Barcelona Meeting Point

Alfonso Vegara has a PhD in Architecture and is also an economist and sociologist. He was President of ISOCARP, the International Society of City and Regional Planners, during the period 2002-2005. Alfonso Vegara has been an urbanism teacher at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, The Universidad de Navarra and the Universidad CEU San Pablo. He was also a visitor teacher at the School of Design of The Pennsylvania University where Proyecto Cities was born.
Alfonso Vegara is the founder and President of the Fundación Metrópoli, and international institution whose headquarters are in Europe. Fundación Metrópoli does research on the future and leads the Proyecto Cities, a project that studies the innovations, the competitve advantages and the success factors of 20 cities from five continents, among which are: Toronto, Boston, Shanghai, Curitiba, Dublin, Miami, Singapore, etc. Fundación Metrópoli is developing a series of programmes sucha as the Mayors´ Institute. Learning from Cities, Cities Art and the Fundación Metrópoli Fellowships programme. The aim of the latest being to train young professionals in the field of urbanism.
Its projects on cities and territories have been developed by Alfonso Vegara´s firm Taller de Ideas. These projects have been disseminated through a number of publications and frequent conferences given by Alfonso Vegara in different cities in Europe, United States, Latin America Asia, Australia and Africa. His projects have been awarded with prizes by United Nations, the European Union, the European Council of Spatial Planners, architects´ associations, managerial associations, town councils and national governments. He also has been awarded the Premio Rey Jaime I Prize in the category of Urbanism, Landscape and Sustainability. At present he is advisor of the Government of Singapore for the development of One North.
The key contribution of Alfonso Vegara´s work has been the defence for the strategic value of cities and of urban politics in our society and his ability to discover the future vocation of different territories basing on their idiosyncrasy and their component of excellence in a complex and interrelated world.