Biography
Trained as an Architect at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (1990), Spain, where he worked in private practice. MSc in Urban & Regional Planning (Developing Countries) in 1996 (Dissertation was on Curitiba, Brazil), followed by a PhD in Planning and Housing focused on low-income housing in Costa Rica in 2000, both at Edinburgh College of Art/Heriot-Watt University. He worked in the private sector as an architect and planner in Edinburgh between 1996 and 2000, and as Central Development Officer at Community Self-Build Scotland, Glasgow, 2000/01. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Planning & Housing, Edinburgh College of Art (1999/2000 and 2001/02), and then at the School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University (2002/04), working on a range of projects including participatory planning in the UK, Europe and Latin America.
Since 2004, he has been a full-time academic at what is now the School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, becoming a Professor in Global Urbanism in 2019. From 2010 to 2019 he was Director of the Centre for Environment & Human Settlements and he is currently Head of the Research Centre for Urban Studies within the Institute for People, Place and Society.
From 2006 to 2010 he was co-coordinator of the Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South (N-AERUS), contributing to the organisation of annual conferences in London, Edinburgh, Rotterdam and Brussels. Since 2007, he is a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. He is a member of the editorial boards of Urban Design and Planning and Open House International: Sustainable & Smart Architecture and Urban Studies.
Since 2013 he is the co-Director of the MSc Urban Strategies and Design, jointly delivered with the University of Edinburgh. He teaches Urban Design Theory and Urbanisation in the Global South.