New Advisory Council for Latin America and the Caribbean

CAMBRIDGE, MA – The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is delighted to announce the creation of a new Advisory Council for its Latin America and the Caribbean program. The council, made up of seven professionals with close ties to Lincoln, will help lead our work in Latin America. For the last 30 years, Lincoln has developed education and training initiatives, and shared research and technical assistance related to land and urban policy in the region.

“The Advisory Council will play a fundamental role in supporting the strategic direction and impact of the Lincon Institute in Latin America and the Caribbean, guaranteeing that our initiatives continue to stay relevant and effective, and respond to regional needs. Their experience and deep knowledge of the institute’s contributions will help us face pressing challenges, such as poverty reduction, sustainable urban development, and strengthening local government finance in the region,” says Enrique Silva, chief program officer at the Lincoln Institute.

The members of this inaugural Advisory Council, which will begin its work in November, are:

Antonio Azuela de la Cueva

Antonio is professor (researcher) at the Institute for Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Since the late 1970s, his research has focused on urban and environmental law from a sociolegal perspective. He served as the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection in the Mexican government between 1994 and 2000, and his recent work has centered on urban conflicts and the urbanization of rural areas. His latest book is Territorial Order and Contingent Legalities: Forty Years of Legal Sociology (University of Quilmes, Argentina; 2025). Since 2017, he has directed Vivero de Tebanca, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the ecological restoration of the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve.

Judy Baker

Judy serves on the faculty of the Urban & Regional Planning program at Georgetown University and is an advisor for several international organizations including the Cities Alliance, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the World Bank, working on issues of sustainable and inclusive urbanization. Judy worked at the World Bank for 30 years, until 2023, with recent positions as global lead and lead economist in the Urban, Resilience and Land Department. Throughout her career at the World Bank, she was responsible for leading policy dialogue, analytical work, and project management, particularly in Latin America, Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. This work included engagements in over 30 countries and covered topics related to sustainable urbanization and its impacts, affordable housing, poverty, informal settlement upgrading, service delivery, climate change, urban governance, and economic development. She has published six books and produced numerous country and regional reports for the World Bank.

María Fernanda Caldas

María is an architect with a PhD in architecture and urbanism; she is also a researcher and consultant on sustainable urban development, land policies, climate policies, environmental policies, and housing policies. Currently, she is an associate researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the University of São Paulo (USP) and a consultant for several national and international organizations. She is a specialist in sustainable urban development at UN-Habitat Brazil, senior fellow at ICLEI South America, and a collaborator and member of the Latin America and Caribbean program at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. She was the secretary of urban policy in large and medium-sized cities, including Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, where she coordinated sustainable urban development plans linked to climate policies and land-based financing policies. In the federal government, she worked at the Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management. There, she was director of social and urban infrastructure for the National Secretariat for the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) and was part of the coordinating team of the Minha Casa, Minha Vida program. These two programs are the largest infrastructure and housing investment programs in Brazil.

Cynthia Goytia

Cynthia is professor and director of the MSc Program in Urban Economics at Torcuato Di Tella University, Buenos Aires, where she founded the Urban Policies and Housing Research Center (CIPUV). Her research applies rigorous economic analysis to land markets and urban policies, examining their implications for housing affordability, informality, development finance, and climate adaptation. She specializes in quantifying how land policies shape urban development patterns and fiscal sustainability in Latin American cities. Her publications advance urban economic theory while providing empirical evidence for policy design. She usually works as a consultant for governments and international organizations, including the World Bank, United Nations, CAF, and the Inter-American Development Bank; her work on land value dynamics, regulatory impacts on housing/informality, and climate-property market intersections has informed regional policy reforms. She has a PhD in urban and regional economics from the London School of Economics; is a David Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at Harvard University; and she lectures globally at Cambridge, LSE, UCLA, and other leading institutions. She is also a fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Marta Lora-Tamayo

Marta is a professor at the Administrative Law Department of the National University of Distance Education (UNED). She is codirector of the Lincoln Institute–UNED Chair in Land Policy and director of the master’s degree program in urban policy and sustainable urban development (UNED-LILP). Marta is also academic coordinator of participatoryGroup.org, a promotion of the Madrid City Council. Her research has focused on urban law from and a historical and comparative perspective, and she has written 10 books. Her last publication in English was The EUropeanisation of Planning Law (Wolters Kluwers; 2018), and she is a member of the Planning Law and Property Rights Association (PLPR) and the International Platform of Experts in Planning Law.

María Mercedes Maldonado

María is a lawyer and urban planner, professor, researcher, and consultant in land-use planning, land and housing policies, and urban financing alternatives, with experience in designing regulations and instruments for land management and financing. She has served as secretary of planning and secretary of habitat for the Bogotá Mayor’s Office, and as a professor and researcher at the Institute of Urban Studies of the National University of Colombia and the Interdisciplinary Center for Regional Studies (CIDER) at the University of Los Andes. She was also part of the UNDP Project team, supporting the national urban management policy, which contributed to the 1997 drafting of Colombia’s Land Development Law No. 388. She has been a member of the Latin America and Caribbean program of the LILP since 2001, coordinating a demonstration project in Colombia and participating in research on expropriation and legal transplants of land use planning and land policy regulations. She has also coordinated and taught various professional development and distance education courses and has actively participated in the debate on land policy in the region.

Daniel A. Rodríguez

Daniel is Chancellor’s Professor of city and regional planning and director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the relationship between transportation and land development, and their effects on health and the environment. Since 2016, Rodríguez has been recognized as one of the 25 most impactful planning scholars in North America based on the number of times his publications have been cited. His research has been funded by the NIH, the EPA, the US Department of Transportation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Wellcome Trust.  Prior to joining Berkeley, Rodriguez was Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is a fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and has been a consultant to many Latin American cities as well as to the Inter-American Development Bank, Andean Development Bank, and the Clean Air Institute.

Lead image credit: ferrantraite via Getty.