UC Irvine

University of Miami

Lourdes

Founder/CEO of State of Place; Urban Design Researcher & Entrepreneur; Global digital nomad: Shanghai, Boston, NYC

Evaluating the relationship between urban design, walkability and the triple bottom line, including its impact on obesity and health, within the rapidly urbanizing developing world, focusing on China

New York University

Research Assistant Professor

State of Place’s AI-driven urban design data and predictive analytics software is a decision-making and communication tool that helps citymakers make more effective, cost-efficient, bottom-up, transparent, and accountable citymaking decisions. Data-driven citymaking not only saves time and money, it helps optimize the economic, social, environmental, and health value of communities, creating more livable, equitable, sustainable places all people can love…

To date, we’ve helped dozens of citymakers - municipalities, developers, communities - use data to: 

1) Identify the best ways to make places more walkable, livable, equitable, and sustainable, while unlocking maximum social, environmental, health, and economic value 
2) Make the data-driven case for these places by quantifying their benefits, including their return on investment, to get faster approvals, funding, and buy-in for projects
3) Objectively market and communicate the value of projects that promote more walkable, livable, equitable, sustainable - resilient - places.  

Fundamentally, we're transforming the intuitive, gut-based, expert-driven top-down approach to citymaking, accessible only to a few, into an evidence-based, data-driven one, bottom-up one accessible to the many, so we get awesome places all people can access and love - DONE - all over the world.

State of Place

Founder & CEO

Urban Imprint demystifies how interactions between the built environment and human activity impact economic, social and ecological value. Working with planning and real estate industry professionals, Urban Imprint then leverages that know-how to develop evidence-based sustainable planning, design, and development solutions.

Urban Imprint

President, Urban Design Researcher and Consultant

Focusing on walkability, urbanization, development and the triple bottom line in China. More info here: http://bit.ly/14UJPmE

Fulbright

Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, Shanghai, China

Polytechnic Institute of New York University

Research Fellow/Adjunct Professor

Conducted and published independent and collaborative research on the value of urban design and the triple bottom line, walkability, sense of community and public space, mall redevelopment, and retail evolution.

Virginia Tech, Alexandria

Post Doctoral Fellow

Urban design & behavior, walkability, urban revitalization, suburban retrofitting, sense of community

Dr. Mariela Alfonzo