Ariam L Torres Cordero

Ariam L. Torres Cordero joined Columbia World Projects as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar to support and advance research and engagement initiatives in urban and water governance, climate adaptation, and disaster prevention and recovery. Ariam earned his doctorate in regional planning from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2022. His research focuses on alternative forms of planning that seek to advance more socially and environmentally just recovery processes for disadvantaged communities in post-disaster environments. He is currently finalizing three articles for publication resulting from his doctoral research. Between 2019 and 2021, Ariam was a research fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York. In that capacity, he investigated disaster governance models in five different U.S. jurisdictions: Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, and wrote the article: “What is possible? Policy Options for Long-term Disaster Recovery in Puerto Rico,” published in CENTRO Journal. Ariam has taught classes on social inequality, planning history and theory, plan-making, and disaster recovery at the Graduate School of Planning and the College of General Studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. He is also the co-founder and co-executive director of the non-profit organization Urbana Planifica, which focuses on planning research, education, and civic support in Puerto Rico.