Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Gianpaolo Baiocchi is professor of individualized studies and sociology and is the founding director of the Urban Democracy Lab, a center that currently works with more than a dozen housing rights organizations in the US and abroad on visioning plausible alternatives to market-based housing. A Brazilian-born and New York City-based engaged scholar, his work has helped inspire and support progressive policy and legislation in the US and abroad.

He earned his PhD in sociology in 2001 from the University of Wisconsin Madison, specializing in critical theory, urban sociology, and political sociology. He is the author or co-author of seven books, and two edited volumes, and more than fifty academic articles and book chapters. He regularly writes in public-facing outlets, and has published in outlets like The New York Times, Dissent, NACLA Report on the Americas, and Boston Review.

His latest book, Housing is a Social Good (University of Chicago Press), with H. Jacob Carlson, explores how market-based thinking came to dominate housing debates in the US and how to reverse that trend. Their work on the Social Housing Development Authority was part of the technical assistance in the development of the Homes Act of 2024. Gianpaolo is also one of the founders of the Participatory Budgeting Project, he is also recognized as a leading expert on implementations of participatory democracy and co-governance.