Luisa Bravo | Founder and Editor in Chief

Dr Luisa Bravo is a public space scholar and passionate activist, cultural entrepreneur and academic. She has more than 20-years experience in the professional field as urban planner and designer with a specific focus on public space. Her expertise is grounded in extensive academic postdoctoral research and teaching in Italy and Europe, the United States, Middle East, Asia and Australia. She is Adjunct Professor in Urban Design at the University of Florence in Italy (2013-) and she has held several academic positions internationally, such as Research Associate at University of Bologna (2008-2014), Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley in the US (2012), Visiting Assistant Professor at the Lebanese American University in Lebanon (2015), Adjunct Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia (2016-19), and Guest Researcher and Instructor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Centre for the Future of Places in Sweden (2019-2021).
With her non-profit organization City Space Architecture, that she founded in 2013 and currently leading as President, she has organized and curated international conferences, seminars, workshops and exhibitions aimed at promoting public space culture, through an interdisciplinary approach, involving art and architecture. Luisa is the Founder and Editor in Chief of ‘The Journal of Public Space‘, the first, international, interdisciplinary, academic, open access journal entirely dedicated to public space, that she established through City Space Architecture in 2015, in partnership with UN-Habitat; she is also the Founder and Director of the Public Space Academy developed by City Space Architecture in partnership with the Ove Arup Foundation, the first, free educational program aimed at establishing a new approach to urban complexity built around public space. Luisa’s lecture ‘Stand up for Public Space!” has been included in the UN-Habitat Global Urban Lectures Series (2017) and is also part of the global campaign that she launched at the Habitat III conference in Quito.
Luisa is the Founder and Curator of Museo Spazio Pubblico / Public Space Museum, a collaborative and transdisciplinary public space practice practice, merging art, architecture and technology into a complex new discipline.
In 2021 Luisa founded the web magazine MaPS. Mastering Public Space, to spread knowledge of public space at the global level, applying an horizontal approach based on sharing and discussion, engaging the global community of members and public space lovers affiliated to City Space Architecture for its development. Read the first editorial on MaPS. Mastering Public Space by Luisa Bravo.