Sevilla-Buitrago, Álvaro
Associate Professor
Town and Regional Planning Department
School of Architecture | Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Avenida Juan de Herrera, 4 | 28040 Madrid, Spain
+34 91 067 50 90
Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Urban Studies at the School of Architecture, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). His writing and teaching focus on the social and political implications of planning and urban processes, building upon and extending various critical traditions in the fields of urban studies and geography, planning history and theory, urban political economy and radical history. His main research interests include the politics of planning and urbanization and their role in the rise and development of capitalism; spatial dynamics of commoning and dispossession; the geographies of social reproduction and everyday life; planetary urbanization; and the clash between austerity urbanism and new urban social movements during the Great Recession.
He has published widely in major international journals in several disciplines such as Antipode, Cities, Journal of Historical Geography, Planning Perspectives, Social and Cultural Geography, Society and Space or ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies. He is the editor of Neil Brenner: Critical Urban Theory and the Politics of Scale (Icaria, Critical Spaces series, 2017). He is currently working on a book-length exploration which reframes planning history using the lens of the commons, dispossession and social reproduction, focusing on cases from England, the US, Germany and Italy, spanning over three centuries of capitalist urbanization.
Sevilla-Buitrago is a member of Harvard University’s Urban Theory Lab and UPM’s research group ‘Architecture, Urbanism and Sustainability,’ and participates in several international academic networks including UEDXX (Urbanism of European Dictatorships during the 20th Century), and the UrbanHist program, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research action and joint doctorate program funded by the EU’s H2020 initiative, where he serves as a member of the advisory board. He has held several positions as a visiting professor and scholar, including frequent visits to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He has participated in seven competitive collective research projects, and received fellowships from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and US Fulbright Commission, among others.
Between 2010 and 2015 he was Editor-in-Chief of Urban, a fundamental journal in the field of urban studies in Spain. He has also served in the editorial boards of journals such as Society and Space, EURE: Estudios Urbano-Regionales and Scripta Nova.
Líneas de investigación:
Publicaciones/Proyectos:
Edited books
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (ed.) (2017) Neil Brenner: Teoría urbana crítica y políticas de escala, Barcelona: Icaria.
Articles (selection)
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2019) Antinomies of space-time value: Fallowness, planning, speculation, in M. Chieffalo and J. Smachylo (eds.) New Geographies 10: Fallow, New York: Actar, 18–23.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2017) Martin Wagner in America: Planning and the political economy of capitalist urbanization, Planning Perspectives 32, pp. 481–502.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2017) Aporías de una ideología urbanística: arquitectura, territorio y capitalismo en el trabajo de Martin Wagner, Scripta Nova, Revista electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales XXI, 565.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2017) Gramsci and Foucault in Central Park: Environmental hegemonies, pedagogical spaces and integral state formations, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35, pp. 165–83.
- Companion essay on Society and Space‘s website: Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2017) Landscape struggles, environmental hegemonies and the politics of urban design.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2015) Capitalist formations of enclosure: Space and the extinction of the commons, Antipode 47, pp. 999–1020.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2015) Outraged spatialities: The production of public space in the #spanishrevolution, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 18, pp. 90-103. Special section: Geographies of 15-M: crisis, austerity and social movements in Spain (versión en castellano: Espacialidades indignadas: la producción del espacio público en la #spanishrevolution).
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2015) Urbanismo, crisis y austeridad, Ciudades 18, pp. 31–48.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2014) Central Park against the streets: The enclosure of public space cultures in mid-nineteenth century New York, Social & Cultural Geography 15, pp. 151–71.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2014) Central Park y la producción del espacio público: el uso de la ciudad y la regulación del comportamiento urbano en la historia, Revista EURE – Revista De Estudios Urbano Regionales 40, pp. 55–74.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2014) Hegemonía, gubernamentalidad, territorio. Apuntes metodológicos para una historia social de la planificación, Empiria. Revista de Metodología de Ciencias Sociales 27, pp. 49–72.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2014) Spatial divisions of society, Fulcrum 97, p. 1.
Castrillo, M., Matesanz, A., Sánchez Fuentes D., and Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2014) ¿Regeneración urbana? Deconstrucción y reconstrucción de un concepto incuestionado, Papeles 126, pp. 129–39.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2013) ¿Planificar los comunes? Autogestión, regulación comunal del suelo y su eclipse en la Inglaterra precapitalista, Scripta Nova, Revista electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, XVII/442.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2013) Debating contemporary urban conflicts: A survey of selected scholars, Cities 31, pp. 454–68.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2012) Territory and the governmentalisation of social reproduction: Parliamentary enclosure and spatial rationalities in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Journal of Historical Geography 38, pp. 209–19.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2012) Urbanismo y reproducción social. Una introducción a su historia, Cuadernos de investigación urbanística, nº 80.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2012) Conflictos de la ciudad contemporánea: un sondeo internacional, Urban nueva serie 3, pp. 107–37.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2011) ‘This Square is our home!’: The organization of urban space in the Spanish 15-M Movement, Progressive Planning 189, pp. 42–49 [also available at Divergences2, 35]
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2011) Cenizas de Gotha, espectros de Lefebvre: derecho a la ciudad y urbanismo alternativo en el ocaso del Estado Social, Biblio 3W XVI/932(3).
Elden, S., Gregory, D., and Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2011) Spaces of the past, histories of the present: An interview with Stuart Elden and Derek Gregory, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 10:2, pp. 313–39.
Elden, S., Gregory, D., and Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2011) Espacios del pasado, historias del presente: en torno a los rastros de la historia espacial, Urban nueva serie 1, pp. 91–114.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2010) Urbanismo, biopolítica, gubernamentalidad: vida y espacio en la renovación de los estudios urbanos, Boletín Ciudades para un Futuro más Sostenible 44.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2010) Hacia el origen de la planificación: territorio, enclosure acts y cambio social en la transición del feudalismo al capitalismo, Ciudades 13, pp. 165–81.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2008) La ciudad y el eclipse de la experiencia. Notas para una historia crítica de la ordenación territorial, Polis 20, pp. 151–77.
Book chapters (selection)
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2019) ¿Revolución urbana en Madrid? Henri Lefebvre y el urbanismo español [Urban revolution in Madrid? Henri Lefebvre and Spanish planning], in C. Sambricio and P. Ramos (eds.) El urbanismo de la Transición: el Plan General de Ordenación Urbana de Madrid, vol. 2, Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid, 18–19.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2019) Manuel Castells y el Plan de Madrid: del comunismo a la socialdemocracia [Manuel Castells and the Madrid Plan: from Communism to Social Democracy], in C. Sambricio and P. Ramos (eds.) El urbanismo de la Transición: el Plan General de Ordenación Urbana de Madrid, vol. 2, Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid, 167–68.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2015) Crisis and the city: neoliberalism, austerity planning and the production of space, in F. Eckardt and J. Ruiz (eds.) City of Crisis. The Multiple Contestation of Southern European Cities, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 31–49.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2015) Urbanism and dictatorship: perspectives from the field of urban studies, in M. Welch Guerra, H. Bodenschatz and P. Sassi, P. (eds.) Urbanism and Dictatorship. A European Perspective, Basel: Birkhäuser, pp. 27–35.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2013) Urbs in rure: historical enclosure and the extended urbanization of the countryside, in N. Brenner (ed.), Implosions / Explosions. Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, Berlin: Jovis, pp. 236–59.
Sevilla-Buitrago, A. (2013) Espacio público y protesta ciudadana: reflexiones sobre la espacialidad del 15M, in Club de Debates Urbanos (ed.), Madrid. Materia de debate, vol. IV, Madrid: Club de Debates Urbanos, pp. 208–18.
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