Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Gianpaolo Baiocchi is a Brazilian-born activist and scholar based in New York City, where he directs NYU’s Urban Democracy Lab. One of the founders of the Participatory Budgeting Project, he has also worked on immigrant rights and anti-militarism campaigns in the US, as well as various efforts to defend democracy in his native Brazil. Recently he has worked with housing justice organizations on people-driven alternatives to private housing provision. With Jake Carlson he is author of the “Social Housing Development Authority,” a proposal to convert distressed real estate into permanently decommodified housing. A sociologist by training, Gianpaolo’s most recent book is We, The Sovereign (Polity Press/ Radical Futures).