About
Prof. Jean-David Gerber is an Associate Professor for Political Urbanism and Sustainable Spatial Development at the Institute of Geography, University of Bern. He also serves as Executive Director of GIUB (Global Institute for Urban Systems) and Unit Leader of the Political Urbanism and Sustainable Spatial Development research group. Gerber holds a PhD in Public Administration from the University of Lausanne (2005) and an MSc in Environmental Sciences from ETH Zurich (2001). His career includes roles as Assistant Professor at the University of Bern (2012–2017) and Lecturer at the University of Lausanne (2009–2012), alongside postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley (2007–2009).
His research focuses on land use planning as public policy, housing policy, and sustainability challenges, with a particular emphasis on property rights, legal pluralism, and commons-based governance. He explores tensions between housing as a commodity versus a human right, strategies for affordable housing, and the role of public landownership in urban development. Recent work examines the telecoupling of global land systems and local resistance to large-scale land acquisitions.
Gerber’s publications address topics like urban commons, post-growth urbanism, and the interplay between property rights and spatial planning. He leads projects such as COMMONPATHS, investigating commons-based alternatives to conventional urban development models. His interdisciplinary approach bridges geography, political science, and legal studies, emphasizing relational understandings of property rights as triadic social relations involving users, states, and third parties.
Key areas of interest include:
- Land policy and governance frameworks
- Housing equity and cooperative models
- Sustainability transitions in urban-rural landscapes
- Legal pluralism and resource conflicts
Gerber’s work contributes to debates on equitable urbanization, resource management, and alternative socio-economic models in a post-growth context.
