Oscar Oliver-Didier

Oscar Oliver-Didier is a Bronx-based urban designer and researcher from Puerto Rico that, after 15 years as an educator and practitioner, became a Henry M. MacCracken and Urban Doctoral Fellow in American Studies at New York University. He is also a member of the adjunct faculty at the Visual Arts Program at Fordham University and has taught at The New School Parsons and the School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (PUPR). Until recently, he served as the Senior Lead Urban Designer for the borough of the Bronx at the NYC Department of City Planning.

His research interests lie at the intersection of radical place-making, memory, and Latinx futurity from the 1970s to the present. For him, experimental land-based relationships become an essential means for recovering urban sovereignty and a way to partake in the sequences of social reproduction in new terms. He has also published on public housing in Puerto Rico, the politics of language in the South Bronx, and the performative nature of urban protests and occupations.

He was director of the research collective CIUDADLAB; the Laboratory for Housing, Planning and Urban Studies at the PUPR; and was an Auxiliary Adviser on urbanism to the Governor of Puerto Rico. He has edited multiple journals such as ENTORNO, Polimorfo, and Planning Perspectives. He holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from PUPR with distinction. In 2019 he was awarded the Michael Weil Award for Urban Design, a recognition of excellence in the pursuit of urban design in the NYC public sector, and the Héctor R. Arce Quintero Award in 2012, recognizing the work of an individual that promotes the city through practice, academia, and/or the public sector.

Companies

• Adjunct Faculty Fordham University (2018)
• Director CIUDADLAB (2004)
• Senior Lead Urban Designer NYC Department of City Planning (2019 — 2020)
• Senior Urban Designer NYC Department of City Planning (2015 — 2019)
• Adjunct Lecturer Parsons School of Design - The New School (2016 — 2016)
• Associate Review Editor for Latin America Routledge Taylor & Francis Group (2013 — 2016)
• Editorial and Urban Policy Consultant Puerto Rico Planning Board (2014 — 2014)
• Assistant Professor Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (2007 — 2014)
• Director Laboratory for Housing, Planning and Urban Studies (2013 — 2014)

Education

• Harvard University Graduate School of Design - Master of Architecture (M.Arch.), Urban Design 2004 - 2006
• New York University - Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, American/United States Studies/Civilization Sep 2020 - May 2025
• Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico - Bachelor's degree, Architecture 1998 - 2004