Oscar Sosa López is a critical planning and international development scholar. His research and teaching are concerned with uncovering and overcoming existing barriers to equitable and sustainable urban development. His work draws on theories and methods from planning, geography, sociology, and anthropology to examine the relationship between policymaking, democracy, and social justice across three sites: 1) climate change governance and urban citizenship in Mexico City; 2) immigrant spaces and social movements in US suburbs; and 3) regional governance and economic development in the Mexico-US border region.

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Oscar’s current research is focused on understanding the relationship between sustainable transportation policy and urban citizenship. His book project, The Politics of Immediacy: Citizenship, Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility in Mexico City, examines sustainable transportation policy in a Global South metropolis to show how the politics of climate governance and technocratic governance and urban democracy intersect in the development of transportation innovations.  He is also conducting research on the changing geographies of care and caregiving in the multiethnic communities of Western Queens.

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Currently Oscar is Chair of Public and Urban Policy, and teaches in the MS and PhD programs. He completed his PhD in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the University of Georgia’s College of Environment and Design. He has taught at the University of Georgia, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.