Anna SOAVE

Anna Soave is an architect/urban planner with more than 10 years of professional experience in physical planning, area upgrading, heritage conservation, institutional development and low-cost housing. Having worked in several developing countries, including post-conflict situations, her interests lies in hands-on planning and capacity-building, with a focus on the application of participatory methods and context-specific approaches for the improvement of dilapidated urban areas.

Having graduated as an architect in Italy and worked in design offices in Europe and Mexico, she specialised in 2000 in planning at the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London (UCL).

In 2001, she was appointed to the academic staff of the DPU as Coordinator of the MSc programme in ‘Building & Urban Design in Development’ (BUDD) in which she taught modules focusing on the upgrading of low-income and dilapidated urban areas in developing countries. She also contributed to the research, design and production of a number of pubblications for DPU, DFID and UN-Habitat.

From 2003 to 2008, she worked in Kabul, Afghanistan as an urban planner for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Historic Cities Support Programme, engaged in the safeguarding and the upgrading historic quarters. Key tasks include the oversight of planning initiatives in close consultation with ministerial staff, municipal officers and community representatives; the synthesis and presentation of data and information emerging from physical and socio-economic surveys; the analysis of critical issues related to urban recovery and the preparation and dissemination of awareness-raising material among government counterparts and donors. In 2008, she undertook a technical assignment for AKTC, funded by the World Bank, specifically addressing historic preservation issues in the formulation of local urban development plans and national policies and procedures.

Since 2009, she has been providing technical advisory services to a slum upgrading and capacity building support initiative in Erbil (Kurdistan), supported by UN-Habitat/UNDP-Iraq within the framework of the Erbil Housing Strategy; this task implies the review of current planning and building practices in formal and informal areas in order to draft recommendations for improved and more affordable housing design and construction processes, as well as institutional development. In parallel, she has been recently contributing to the development of viable strategies for the revitalisation of the walled city of Harar Jugol, in Ethiopia, in support of the efforts of the Jugol Revitalization Program Coordination Office and Harar Bureau of Trade, Industry and Urban Development.

Published research on urban development includes: Soave Anna, “Kabul: A City in the Making”, in Parametro, no. 272, Nov/Dec 2007; “Urban Conservation in the Historic Neighbourhoods of Kabul”, in Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme, Urban Conservation and Area Development in Afghanistan, AKTC, Lausanne, 2007; “The Historical Neighbourhoods of Kabul: Planning Efforts and Negotiation Processes” in Mumtaz B. & Noshis K.(2004), in Development of Kabul: Reconstruction and planning issues, 10th Architecture & Behaviour Colloquium, Monte Verità, Comportements, Lausanne; and “San Isidro Neighbourhood, within Old Havana (Cuba): An Integrated Community Project”, in Turath: Old City of Jerusalem Revitalisation Program, 2000; as well as compiling and editing publications that include: Understanding Slums: 40 Case Studies for the UN Global Report 2003, UN-HABITAT (2003); Sustainable Urbanisation: Bridging the Green and Brown Agendas, London; Allen A., You N. et al (eds), DPU-DFID, London 2002; Implementing the Habitat Agenda: In Search for Urban Sustainability, Wakely P., You N. et al (eds), DPU-DFID, London, 2001.

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