Supporting policy with scientific evidence

Sonia De Gregorio Hurtado.  M. Arch., PhD with European Mention. Professor of Urbanism and Urban Regeneration in the Department of Urban and Spatial Planning of the School of Architecture, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Her research focuses on the analysis of the urban dimension of the EU policy and urban national policies, applying a comprehensive approach in which urban regeneration, local climate action, governance issues, mobility, and the gender dimensions are integrated.  She has participated and coordinated national and international research projects and is member of international and national initiatives and committees on urban matters (see below). 

Her professional activity has been developed in parallel in the fields of urban planning and research on urban policies from the beginning of her career:  She has developed her activity as a practitioner in international urban planning offices focusing on the development of urban masterplans in Europe, North Africa, Asia and Central America. Sonia started to develop her research activity as a student at the Laboratorio di Politiche Urbane e Territoriali (Politecnico di Milano) in the framework of a grant of the Ministero degli Affari Esteri of Italy.  This experience introduced her in the analysis of the urban policy of the European Union, an interest that she integrated in her Doctorate and in her independent research work.  Her PhD Thesis resulted in the first systematic analysis of the impact of the urban policy of the European Union in Spain.  It benefited from the work of Sonia as visitor researcher in the European Institute for Urban Affairs (John Moores University of Liverpool) under the direction of Prof. Michael Parkinson, with the support of a grant of the Ministry of Education of Spain.  This research stay resulted in the European Mention of her PhD Thesis.  Sonia was identified by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona as the main author on this topic in Spain in its 2016 report “30 Anys d’Espanya a la Unió Europea”.

She has been researcher in CEDEX, the Research Center of the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, where she worked in EU projects (6th and 7th Framework Programmes, and Intelligent Europe) during 2009-2013 and was director of two research projects.  She has also been visitor researcher (postdoctoral) in the BOKU University (Vienna), the University of Trento, and the University IUAV di Venezia. 

Sonia participates frequently in high-level conferences and publishes research in Spanish and international journals.  From 2011 she is member of the Technical Committee of CONAMA. In 2015 she was selected as member of the Working Group of the Ministry of Finance on the Urban Agenda of Spain.  From 2015 she is member of the Governing Board of the European Urban Research Association (EURA).  In 2017 she was nominated external expert for the drafting of the Action Plan of the Urban Poverty and Urban Regeneration Partnership of the Urban Agenda for the European Union and...