Santina Contreras

Biography

Santina Contreras is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis in USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, a Faculty Affiliate with USC’s Equity Research Institute, and a Nonresident Fellow with the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on advancing a justice-centered understanding of resilience planning through sustained, reflexive engagement with communities, organizations, and institutions operating in contexts of structural disadvantage and disruption. Situated at the intersection of urban planning and hazards research, her work examines how power, equity, and knowledge shape responses to risk. Through qualitative, community-engaged research, she advances empirically grounded interventions that center lived experience and foreground equity concerns often marginalized in technical analyses.

Contreras has extensive experience working in the private and nonprofit sectors on the design and implementation of resilience-building and international development-focused projects. Widely published in leading urban planning, environmental hazard, and disaster journals, she has also produced actionable outputs for community-based organizations and practitioners, including technical reports that support equitable, community-driven resilience planning and decision-making. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and has been covered by major media outlets, including the Associated Press, NPR, PBS, and the Los Angeles Times. 

Contreras holds a Bachelor of Science in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and a Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Planning, Policy, and Design from the University of California, Irvine.

Selected Publications

• Contreras, S., Ortiz, Z., Maysonet, T., Gilliam, R., Dean, M., Babboni, M., & Vega, K. (2026). Building urban resilience with “just” trees: addressing community interests within urban forestry planning in South Los Angeles. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2025.2604127
• Contreras, S., Cannon, C.E.B., & Barajas, (2026). J. Beyond Research Delays: Science funding disruptions limit community participation in climate and infrastructure planning. npj Urban Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-026-00374-5
• Contreras, S., Witkowski, K., Perodin, J., Remington, C., Headley, A., & Ganapati, E. (2026). First Responder Ladder of Community Engagement: Understanding Community Facing Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Urban Affairs, 48(2), 662-684. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2410277
• Contreras, S. (2019). Using Arnstein’s Ladder as an Evaluative Framework for the Assessment of Participatory Work in Post-disaster Haiti. Journal of the American Planning Association, 85(3), 219-235. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2019.1618728