ANTONIO RACITI

Antonio Raciti is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the School of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome. His work is grounded in planning theory, community development, and collaborative governance, with particular attention to power relations, institutions, and the role of community–university partnerships in urban transformation.
He developed his research trajectory through more than a decade of academic experience in the United States. His early work, carried out at the University of Memphis, focused on community design, advocacy planning, and action research in disinvested urban neighborhoods, emphasizing participatory processes and grassroots organizing. He later joined the University of Massachusetts Boston, where his scholarship shifted toward the study of climate adaptation as a planning and governance challenge, examining how institutional coalitions, civic actors, and planning systems shape responses to environmental risk and inequality. This line of work has been supported by federal and state research funding and is rooted in long-term partnerships with municipalities, community organizations, and public agencies.
He has published in leading international journals including Planning Theory & Practice, Journal of Planning History, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Cities. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research and is actively involved in international planning networks (AESOP, ACSP, SIU). His research and teaching emphasize action research and sustained engagement with communities and institutions in both the United States and Italy.

Selected Recent Publications

• Raciti, A., (Forthcoming) Disancorare le Anchor Institution? Il Ruolo delle Università nei Processi Collaborativi per l’Adattamento. Tracce Urbane. Rivista italiana transdisciplinare di studi urbani.
• Tornabene, S. and Raciti, A., (Forthcoming) Beyond the Capitalist/Alternative Economic Binary: Diverse Economies in Urban Planning, in The Routledge Companion to Urban Planning, Balakrishnan, S., Phelps, N.A., and Sotomayor, L. (eds.)
• Raciti, A., Negrón, R., & Herst, R. (2025). Collaboration in Adaptation Planning: Power Clusters and Opportunities for Governance Arrangements in Metro-Boston. Planning Theory & Practice, 26(4), 557–577. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2025.2539877
• Raciti, A., and Reardon, K., (2024) Paul Davidoff’s Life in Prospect: Building a Progressive Planning Research Agenda through Engaged Scholarship. Journal of Planning History, 24 (1), 40-57. https://doi.org/10.1177/15385132241270287
• Estrada-Martínez, L. M., Raciti, A., Reardon, K. M., Reyes, A. G., and Israel, B. A., (2021) Is the Scholarship of Engagement a Meaningful Approach to Foster Change in Community Development Education? Field Notes from Three Community/University Partnerships. International Journal of Community Well-Being, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42413-021-00114-w
• Raciti, A., (2020) Whose Traditions Count? Questioning New Urbanism’s Traditional Neighborhood in the American South. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 44 (1), 178-193. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X20954532
• Saija, L., Santo, C. A., and Raciti, A., (2020) The deep roots of austere planning in Memphis, TN: is the fox guarding the hen house? International Planning Studies, 25(1), 38-51.
  https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2019.1703653
• Raciti, A., (2020) ‘Community Design’ e Pratiche Sociali. Esperienze di Progetto-Azione in Italia e negli Stati Uniti. Bonanno, Rome. ISBN: 978-88-6318-262-0

Antonio Raciti is an urban planner and scholar whose academic career bridges Southern Europe and the United States, with a long-standing commitment to community-engaged research, planning theory, and the study of governance in contexts of social and environmental change. He is currently Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the School of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome.

He received his PhD in Urban Planning and Design from the University of Catania, where his doctoral research conceptualized design as a social practice through participatory action-research experiences in the Simeto River Valley. His formative training as an architectural engineer and planner, combined with early exposure to community-based design in Southern Italy, laid the foundation for a scholarly approach that integrates theory, practice, and civic engagement.

His academic career developed primarily in the United States, beginning with research and teaching appointments at the University of Memphis. There, his early scholarship focused on community design, advocacy planning, and participatory action research in disinvested urban neighborhoods, particularly in Memphis and other cities of the American South. This period produced foundational work on public housing struggles, grassroots organizing, food justice, and the role of universities as partners in community-led planning processes. These experiences shaped his long-term engagement with planning as a political and institutional practice rather than a purely technical one.

In 2017, he joined the University of Massachusetts Boston, where his research agenda expanded and evolved. While continuing to work through community–university partnerships, his scholarship increasingly turned toward questions of governance, power, and institutional coordination in metropolitan regions. During this period, his work shifted toward the analysis of climate adaptation as a planning challenge, examining how environmental risk, inequality, and entrenched coalitions shape decision-making processes in cities and regions. His research in Metro Boston, Gloucester, Chelsea, and East Boston has been supported by federal and state funding, including projects funded by the National Science Foundation, NOAA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Across these phases, his scholarship has been published in leading international journals such as Planning Theory & Practice, Journal of Planning History, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Cities, as well as in edited volumes with major academic presses. His work contributes to debates on collaborative governance, advocacy planning, institutional power, and the role of planning in contexts of social and environmental uncertainty. In parallel, he has authored and co-authored numerous planning reports and community plans that translate research into actionable knowledge for public agencies and civic organizations.

Teaching has been a central component of his academic identity. He has taught core and advanced courses in urban planning, urban design, planning theory, ethics, and community development at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He has also supervised and served on numerous PhD and master’s thesis committees across planning, environmental science, and public policy programs. A distinctive feature of his teaching is the integration of research, pedagogy, and practice through long-term, place-based engagement.

Since 2015, he has been the co-founder and co-director of the Community Planning and Ecological Design (CoPED) international program, an action-research summer school operating in Sicily that brings together students, faculty, local governments, and community organizations to co-produce plans and strategies for territorial development. This program exemplifies his approach to international planning education as a space of encounter between knowledge, institutions, and lived experience.

In addition to research and teaching, he has played significant leadership and service roles within academia. At UMass Boston, he served as Graduate Program Director and later as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Community Development. Internationally, he is Associate Editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research. He is actively involved in professional and scholarly networks, including AESOP (Association of European Schools of Planning), ACSP (Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning), and SIU (Società Italiana degli Urbanisti), and currently serves as ACSP’s representative to AESOP.

Through his career, Antonio Raciti has consistently worked at the intersection of theory and practice, foregrounding planning as a civic, institutional, and political endeavor. His current work at Sapienza builds on this trajectory, connecting long-term U.S.-based experience with European debates on governance, planning systems, and the role of universities in public life.