Resilience; Disaster Governance; Development Finance; Science and Technology Studies; Critical Urban Geography

While cities can anticipate an increasing frequency and severity of climate related disasters, political uncertainty and global pandemic fallout are producing fiscal crises in state and local economies. This convergence of crises exposes a ‘muddy politics’ that upends implicit assumptions about the existence of a functioning state and its role in addressing climate risk. 

My current research explores how this muddiness came to the surface in Mexico City, where a recent political regime shift and pandemic pressures resulted in deep austerity measures, which have dismantled Mexico’s complex infrastructure of bonds and trusts used for disaster recovery and climate adaptation in the capital. Characterizing Mexico City as a case of ‘planning in the mud’ that is becoming increasingly pervasive globally, my work traces adaptation finance to explore how urban resilience is made and unmade in increasingly uncertain times.

E-mail me at bmcelvain@berkeley.edu.

ED4C Future Ecologies

GEOG c188 Geographic Information Systems

CP204c Methods for Planners: Introduction to GIS + City Planning

CP119 Planning for Sustainability

CP202 Gateway Introduction to Planning Practice 

Other:

D-Lab: QGIS Fundamentals + AGOL Workshops

City College of San Francisco (BAYGEO): Introduction to GIS

embARC Summer Design Academy: Sustainable Planning + Design/Build

McElvain, B. (2021). Agua Bajo Tierra: Mapping Hydraulic Imaginaries in Iztapalapa, chapter in “Mexico City: Space | Power | Materiality.” Edited volume by Greig Chrysler and María Moreno. (Expected)

McElvain, B., Moreno, M. (2020). "Life Above, Rubble Below: A Case of Historically Produced Risk & Perception in Mexico City." Ardeth Magazine 06: Contingency. Forthcoming.

Nikolaou, S., Diaz-Fanas, G., Garini, E., & McElvain, B. (2019). "Dried Lakes Do Tell Tales: Seismic Soil Amplification in Mexico City." Geo-Strata—Geo Institute of ASCE, 23(2), 40-46.