Architect and planner, he is Full Professor of Policies for Sustainability and Local Development at the MA on Green Economy and Sustainability – Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara (Italy). In October 2012 he founded the International University Network Routes towards Sustainability of which is co-coordinator. Since 2019 he is amongst the founders and member of the board of the Unife’s international Ph.D. progrmme Environmental Sustainability and Wellbeing, as a joint Ph.D. with the Western Sydney University. In 2022 he published for Mimesis Edizioni (Italy): L’Umanità a un bivio. Il dilemma della sostenibilità a trent’anni da Rio de Janeiro (Humanity at a crossroads. The dilemma of sustainability thirty years after Rio de Janeiro).
He has extensive experience in sustainability policies and practices, local development, strategic spatial planning and urban creativity conducted in Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Vietnam. From 2003 to 2015 he has been the coordinator of the international master degree EcoPolis, in collaboration with various Latin American and Asian universities. In 2012 he founded for the University of Ferrara the Routes towards Sustainability International University Network, created in collaboration with 9 universities and now grown up to 23 partner universities from five continents. Routes promotes multi and cross disciplinary academic initiatives (symposia, summer schools, workshops, doctoral courses). From this network, in 2019, the international doctoral course in Environmental Sustainability and Wellbeing of the University of Ferrara was born, with a joint degree with Western Sydney University of which he is one of the founders and a member of the teaching board.
The research areas in which he has engaged are: Policies and projects for public and social housing; Urban planning and management; Urban regeneration and creativity; Policies and tools for sustainability; Smart and circular cities and territories. Since 2017 he has developed theoretical and critical thinking on the cultures of sustainability and on the recent paradigms of the Anthropocene and the ecological transition. Recently he has been developing research on the circular city, sustainability, social sciences and humanities.
He has written books and essays since the 90s, on the themes of social housing, urban redevelopment and complex programs, urban regeneration and creativity, as well as sustainability.