A research lab at ICTA-UAB
Postdoctoral researcher
Brian Rosa joined the lab in 2024 as a core member, where he was previously an Affiliated Researcher. He leads the work package for the ReHousIn project. Rosa holds an MRP in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and a PhD in Human Geography from The University of Manchester. Before relocating to Barcelona in 2018, he was Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Geography, as well as founding director of the Queens College City Lab, at the City University of New York (CUNY). In Barcelona, Rosa has been a Visiting Professor and Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, as well as a Fundació ‘La Caixa’ Research Fellow at the Department of Geography and Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
His research has focused on deindustrialization and urban redevelopment, landscapes of urban infrastructure, political debates about urban heritage and working-class memory, gentrification and migration, visual and creative methods, urban political ecology, and the spatial and cultural politics of urban transformation in Great Britain, the United States, and Spain. Rosa served as Ad Hoc Expert for the URBACT action planning network RiConnect, led by the Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona, where he consulted city and regional planning authorities on the social displacement risks associated with the creation of new public spaces and active mobility infrastructures. He is also Research Associate with Deindustrialization and the Politics of our Time (DePOT) and a member of the COST Action Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change.
Selected Publications
- Brian Rosa. (2024). Industrial Obelisks: Working-class memory and Barcelona’s chimney-monuments,
Journal of Historical Geography, 2024. - Arboleda, Pablo and Brian Rosa (2023). “‘But, What’s Wrong with Ruins?’ Traversing Inevitable Loss in Industrial Heritage.” cultural geographies, published online ahead of print.
- Rosa, Brian (2023). “Deindustrialization Without End: Smokestacks as Postindustrial Monuments.” GeoHumanities, 9 (1), pp. 230-255.
- Rosa, Brian (2022). “Case Studies for Infrastructural Reconnection: From ‘Win-Win Scenarios’ Toward the ‘Right to Stay Put’. RiConnect- Rethinking Infrastructure: Case Studies. RiConnect and Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona.
- Caba, Joan, Mikel Berra-Sandín, Roland Krebs, and Brian Rosa (2022). RiConnect Final Report: Rethink Mobility Infrastructure for Better Metropolises. RiConnect and Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona.
- Rosa, Brian (2022). “Social Impacts of Infrastructure Reconnection Initiatives: Focus on Displacement Risks.” RiConnect- Rethinking Infrastructure. RiConnect and Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona.
- Rosa, Brian (2020). “Green Gentrification, Historic Preservation, and New York’s High Line.” TICCIH Bulletin (The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage), Issue 88.
- Lindner, Christoph and Brian Rosa, eds. (2017). Deconstructing the High Line: Postindustrial Urbanism and the Rise of the Elevated Park. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press).
- Rosa, Brian (2016). “Waste and Value in Urban Transformation: Reflections on a Post-Industrial ‘Wasteland’ in Manchester” in Global Garbage: Urban Imaginaries of Excess, Waste, and Abandonment, eds. Miriam Meissner and Christoph Lindner. (New York: Routledge).