About

An architect and planner, Meg Walker served as Senior Vice President at Project for Public Spaces in New York City where she worked for twenty years with communities around the US to transform their public spaces and buildings, downtowns, waterfronts, and neighborhoods into vibrant, sociable, and sustainable places. Outstanding examples include a new public space plan for downtown Detroit, a street activation plan for downtown Seattle, and a public space design for the Pearl Brewery development in San Antonio, Texas.

Meg Walker is currently an Assistant Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she has taught core courses in the graduate program in Urban Placemaking and Management and has advised thesis students since 2010.  She was also a visiting professor at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. Ms. Walker is the chair of the board of En Garde Arts in New York City, an innovative, site-specific theater company that uses the city as its stage to promote young artists in the performing arts. She also served on the Board of Trustees for the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY for eight years. She holds a B.A. in government from Wesleyan University and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. Ms. Walker has spent many months visiting family in Barcelona over the past five years and has enjoyed getting to know the city, its public spaces, museums, and delightful events. She is the lead curator of Art and Public Space.

Meg leads the Arts & Public Space program.

Alison Sant is an urban designer, author, and teacher. She co-founded the Studio for Urban Projects, an interdisciplinary design collaborative that has worked for nearly 20 years at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, art, and social activism. The Studio focuses on public programming, urban prototyping, and civic dialog that aims to bring social justice and sustainability to the design of cities. In her role as partner, Alison has been a design captain for the Market Street Prototyping Festival, a designer-in-residence at the Exploratorium’s Bay Observatory, and a member of the Bionic team for the Bay Area Resilient By Design Challenge. In 2016, the Studio for Urban Projects was honored for contributing to its field by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as a member of the YBCA100.

Alison is the author of From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities, named among the best books of 2022 by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and Planetizen. She is currently working on a new book entitled Streetlife (Island Press). Sant’s writing has been featured in U.S. News and World Report, Streetsblog, Earth Island Magazine, New Cities, City Lab, Planetizen, and Fast Company. She has taught at the College of Environmental Design, the University of California Berkeley, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of Art. Alison currently teaches at Harvard Extension School’s Sustainability & Environment Program.

Alison leads the New York City Streets program.

Sílvia Casorrán Martos (Barcelona, 1979) has a degree in Environmental Sciences and an MBA, with studies in The Netherlands (Utrecht) and in Mexico (Guadalajara). She has 20 years of professional experience in the fields of sustainable mobility and the transformation of public space, working from both private and public sector.

From 2015-2020 she was the lead officer at the Cycling Office for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, a role she founded, and she coordinated the Cycling Cities Network in Spain. In the period 2019-2023 she served as the Mobility Councillor for Sant Martí District in Barcelona. In the period 2021-2023 she served as Deputy to the Chief Architect in Barcelona. For more than 15 years she has been an activist among sustainable mobility social movements.

Earlier in his career, as founding director of Van Alen Institute, Gastil led a program of urban design competitions, publications, and exhibitions, focused on open space and waterfronts, including the exhibition and publication Open: New Designs for Public Space and the book, Beyond the Edge: New York’s New Waterfront. His focus on waterfronts has continued in his work and scholarship, including his essay, “Complexity and Continuity in the Transformation of Pittsburgh’s Rivers and Riverfronts,” and Success Looks Different Now: Design and Cultural Vitality in Lower Manhattan.

Gastil has taught studio and seminars and published widely, including visiting professorships and full time appointments at institutions including at University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, and University of California, Berkeley, and is on the affiliate faculty of the University of Washington, Landscape Architecture. From 2019-2022, he headed the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught and advised on the future of urbanism in post-industrial cities. He serves on the board of Riverlife, Pittsburgh, and CALL/City as Living Laboratory.

Ray leads the Seattle program.

Mars Arriesgado holds a Master of Environmental Management degree from Yale University, focusing on unlocking the potential of urban areas to drive climate solutions. He advanced this lens at the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability by synthesizing complex urban sustainability research into accessible and actionable resources for practitioners. Prior to moving to the United States, he was a practicing licensed environmental planner in the Philippines, collaborating with various local governments to mainstream climate and disaster risk assessments into their medium- and long-term development plans.

Bridging science to practice, Mars now curates the Custom Program at City Lab Discovery, where he designs tailored learning experiences that meet the distinct needs of institutional partners.

Elena is an architect graduated with honors from ETSAB, UPC. Currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Architecture. Her professional journey includes collaborations with a handful of local architecture firms, where she has gained experience across diverse domains, including hospitality, commercial, residential architecture, and also installations.
Elena is currently contributing to the Barcelona Program at City Lab Discovery. With ETSAB recognized as a leader in the field of urbanism in Europe, Elena brings an unique local perspective on the relationship between architecture and the lived experiences of residents, enriching her contributions to the discipline.