Verónica Crossa Niell is an urban scholar whose work explores public space, street vending, informality, inequality, and the politics of who gets to occupy the city. She is a professor-researcher at El Colegio de México’s Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies.
Her research focuses on Mexico City and the tension between the idealized public space imagined by planners and the messy, negotiated realities of everyday urban life.
Crossa examines street vendors not as obstacles to urban management, but as people whose livelihoods, identities, and relationships are embedded in streets and plazas. Her work challenges efforts to “rescue” or beautify public spaces when those improvements displace the people already using them.
Her 2018 book, Luchando por un espacio en la Ciudad de México (Fighting for Space in Mexico City), explores these conflicts in the Historic Center and Coyoacán, where vendors and artisans have resisted displacement through music, dance, workshops, photography, and public performances.
Her work raises an essential question for placemaking: when we say a public space needs to be improved, rescued, or activated, whose definition of a good public space are we using?
Crossa reminds us that public space isn't simply a setting waiting to be designed. It is produced through everyday use, negotiation, livelihood, and resistance.
And sometimes the people who make a place feel inconvenient, disorderly, or difficult to manage are also among those most actively making it public.
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