Seminar on Urban Transformations, Social Inequalities and Environmental Justice

The ICTA-UAB will host the Seminar on Urban Transformations, Social Inequalities and Environmental Justice, comprising two sessions led by Justine Pineault and Ana Polgár, two visiting PhD candidates from different universities in Canada.

Seminar on Urban Transformations, Social Inequalities and Environmental Justice

Speakers: Justine Pineault and Ana Polgár

• Date: Tuesday, November 17th, 2026
• Time: From 15h to 17h
• Venue: Sala Montseny (Z/022 & Z/023) ICTA-UAB

Talk: "Mental Health Implications of Perceived Gentrification Across Distinct Experiential Profiles of Young Adults: A Mixed-Methods Study"

By Justine Pineault, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. 

This presentation will examine how perceived gentrification is related to the mental health and well-being of young adults. Using a mixed-methods study conducted among young adults living in Sherbrooke (Québec) Canada, it will explore how perceived changes in the built and social environments as well as in housing affordability are experienced across different subgroups. The findings will provide insights into who may be most affected by neighborhood change and highlight implications for municipal planning and community-based interventions.

Justine Pineault is a PhD candidate in Community Health Sciences at the Université de Sherbrooke. With a background in criminology, her research focuses on social health inequalities and environmental justice. Using mixed methods, she is interested in the role of social structures and living environments in shaping health and unequal health experiences across social groups.

Talk: "From Patchwork to Landscape Resilience: Urban nature in the Rapidly Urbanising Silang-Santa Rosa Watershed"

By Ana Polgár, University of British Columbia (UBC), Canadà

She will give an overview of her PhD research on how nature-based solutions in the Silang–Santa Rosa Watershed, a rapidly urbanising secondary city region south of Manila, Philippines. Unlike major cities where NbS governance is often driven by international development agencies or national policy frameworks, secondary cities navigate climate adaptation through fragmented, multi-jurisdictional arrangements in which private sector developments, NGOs, community organisations, local and regional government units operate largely in parallel rather than in coordination.

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, spatial analysis, mixed methods governance research, and participatory action research, the dissertation asks what it takes to move from this patchwork of disconnected interventions toward landscape resilience; and at whose cost current arrangements are sustained. The talk foregrounds the labour justice dimensions of community-led NbS, presents a spatial framework for prioritising nature across contested multi-jurisdictional landscapes, diagnoses the scalar mismatches that prevent local resilience from adding up to watershed-level resilience, and reflects on what participatory research can and cannot do when it encounters entrenched top-down infrastructure planning.

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