Javier Babí Almenar

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT JAVIER BABÍ ALMENAR

I advocate a smart (re)development of our territories to make them more biodiverse and climate adapted, helping to preserve human well-being and natural capital in the long term. To achieve this vision, I do cross-disciplinary research and practice on land sustainability to enhance the environmental and socio-economic performance of urban and rural territories. My work integrates knowledge and techniques from ecology, urbanism, environmental design, geographic information sciences, life cycle assessment, and environmental modelling. It encourages me to collaborate with a diverse set of professionals and stakeholders to develop creative, pragmatic, and innovative solutions.Originally, I trained as an architect-urbanist, but soon I realised how important was to expand my knowledge on the assessment and management of natural resources and biodiversity to support policies, plans and projects for sustainable and resilient (i.e, smarter) territories. Consequently, I did a step back on my career and trained also as an environmental scientist, specialising on landscape ecology. As a result, I had the opportunity to work for several years in a hybrid position as an urban designer and landscape consultant for a town planning studio in the UK. As a consultant, I supported the development of environmentally conscious strategies, urban plans/designs, and I contributed to environmental and landscape assessments/studies.I continued my career as a researcher for a Research & Technology Organisation in Luxembourg, where I pursued a double PhD. I mainly worked on the interrelation of urban challenges, ecosystem services, and nature-based solutions, developing quantitative assessment models to forecast the environmental and economic contribution of urban nature-based solutions to human well-being. I also contributed to a decarbonisation strategy for Luxembourg, research on ecological connectivity assessment, GIS applied to life cycle assessment, and on biodiversity sensitive farming.Currently, after a period in the Joint Research Centre researching on ecosystem accounting, I am assistant professor in (urban) ecology at Politecnico di Milano, supporting with my research the development of polices, plans and projects for a smart (re)development of our territories.Feel free to contact me if you are also doing research or practice on land sustainability and would like to collaborate or be in contact. It would be my pleasure meeting you.