Our host Stephanie Fortunato speaks with Luisa Bravo, founder and president of City Space Architecture. They discuss principles for designing inclusively and creating moments for sharing and togetherness, and how it takes a village to create successful public spaces – including the importance of working with collaborators that might not agree with you.


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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, Middle East, Asia and Australia. She is Adjunct Professor in Urban Design at the University of Florence in Italy and has 20+ years experience in the professional field with a specific focus on public space. 

 Luisa holds a strong record of academic publications, she has been the recipient of grants and awards, such as the Australia Endeavour Executive Award, and she served as keynote speaker in major international conferences in 30+ countries. She has actively participated in key United Nations summits, such as the Habitat III conference (Quito, 2016), the World Urban Forum (Kuala Lumpur, 2018; Abu Dhabi, 2020; Katowice, 2022) 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 organization City Space Architecture, that she founded in 2013, she organized and curated conferences, seminars, workshops and exhibitions internationally aimed at promoting public space culture. Under her leadership, City Space Architecture became partner of UN-Habitat and was engaged in the General Assembly of Partners (GAP), Research and Academia Partner Constituent Group.

 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 and free resource with a curated collection of news on public space from influential and reliable sources. 

 She is Member of AESOP Thematic group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures, Member of the Board of Experts for the European Prize for Urban Public Space, 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 and for the Fulbright Commission (USA), 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'.