Savannah Cox
Ph.D. Student - City and Regional Planning
- Research Interests/Specializations
Science and Technology Studies; Resilience; Urban Climate Governance; Economic Sociology
- Degrees
- M.A. International Affairs, The New School
- B.A. Political Science, B.A. Foreign Languages and International Studies, Bellarmine University
- Biography
I study the technologies and forms of expertise that cities use to constitute climate change as a problem that requires intervention. Specifically, I examine how these instruments—such as catastrophe models, financial risk assessments and ratings, and flood maps—become authoritative to urban planners and officials, as well as the assumptions and values that often undergird them. As planners typically employ these tools to inform future land use decisions and infrastructure investments, interventions inspired by the use of these devices inevitably interact with existing political and social terrains whose unique histories, possibilities, and needs may often go unaddressed or misunderstood by city officials. Thus, in my research I am equally invested in interrogating how climate risk-driven planning may incite (or attempt to curtail) novel forms of segregation, political claims- and counter claims-making, and insurgent citizenship in climate-changing cities. As a former journalist, I am deeply committed to producing work that is useful for activists, planners, journalists, researchers, and members of the general public who wish to better understand, and perhaps re-shape, the ways that cities often think, see, and act with respect to climate change.
E-mail me at savannah.cox@berkeley.edu.
- Courses Taught
CP 200: History of City Planning
- Awards + Recognition
- 2020 - recipient of NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant in Geography
- 2019-20 – recipient of the Blum Center for Developing Economies’ InFEWS Fellowship (NSF grant no. DGE-1633740)
- 2019 – recipient of Global Metropolitan Studies Summer Research Grant
- 2019 – recipient of U.C. Berkeley Global Metropolitan Studies Conference Grant
- 2018 – recipient of U.C. Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning Travel Grant
- 2018 – recipient of U.C. Berkeley Global Metropolitan Studies Conference Grant
- 2017 – 2022 recipient of University of California-Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study
- 2015 – 2017 recipient of Julien J. Studley Grant for original research on resilience and urban planning in New York City
- 2013 – 2015 recipient of The New School for Public Engagement Merit Scholarship
- 2012 – 2013 recipient of the Spanish Ministry of Education Teaching Grant
- 2012 – winner of Fulbright Scholarship for English Teaching (declined)
- 2012 – winner of the Miguel de Cervantes Award for Excellence in Spanish Language and Culture
- 2011 – winner of Humana Foundation essay contest on human rights and women’s leadership
- Selected Publications
Refereed Journal Articles
“Governing Urban Resilience: Insurance and the Problematization of Climate Change,” with Stephen Collier. Economy and Society, forthcoming.
"Racializing Resilience: Assemblage, Critique, and Contested Futures in Greater Miami Resilience Planning" with Kevin Grove. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 2020.
"Design and the scaling of politics" with Stephen Collier. Political Geography. 2019.
"Rebuilding by Design in Post-Sandy New York" with Stephen Collier and Kevin Grove. Limn, 7. 2016.
Articles and manuscripts under review
“Designing Justice? Race and the Limits of Recognition in Greater Miami Resilience Planning,” with Kevin Grove and Allain Barnett. Geoforum.
“Accounting for Climate Justice: Fiscal Fights over Climate-Changed Urban Futures,” The Just City in the Era of Climate Change: Theory, Praxis, Resistance, Rice, J., Long, J., and Levenda, A., eds., University of Georgia Press, Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Series.