international grants, she works with local foundations and NGOs in collaboration with interdisciplinary teams as a way to connect design expertise and political will to positively impact regenerative change and climatic adaptation. She has received support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in Spain (2016), the Aga Khan Foundation in India (2017-2018), Fundación Social in Colombia (2017-), TUMO Foundation in Armenia (2018), the David Rockefeller DRCLAS in Mexico (2018-), and UKPACT Mexico Program (2021-). She has also engaged in workshops with universities and/or governments in Colombia, Japan, Spain, Mexico, China, and Portugal. Out of these collaborations, publications include: Beyond Reconstruction, City in Transition, and Disaster Resilient Housing. Bello´s work has been exhibited at the 2018 Venice Biennale and at MIT´s Media Lab.

Prior to the GSD, Bello was lecturer in architecture and urbanism at MIT SA+P (2013-2021) and Visiting Professor in architecture and urbanism at Porto University´s FAUP (2020-2021). During her time at MIT Lorena collaborated in design projects at the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.

Her design research focuses on the territorial implications of infrastructure as catalysts for design. She started examining this topic in her dissertation “Hybrid Networks”—with the guidance of Joan Busquets and the late Manuel de Solá-Morales—to portray the slow geography of the European ¨camino network¨ toward the Romans´ World End in Finisterrae. Caminos are resilient and millenary cultural itineraries that combine continuous upgrades and recalibration to fuse history, art, religion´s geopolitics, territorial urban design and landscape to create a public and open platform regardless of race, class, or religion. Since then, Lorena has applied some of these lessons when working with environmentally vulnerable communities engulfed in climatic risks in India, Colombia, Armenia, and Mexico.

Bello began her architectural career in Barcelona as project director at Aldayjover Architecture and Landscape, where she led projects at different scales including those within the Water Park 2008 international exhibit in Zaragoza. She was also research assistant at the Joan Miró Foundation and the Building Tech Institute of Catalonia (ITEC). Bello holds a Master in Architecture with honors from Barcelona UPC (MArch´05), a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard GSD (MAUD´11), and a European PhD in Urbanism from Barcelona UPC (PhD´15).

Pablo Pérez-Ramos is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he coordinates the first-semester Landscape Architecture Core Studio and teaches lecture courses in landscape theory, research seminars, and option studios. He holds Doctor of Design and Master in Landscape Architecture degrees from the GSD and is a licensed architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM).

Pérez-Ramos’s research focuses on the aesthetic and formal associations between design and the natural sciences, and is informed by interests in material culture, the environmental humanities, and the philosophy of science. He has delved into the origins of ecological narratives in contemporary landscape architecture by examining the central debates in ecological theory throughout the twentieth century. His interest in the intersection of science and design also encompasses thermodynamics, biological systematics, and evolutionary theory. This theoretical agenda underpins ongoing research on climate adaptation strategies, traditional knowledge, and agroecological practices in productive landscapes under extreme heat and aridity, including the Maghreb region, Northwest India, Peru, Northern Chile, and the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. His work is ultimately concerned with the formal tensions and interferences existing between human technology and the other physical forces and processes—tectonic, atmospheric, biological—that shape the built environment.

Prior to his appointment at the GSD, Pérez-Ramos coordinated the Urban Landscape Program at the Northeastern University School of Architecture and taught at the Boston Architectural College (BAC) and the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as regional planning coordinator for the 2025 Masterplan for the Metropolitan District of Quito, and before that, he practiced as a licensed architect in Madrid.

He was a member of the editorial board of the New Geographies journal between 2013 and 2018 and editor-in-chief (with Daniel Daou) of New Geographies 08: Island (Harvard GSD, 2016). His writings have also been published in the Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA), The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA), PLOT, MONU, Revista Arquitectura (COAM), Landscape Research Record (CELA), and in the edited volumes The Landscape as Union between Art and Science: The Legacy of Alexander von Humboldt and Ernst Haeckel (Quodlibet, 2023), MedWays Open Atlas (LetteraVentidue, 2022), Architecture is All Over (Columbia University Press, 2017), and Urban Landscape: Critical Concepts in Built Environment (Routledge, 2015), among others.

Pérez-Ramos’ research and academic work at Harvard has been funded by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the William F. Milton Fund, the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program, La Caixa Foundation, and Caja Madrid Foundation, among others, and his design work has received numerous awards in competitions of architecture and urbanism.

Laura Janka Zires (Architecture, UNAM; Urban Design, Harvard) has worked since 2007 on issues related to urban development in the context of Mexican cities, and more recently on fostering dialogue among Latin American cities, especially São Paulo and Mexico City.

Since late 2015, she has led l-o-c-a-l, a collaborative platform that develops projects for spatial transformation and the strengthening of civic and institutional capacities through research, dialogue, planning, and action centered on public space and the construction of active public life.

As a public official and advisor, she has coordinated projects such as the Public Space Recovery Program, the first Transit-Oriented Development Manual, the pilot Public Space Atlas Project, and the General Urban Development Program for Mexico City. She also served as Director of Bosque de Chapultepec.

She is currently developing AB_CDMX: An Urban Dictionary for Mexico City.

She is also part of SEDATU’s Strategic Advisory Group on neighborhood improvement and public space.

As of this year, she joined the Arq.Futuro Cities Laboratory at INSPER, where she coordinates the transdisciplinary research, teaching, and design hub Architecture and City.

Member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators.