Irene Farah

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My research focuses on urban politics, informality, food systems, and methods. Broadly, my research aims to shed light on the complex relationships between urban development, street economies, and organizational power to reflect on uneven power dynamics within cities and to visibilize populations that are often misunderstood and over simplified.

I obtained my Ph.D. from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. My dissertation research focused on how regulations and the intermediation between local governments and street vendors impact how public space is assigned and contested in Mexico City and San Francisco. As part of my research, I have worked closely with street vendors and street vending associations to understand their relationship with state actors and the impact that regulations have on workers’ livelihoods.

Previously, I worked at the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago, where I did my Master’s in Social Sciences. Before that, I worked at the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development (CONEVAL) in Mexico City. I also hold a B.A. in Political Science from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Another line of my work focuses on the retail food environment and the importance of incorporating informal outlets in food policy interventions. Jointly with the National Institute of Health in Mexico, I have studied how food outlets’ healthfulness varies geographically and the role of informal outlets in food environments.

I have also employed a wide range of methodological approaches besides ethnographic methods: examining spatial accessibility metrics, applying mathematical demography to examine firm dynamics, and analyzing heat waves through remote sensing. In current projects, I am working on deploying innovative methods I have learned in previous projects to study urban inequalities and street economies, such as mobile data, point pattern analysis, and satellite imagery.

Lastly, I am building a teaching curriculum which integrates methods of spatial analysis with critical theory to improve the ways policymakers and planners use spatial statistics to reduce inequities in cities. In my free time, I enjoy music, exploring cities by bike, and swimming in open waters.