Dr Gianni Talamini is an assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong, where he leads the Master of Urban Design and Regional Planning. Gianni does research on the notion of organic urbanism and the relationship between society and space. He works for an environmentally innocuous, culturally leavened, and spatially just society. 

Ximena is an architect graduated from Tec de Monterrey, she studied an MSc in City Design and Social Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she developed different research works on the public and the role of civil society in the transformation of the city. She worked as an urban designer at Embarq, now WRI Mexico, and later founded dérive LAB, a laboratory that seeks to explore, understand and inspire other (new) ways of living and thinking about life in the City. She is also co-founder of BEMA, a cultural centre in Queretaro, Mexico, dedicated to art and architecture communitary projects.

Ximena has taught an Urban Design course at Universidad Anáhuac since 2019, and has been recipient of various grants from institutions such as the Design Trust Hong Kong in 2018 and the Active Travel Academy at the University of Westminster in 2020. Ximena is currently a Young Fellow of the Mexican National Endowment for the Arts (FONCA) with the project 1000+ ways of occupying public space in Mexico.

Dr Pablo Sendra is an architect and urban designer. He is an Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. He combines his academic career with professional work through his own urban design practice, LUGADERO LTD, which focuses on facilitating co-design processes with communities. At UCL, he is the Director of the MSc Urban Design and City Planning Programme and the Coordinator of the Civic Design CPD. He has carried out action-research projects in collaboration with activists and communities. His work with communities can be accessed in the Community-Led Regeneration platform. He is co-author of Designing Disorder (with Richard Sennett, 2020), which has been translated into 7 languages, co-author of Community-Led Regeneration (with Daniel Fitzpatrick, 2020) and co-editor of Civic Practices (with Maria Joao Pita and CivicWise, 2017). He is part of the City Collective for the journal City.

Mahyar Arefi has taught at the University of Texas at Arlington for four and at the University of Cincinnati for sixteen years.  He also co-edits Urban Design International.  In addition to his affiliations with international institutions of higher education including the UAE, Turkey and Sweden, he served as a Fulbright scholar in Turkey and peer-reviewed for the Fulbright, and the Global Innovation Initiative grant.  Dr. Arefi has published extensively in academic journals including Planning Education & Research, Town Planning Review, Journal of Urban Design, Cities, Cityscape, Planning Theory and Practice, Planning Practice & Research, Social Semiotics, and specializes in the areas of urban design theory, practice, and pedagogy, place and placemaking, community and international development, and informal settlements.  He published his book Asset-based Approaches to Community Development with the UN HABITAT in 2008, and his recent books include: “Learning from Informal Settlements in Iran: Models, Policies & Processes” (2018), and a co-edited volume: “The Palgrave Handbook of Bottom-Up Urbanism” (2019).  His other book “Deconstructing Placemaking: Needs, Assets, and Opportunities” (2014) was the recipient of two international awards in 2015 and 2019.  He currently has a book on formal-informal urban design dichotomy under contract with Manchester University Press.  

Miodrag Mitrašinović is Professor of Urbanism and Architecture at Parsons School of Design, The New School. Miodrag is the co-editor of “The emerging public realm of the Greater Bay Area: Approaches to public space in a Chinese megaregion” (Routledge 2021, forthcoming); “Public space reader” (Routledge 2021); “Cooperative Cities” (Journal of Design Strategies, No. 9, 2017); editor of “Concurrent urbanities: Designing infrastructures of inclusion” (Routledge 2016); co-editor of “Travel, space, architecture” (Routledge 2009); and author of “Total landscape, theme parks, public space” (Routledge 2006). One of the foci of his scholarly work are infrastructural dimensions of public space, specifically at the intersections of socio-spatial justice, designing and public policy.

Matthew Carmona is Professor of Planning and Urban Design at The Bartlett, UCL.  He is an architect / planner with research interests in the fields of urban design governance, the design and management of public space, and the value of urban design.  He Chairs the Place Alliance and edits www.place-value-wiki.net.  His research can be found at https://matthew-carmona.com. 

Twitter @ProfMCarmona