Luisa Bravo
Luisa Bravo is a global academic scholar and educator, passionate public space activist and social entrepreneur. She has more than 15-years experience in the professional field as urban planner and designer with a specific focus on public space. After completing her PhD in Italy (2008), she has taught, researched and lectured in Europe, the United States, Middle East, Asia and Australia. She holds a strong record of publications, and she has been the recipient of grants, such as the Marco Polo scholarship, and awards, such as the Australia Award Endeavour Executive Fellowship. She is currently Adjunct Professor in Urban Design at University of Florence in Italy.
Over the past 15 years, Luisa organized and curated exhibitions and conferences in Italy and abroad, working in collaboration with international and multi-disciplinary teams, she extensively published contributions and essays in peer-reviewed journals and books, she served as reviewer for international conferences, journals, and doctoral dissertations, as advisor, supervisor and co-supervisor for Master thesis.
Luisa is regularly invited as keynote speaker in international conferences and she has been a speaker at major United Nations events, such as the Habitat III conference (Quito, 2016), the 9th World Urban Forum (Kuala Lumpur, 2018), the 2nd Saudi Urban Forum (Riyadh, 2018), the first UN-Habitat Assembly (Nairobi, 2019), the 10th World Urban Forum (Abu Dhabi, 2020). She was also selected and invited to attend the 26th UN-Habitat Governing Council in Nairobi (May 2017) and the High Level Meeting on the New Urban Agenda of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York (September 2017).
With her non-profit organization City Space Architecture, that she founded in 2013 and is currently leading as President, she has been curating projects, conferences, seminars, workshops and exhibitions internationally, aimed at promoting public space culture, involving art and architecture. Under her visionary leadership, City Space Architecture became partner of the UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, was included in the United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs' Civil Society database and was engaged in the United Nations General Assembly of Partners (GAP), Research and Academia Partner Constituent Group - www.cityspacearchitecture.org.
Luisa is the Founder, Editor in Chief and Journal Manager of 'The Journal of Public Space', the first, international, interdisciplinary, academic, open access journal entirely dedicated to public space, that she established through City Space Architecture in 2015, in partnership with UN-Habitat - www.journalpublicspace.org.
Luisa’s lecture ‘Stand up for Public Space!’ has been included in the UN-Habitat Global Urban Lectures series (2017), one of the UN-Habitat’s most publicly shared online outreach initiatives. 'Stand up for Public Space!' is also a global campaign promoted by City Space Architecture that Luisa is leading as principal researcher - www.standupforpublicspace.org.
Luisa is the Founder, Editor in Chief and Journal Manager of 'The Journal of Public Space', the first, international, interdisciplinary, academic, open access journal entirely dedicated to public space, that she established through City Space Architecture in 2015, in partnership with UN-Habitat - www.journalpublicspace.org.
Luisa’s lecture ‘Stand up for Public Space!’ has been included in the UN-Habitat Global Urban Lectures series (2017), one of the UN-Habitat’s most publicly shared online outreach initiatives. 'Stand up for Public Space!' is also a global campaign promoted by City Space Architecture that Luisa is leading as principal researcher - www.standupforpublicspace.org.