Associate Professor Jill Wigle

Geographies of housing, informality, social infrastructure, and care; the right to the city; affordable housing and community land trusts; Ottawa & Mexico City

• Ph.D. (University of Toronto), MSc. Planning (University of Toronto)
• Email Associate Professor Jill Wigle

Biography

As an urban geographer, I’m broadly interested in housing, planning, and governance issues and how they relate to power, precarity, and equity. In Mexico City, my research has largely focused on the geographies of “informal” housing and spatial regulation as well as the politics of city-making processes and everyday planning practices. More recently, I’ve started to investigate the possibilities for affordable housing through the formation of community land trusts as part of Carleton’s multidisciplinary research project, A Safe and Affordable Place to Call Home (2023-2033). I’m cross-appointed to the Institute of Political Economy (IPE) and participate in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) Program. I welcome graduate students with related research interests in Latin America or Canada. Some students may also be interested in our MA Geography with Specialization in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Research Interests

• Critical geographies of housing, informality, and spatial regulation.
• Feminist geographies of housing, infrastructure, and care.
• The right to the city, city-making processes, and neighbourhood organization.
• Affordable housing and alternative forms of organizing communities.

2026-2027 Courses

• Approaches to Geographic Inquiry (GEOG 5000), Fall 2026
• Environment and Sustainability in the South (GEOG 3209), Fall 2026
• Cities in a Global World (GEOG 3023), Winter 2027
• Regional Field Excursion: Mexico City (GEOG 3030), April-May 2027 (details forthcoming)

Publications

Wigle, Jill, Lorena Zárate, Cecilia Zapata, and Marianna Relli Ugartamendía. 2025. Tejiendo vocabularios urbanos para hábitats alternativos [Weaving urban vocabularies for alternative habitats], in J. J. Michelini and M.C. Rodríguez (Eds.), Ciudades en Común: Diálogos Norte-sur sobre Formas Colectivas de Producción del Hábitat [Cities in Common: North-south Dialogues on Collective Forms of Habitat Production]. Madrid: Catarata, pp. 43-61.

Wigle, Jill and Lorena Zárate. 2025. Crisis de vivienda asequible y alternativas no mercantiles: Los fideicomisos de tierras comunitarias en Canadá [The crisis of affordable housing and non-market alternatives: Community land trusts in Canada], in J.J. Michelini and M.C. Rodríguez (Eds.), Ciudades en Común: Diálogos Norte-sur sobre Formas Colectivas de Producción del Hábitat [Cities in Common: North-south Dialogues on Collective Forms of Habitat Production]. Madrid: Catarata, pp. 123-144.

Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, Charmain Levy, Natalia Czytajlo, Marisol Dalmazzo Peillard, Liliana Rainero, Jill Wigle and Lorena Zárate. 2024. Feminist interventions in barrios populares in Latin America: Local politics around care and social services, in C. Levy, M. Larrabure & D. Furukawa Marques (Eds.), New Democratic Initiatives in Authoritarian Twenty-First Century Latin America. Rowman Littlefield, pp. 73-92.

Jill Wigle, Laura Macdonald, Lucy Luccisano & Paula Maurutto. 2023. Struggles over city-making: The community program for neighborhood improvement in Mexico City. Journal of Urban Affairs. pp.1-20.

Wigle, Jill and Lorena Zárate.2022. Claiming the right to the city in Mexico City: From lived experience to mobilizing for change, in Patricia Ballamingie and David Szanto (eds.) Showing Theory to Know Theory: Understanding Social Science Concepts through Illustrative Vignettes. Showing Theory Press. Available at: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/showingtheory/ https://doi.org/10.22215/stkt

Wigle, Jill and Lorena Zárate. 2022. The right to the city in Latin America and the Caribbean, in J. González-Pérez, C. Irazábal Zurita & R. Lois-González (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Urban Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean, pp. 13-34.

Wigle, Jill. 2020. Fast-track redevelopment and slow-track regularization: The uneven geographies of spatial regulation in Mexico City. Latin American Perspectives 47 (6): 56-76.

Hungry Cities Partnership Report No. 7: The Urban Food System of Mexico City, Mexico. 2017. Cape Town, South Africa and Waterloo, Canada: African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town and Wilfrid Laurier University/Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Connolly, Priscilla and Jill Wigle. 2017. (Re)constructing Informality and “Doing Regularization”in the Conservation Zone of Mexico City. Planning Theory and Practice, 18 (2): 183-201.

Wigle, Jill. 2016. De Áreas Verdes a Zonas Grises: Gobernanza del Espacio y Asentamientos Irregulares en Xochimilco, Ciudad de México, in Antonio Azuela (Ed.) La Ciudad y Sus Reglas: Sobre la Huella del Derecho en el Orden Urbano. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones, UNAM and PAOT.

Wigle, Jill. 2014. The “graying” of “green” zones: Spatial governance and irregular settlement in Xochimilco, Mexico City. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 38(2): 573-589.

Wigle, Jill and Lorena Zárate. 2012. Realizing the Right to the City: From declaration to action? Progressive Planning 193: 35-38.

Wigle, Jill. 2010. The “Xochimilco model” for managing irregular settlements in conservation land in Mexico City. Cities 27: 337–347.

Wigle, Jill. 2010. Social Relations, Property and “Peripheral” Informal Settlement: The Case of Ampliación San Marcos, Mexico City. Urban Studies 47(2): 411–436.

Wigle, Jill. 2008. Shelter, Location and Livelihoods: Exploring the Linkages in Mexico City. International Planning Studies 13 (3): 197-222.