Equipo / Personal docente e investigador
Blanca Valdivia Gutiérrez
Post doctoral fellow Juan de la Cierva
Blanca holds a PhD in Urban and Architectural Management and Valuation from the Technical University of Catalonia’s School of Architecture of Barcelona (2021), with a dissertation entitled Caring City: Urban Quality of Life from a Feminist Perspective. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid.
She is a co-founder of the cooperative Col·lectiu Punt 6, a benchmark organisation in the field of feminist urbanism in Catalonia and internationally. Within this collective, she co-authored the book Feminist Urbanism: Towards a Radical Transformation of Living Spaces and seven guides on gender-responsive urban planning and mobility. From 2009 to 2015, she worked as a researcher at the Land Policy and Valuation Centre of the School of Architecture of Barcelona (UPC), taking part in several projects on housing, public space and migration.
She has delivered numerous training programmes on gender-sensitive urban planning and care policies for public-sector professionals and at several universities across Spain and Latin America, including the Complutense University of Madrid, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Córdoba, the University of Buenos Aires, the University of Concepción and the University of Montevideo. She has also been an associate lecturer in the Department of Geography at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her work has received several awards, most notably the Francesca Bonnemaison Prize (Barcelona Provincial Council, 2021) for the project Urban Ecosystem to Support Care in the Municipalities of Barcelona. That same year, she was selected by the international Future Architecture Platform with her project The Caring City. In 2020, her project Creating a Network of Climate and Care Shelters in the Prosperitat Neighbourhood received the Barcelona City Council’s 8 March Award.
She has published scientific and outreach articles on the concept of the caring city, of which she has been one of the pioneering voices.
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Departament de Sociologia
Campus UAB- Edifici B
08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona)
Spain
Areas of specialization
Her main line of research focuses on analyzing the link between urban characteristics and the social organization of care. She has contributed to the construction of the conceptual framework of the “Caring City”, as a concept that seeks to articulate the needs of people to be able to care in urban spaces.
The research she is carrying out at QUIT is “Urban public and community care support infrastructures”. The starting point is the theoretical discussion around the social organization of care and the empirical evidence of the last decades that suggest a crisis in the public care system, due to the increase of the population in need of care on a continuous basis and the structural deficiencies of the welfare system.
The research proposes to deepen the study of urban infrastructures as a fundamental element to provide a physical support for the management and provision of care, both from the community dimension, as well as from the public policy.
Selected bibliography
Cole, H. V. S., Triguero‐Mas, M., Valdivia, B., Cuenca, VC., Anguelovski, I., Calderón‐Argelich, A., & Baró, F. (2024). Shifting perceptions of green and blue spaces during the COVID ‐19 pandemic in gentrifying neighbourhoods: Experiences of inclusion and exclusion by women and non‐binary residents. People and Nature, 6(6), 2494-2513. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10722
Valdivia, Blanca y Ortiz Escalante, Sara (2024) Feminist Urban Planning: Women Transforming Territories through Participatory Action Methods. In: Miguel Martínez: Research Handbook on Urban Sociology Ed: Routledge
Valdivia, Blanca (2024) Recursos urbans de suport a les cures als municipis de Barcelona. Diputació de Barcelona
Valdivia, Blanca (2023) Territorios cuidadores. La propuesta de la bioregión desde la dimensión de los cuidados. A: Nerea Moran & José Luis Fernández: BIORREGIONES. De la globalización imposible a las redes territoriales ecosostenibles. Editorial Icaria
Valdivia, Blanca (2022) Ciudades que cuidan: transformar el espacio para priorizar la vida. Barcelona Metropolis
