Rethink the City: New approaches to Global and Local Urban Challenges

Dominic Stead

Associate Professor

Delft University of Technology

Dominic Stead is associate professor of urban and regional planning in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. He began his academic career as researcher at the University of the West of England. From 1996 to 2001, he was research fellow at University College London in the Bartlett School of Planning and associate lecturer at the University of the West of England. He moved to Delft University of Technology in 2001, initially as a postdoctoral researcher supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship, a European postdoctoral research training grant for young talented academics. He belongs to the OTB Research and Spatial Planning and Strategy groups. Since moving to Delft, Dominic has been principal investigator for more than 10 large European research projects on issues related to urban development, governance and sustainability.

Dominic has a strong interdisciplinary background: a doctorate in Planning Studies, a master's degree in Town and Country Planning and a master's degree in Environmental Science. His research and teaching focus on processes of policy-making and the impacts of policies, particularly in relation to urban transport and spatial planning. He has recently been involved in projects funded by ESPON, European Framework Programmes, JPI Urban Europe and the United Nations. He has broad experience in teaching, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level, including courses on urban and regional planning, urban environmental management and transport planning.

Dominic has published widely in books and international journals and has co-edited five books: 'European Transport Policy and Sustainable Development' (2000, Spon), 'Policy Integration in Practice' (2004, Delft University Press), 'Transition towards Sustainable Mobility' (2012, Ashgate), 'Impacts of European Territorial Policies in the Baltic States' (2015, Routledge) and 'Planning Cultures and Histories' (2017, Routledge). He is European editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Planning Practice and Research, as well as being a member of four editorial boards of highly esteemed international peer-reviewed journals: European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, European Planning Studies, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Planning Practice and Research.

Roberto Rocco

Associate Professor

Delft University of Technology

Roberto Rocco is a spatial planner and researcher in planning theory, regional planning, governance and sustainability at the Section of Spatial Planning and Strategy of the Delft University of Technology. His research interests include multi-level networked governance issues in regional planning and the emergence of complex networked city-regions.

A special focus lies on the study of regional mobility and accessibility systems and their impacts on centrality formation at the regional level. Lately, he has been reorienting his work towards studies of metropolitan and regional governance and the sustainability of these governance structures. He is interested in concepts of spatial justice and the right to the city as crucial concepts that allow for a broader definition of planning tasks and for the emergence of new roles for planners in networked governance structures.

Darinka Czishke

Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology

Delft University of Technology

Dr. Darinka Czischke is an Associate Professor in Housing and Social Sustainability at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. In 2014 Dr. Czischke was awarded the Delft Technology Fellowship to develop her research on Collaborative Housing. She is the founder of the Co-Lab Research group at the TU Delft and co-founder of the working group ‘Collaborative Housing’ at the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR). Previously, she worked as Director of World Habitat (formerly Building and Social Housing Foundation, BSHF); Research Director of the European Social Housing Observatory at CECODHAS Housing Europe; and as Research Associate at the LSE Cities Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science. She has published extensively about social, affordable, and collaborative housing in international comparative perspective. She is the leader of Project Together!, a cross-sector initiative focused on realizing the potential of collaborative housing forms in the Netherlands and internationally.

Luz Maria Vergara d’Alençon

Postdoctoral researcher

Delft University of Technology

Dr. Luz Maria Vergara d'Alençon is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Management in the Built Environment at TU Delft. Her PhD focused on the role of civil society organisations in supporting low-income homeowners to improve the management of their condominium housing. She is an architect and holds a MSc in Architecture from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Luz María was born in Chile and resides in the Netherlands since 2014. Throughout her professional career she has performed functions in architectural design, independent consultancy, research and teaching. Her research interests are related to housing challenges in the Global South with special attention to the role of civil society organisations in the context of deprived neighbourhoods and social vulnerability. She is interested in understanding how societal requirements can be incorporated in housing/ urban design processes and management services through participatory and collaborative methods.

Igor Pessoa

Postdoctoral Researcher

Delft University of Technology

Dr. Igor Pessoa is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. He is an expert on participatory planning and design practices. His research looks for possible mechanisms to improve urban resilience with focuses in community empowerment. He tries to transform the broad concept of resilience into practical, objective and implementable practices.

In TU Delft he also helped to establish the Global Urban Lab, a collective initiative of researchers that are working to tackle urban challenges in emerging economies. He became an Architect and Urban Planner by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, but has always been interested on strategies beyond the traditional design-oriented solution for urban problems. In that sense, Igor is eager to work with experimental and multidisciplinary strategies to solve complex urban challenges.