Dr. Gabriela Debrunner joins the SPUR team as Postdoc with a focus on Housing, Strategic Spatial Planning, and Urban Sustainability

As of October 2022, Dr. Gabriela Debrunner has joined the Chair of Spatial Development and Urban Policy (SPUR) group at the Institute of Spatial and Landscape Development (IRL) at ETH Zürich. Together with Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann and his team, she will focus on research on densification, strategic spatial planning, and urban sustainability. In addition to her scientific expertise, she adds practical knowledge to the group and the institute having worked for private planning offices, as well as for the public and non-profit sector. She adds her expertise also to the Spatial Transformation Laboratories (STL) where she has been working as a Postdoc in group of PD Dr. Joris Van Wezemael already since 2021.

In her work, Gabriela Debrunner, Dr.sc.nat., focuses on the challenges for humankind and life together that arise through densification. Her point of departure is that densification (also called urban transformation, internal settlement development) per se does not necessarily lead to sustainable outcomes in terms of social inclusion or energy efficiency. Rather, how it is planned, implemented, and governed by the actors involved is what matters. In her projects, she seeks to politicize densification and to understand the various socio-political structures that try to prevent rivalries among competing groups and unsustainable outcomes, such as discrimination, housing unaffordability, or displacement. At SPUR, she works in a leading position for the «Densifying Switzerland» and «Future Cities Laboratories» projects.