Cohabitation Strategies (CohStra)

Background

Cohabitation Strategies was founded in 2008 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands by Lucia Babina, Emiliano Gandolfi, Gabriela Rendon, and Miguel Robles-Duran following the 2008 financial crisis. Since its founding, the organization has also operated in cities across Europe, South America, and North America, including New York City. ^{2 3}

Cohabitation Strategies claims to work across disciplines to understand what factors negatively affect urban areas and to find ways to catalyze what it describes as grassroots-led transformations. Cohabitation Strategies seeks to overcome traditional divisions between architecture, planning, and development by bringing together urban, artistic, social, and economic strategies. ⁴

The organization works with governments, cultural institutions, nonprofit organizations, and activists to achieve left-of-center social, “spatial,” and environmental policy objectives. ⁵

Cohabitation Strategies has engaged in urban and community projects in The Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Venezuela, Ecuador, Canada, and the United States. Notable collaborations have included its work with Philadelphia Mural Arts Program on the project Playgrounds for Useful Knowledge in 2015, which was supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. ^{6 1}

Right to the City Ideology

Cohabitation Strategies’ work is rooted in the concept of the “right to the city,” originally articulated by French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le Droit à la Ville and later popularized by Marxist geographer David Harvey. Harvey argued that the right to the city is the collective right of the citizenry to change a city itself through what he characterized as collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. ^{7 8}

The organization promotes what it describes as non-speculative and shared ownership property models, community land trusts, and alternative housing systems as ways to resist what it characterizes as for-profit-driven urban development and capitalist urbanization. ^{9 10}

Merger with Urban Front

In 2019, Miguel Robles-Duran and David Harvey co-founded Urban Front, describing it as an international consultancy network for what they characterized as left-of-center governments, NGOs, and foundations seeking to address urban inequalities. Robles-Duran described Urban Front as a “McKinsey of the left,” stating that the organization would charge the same fees as major consulting firms but redistribute surplus revenue to a foundation supporting what he described as grassroots groups. ^{11 12}

In May 2021, Cohabitation Strategies announced it was merging with Urban Front. The organization stated that all future CohStra projects would be developed with Urban Front, which by that time had grown into a transnational consultancy established by urbanists across Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, including Cohabitation Strategies co-founders Emiliano Gandolfi, Gabriela Rendan, and Miguel Robles-Duran. ¹³

Leadership

Cohabitation Strategies was co-founded by Lucia Babina, Emiliano Gandolfi, Gabriela Rendon, and Miguel Robles-Duran. ²

Lucia Babina is a cultural activist focused on research and reactivation of what she describes as “sustainable” ways of cohabitation and coexistence. Her work aims to reflect on what she characterizes as global unevenness and injustice through collective and artistic processes. She is also co-founder of the environmental organizations iStrike and iStrike.ultd based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. ²

Emiliano Gandolfi is an urbanist and independent curator. He is also a co-founder of Urban Front. He formerly worked as director of the Curry Stone Design Prize and was co-curator of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia. Gandolfi previously worked as curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. ²

Gabriela Rendon is an urbanist committed to what she characterizes as social and spatial justice. As of 2026, she was an assistant professor of urban planning and community development at Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York City. She is a co-founder of Urban Front. ²

Miguel Robles-Duran is a self-described “unitary urbanist” focused on what he characterizes as the design and analysis of complex urban systems, urban political ecology, and anti-capitalist strategy. Born in Mexico City, as of 2026 he held a tenured position as associate professor of urbanism at the Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York City, where he directed the graduate urban programs. He is a co-founder of Urban Front, and was a founding board member of the Shape of Cities to Come Institute, which he described as a movement-building platform dedicated to urban activism. Robles-Duran described himself as a collaborator and longstanding partner of Marxist geographer David Harvey. ^{2 14 10}

Robles-Duran was also a judge at the International Tribunal of Evictions, an advisor to the International Alliance of Inhabitants, advisor to the Right to the City Alliance, and co-director with David Harvey of the National Strategy Center for the Right to the Territory in the Republic of Ecuador during the administration of its former socialist President Rafael Correa. ^{9 15}