In the Instituto Universitario de Urbanística, different collaborations with local and regional authorities (PGOU Valladolid http://www3.uva.es/iuu/T42.htm, Directrices de Ordenaciçon Territorial de Castilla y León http://www3.uva.es/iuu/T33.htm) have been the basis to create a solid interaction and in 2009, I collaborated with Juan Luis de las Rivas, the coordinator of the PRAUs (Planes Regionales de Actuación de Urbanización) a program awarded in 2012 with the 9th European Urban and Regional Planning Award. The aim of the program was the re-activation of investments in social housing, with a special attention to the quality of the projects and the relationships with the existing cities (http://www3.uva.es/iuu/T41.htm). I have been one of the redactors of the report “Criterios de calidad sostenible” (http://www3.uva.es/iuu/CIUDADES/Works/PRAUs/Criterios%20de%20Calidad%20Sostenible%20PRAU.pdf): it was a tool for developers and a reference for those administrations of Castilla y León which want create a policy for social housing. After this first step, I had a role of consultant of several city councils and municipalities in developing these new kinds of strategies

My experience in integrated design of urban strategies and policies is strongly related with my work as consultant; in this kind of tasks I am called to assess and improve actions and decision from local authorities, as in the case of PRICyL – Plan/Programa de Rehabilitación Integral de Castilla y León (E). Urban renewal (Rehabilitación urbana) is a trend based on public actions in planning and urban housing. The main reference is the Leipzig Charter on sustainable European cities (EU, 2007), adopted within the informal reunion about Urban Development and Territorial cohesion aimed at: (i) using the tool of integrated urban development and the related governance for its implementation (ii) establishing any necessary framework at national level (iii) promoting the establishment of balanced territorial organisation based on a European polycentric urban structure One of the most important strategies to achieve the integrated policy of urban development is related with a new interest to deprived neighbourhood inside the context of the city. In this document they never speak using the terms ‘rehabilitation’ or ‘renewal’, and just in a case they mention the idea of ‘renovation of the housing stock’ as opportunity to improve the energy efficiency. During the following Informal Ministry meeting, which took place in Toledo, (2010), they approved a declaration on urban development. The declaration recognizes the importance of the work on the existing city, from different points of views (social, productive, urban) and underlining the role of the city as a complex system. During the last 25 years, the urban regeneration in Spain has evolved, with its concepts and its tools. In the 90’s the double pressures of EU policies and the decentralization enlarged the field of work, and the deprived areas of the consolidated city became another space of action, with the historical cores of the city. I had the occasion to collaborate in the creation of the PRICyL as a strategic tool at regional scale, aimed at activating a public policy about rehabilitation of housing stock in the framework of the Regional strategy of social housing. At the same time the PRICyL wants be a tool to improve the sustainable development, working on the existing city, avoiding land waste and reactivating greyfields and brownfields. The integrated rehabilitation has an incredible potential in stimulating the social, economic, environmental quality of urban spaces, and it creates opportunities to improve built spaces and especially the housing stock. My work on this program was aimed at create two kinds of indicators. In the analysis phase, I propose to use four data (growth of population in 1991-2010, age average of population, unemployment rate, and age of building) to create a synthetic indicator and mapping the deprived areas of the region and, for the city with more than 20.000 inhabitants, the deprived neighbourhoods. Once defined these area of actions, I elaborated a grid to assess projects of rehabilitation, in which we consider the area of interventions, the actors involved, the amount of the investments attracted and the expected social, economic and environmental impacts. It was an attempt to assess the proposed solutions and not to finance existing problems. In the last four years the program has been approved from the Regional Authority, and the indicators I developed are currently a part of the mandatory material asked to those areas which are involved in rehabilitation projects in Castilla y León.

Nowadays, I work in the Politecnico di Milano, one of the most important research clusters in planning and urban studies in Europe. The everyday contact with a number of scholars, teachers and researcher in the field of urbanism and planning allows me to keep up to date about the different topics related to the sustainable urban development. The DASTU – Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani is a dynamic and competitive environment, a space of comparison where the continuous dialog between different trends and concepts permits to improve the background of every component. At the same time, every experience during the past years has been useful for me, to improve my skills and my approach as expert in the field. Among others, I belong to the SIU - Societá Italiana Urbanisti, another important network which organizing meetings, reunions and publish reports and studies about innovations in planning and it is another way to get update on the subject. From the international point of view, I used to take part in two European networks of young researchers (YA Aesop) and planners, architects and policy makers (NG - New Generations) which helped me to keep in contact with other early careers scholars, following new trends and taking part in to their regular activities (as the NG Festival, where I participated as invited) and online initiatives and debates (http://www.newgenerationsweb.com/portfolio_page/about/).