Luisa Bravo

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT LUISA BRAVO

Dr Luisa Bravo is a public space scholar and passionate activist, a cultural entrepreneur and an academic. After completing her PhD (2008), she has taught, researched and lectured in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. She is an Adjunct Professor in Urban Design at the University of Florence and has over 20 years of experience in the professional field. Luisa holds a strong record of academic publications, has been the recipient of grants and awards, and she served as a keynote speaker in major international conferences in more than 30 countries. She has actively participated in key United Nations summits, such as the Habitat conference (Quito, 2016), the World Urban Forum (Kuala Lumpur, 2018; Abu Dhabi, 2020; Katowice, 2022; Cairo, 2024) the first UN-Habitat Assembly (Nairobi, 2019) and two High-Level Meetings at the UN headquarters in New York (2017, 2022). With her non-profit organisation City Space Architecture, which she founded in 2013, she organised and curated conferences, seminars, workshops, and exhibitions internationally aimed at promoting public space culture. Under her leadership, City Space Architecture became a partner of UN-Habitat, was engaged in the General Assembly of Partners (GAP), Research and Academia Partner Constituent Group and became a Member of the Davos Baukultur Alliance of the World Economic Forum. Luisa initiated and is currently leading several public space projects, such as: The Journal of Public Space, the first, interdisciplinary, academic, open access journal entirely dedicated to public space; the Public Space Academy, the first, free, interdisciplinary educational program on public space; the Public Space Museum, a collaborative and transdisciplinary practice on public space; the web-magazine Mastering Public Space, an online resource with a curated collection of news on public space from influential and reliable sources. She is a Member of AESOP Thematic group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures, a Member of the Board of Experts for the European Prize for Urban Public Space, an Expert to the European Commission for the Horizon Europe Program and for the research project \'Public Spaces as Spaces for Citizen Engagement\', promoted by the JRC Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. She is also an expert evaluator for the European COST project, for the Fulbright Commission, for EIT Culture & Creativity, and a consultant for the Global Platform for the Right to the City, for which she wrote the thematic paper \'Cities and Human Settlements with Quality Public Spaces\'.