Davide Ponzini

Assoc. Prof., Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano

Davide Ponzini is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at Politecnico di Milano. He is the director of the Transnational Architecture and Urbanism research unit (TAU-Lab - www.tau-lab.polimi.it). He has also been a visiting scholar at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, and Sciences Po Paris and Visiting Professor at TU Munich. His research activity focuses on planning theory, urban and cultural policy, and contemporary architecture. He has been the director and co-director of research projects among which the "Learning from Gulf Cities" initiative (with Harvey Molotch) regarding urbanization in the Arabian Peninsula. Currently he is the Research Leader of the JPI Cultural Heritage research project "HOMEE – Heritage Opportunities/threats within Mega-Events in Europe". He has been an advisor of both urban and cultural policy to local and national governments and other public and private entities. He is co-author (with the photographer Michele Nastasi) of Starchitecture: Scenes, Actors, and Spectacles in contemporary Cities (Monacelli Press, 2016), co-editor (with Harvey Molotch) of The New Arab Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, Ambition, and Distress (NYU Press, 2019). He authored the book Transnational Architecture and Urbanism: Rethinking How Cities Plan, Transform, and Learn (Routledge, 2020).