International Conference on Public Transport and Urban Citizenship
Speaker Biographies
- Mr Salvador Alvarez
- Prof David Banister
- Ms Louise Duggan
- Mr John Henry
- Prof Julian Hine
- Prof Jeff Kenworthy
- Prof Kevin Leyden
- Mr Frank McDonald
- Dr Pascal Pochet
- Prof John Pucher
- Mr David Sim
- Prof James Wickham
Salvador Alvarez is Engineering Director at Tramvia Metropolita, S.A. of Barcelona. He is responsible for the implementation and management of key aspects of Barcelona’s two tramway systems.
Previously, he worked for the company as Systems Engineer, in charge of the track system, signalling, traffic lighting, ticketing, communications and energy.
Before that, he worked for Comsa, S.A., where he was responsible for various projects, collaborating on many railway infrastructure projects around Europe.
David Banister is Professor of Transport Studies at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment. Until recently he was Professor of Transport Planning at University College London. He has also been Research Fellow at the Warren Centre in the University of Sydney (2001-2002) on the Sustainable Transport for a Sustainable City project and was Visiting VSB Professor at the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam (1994-1997). He is currently a visiting Professor at the Universitat fur Bodenkultur in Vienna. He is a Trustee of the Civic Trust and Chair of their Policy Committee (2005-2009). He has published widely on cities and sustainable transport, including 18 books and over 200 papers in refereed journals or as contributions to books.
Louise Duggan is an urban designer with specific expertise in the sociology and the design of streets and public space. She is interested in how well-designed streets can be made to deliver a range of benefits for our neighbourhoods, towns and cities.
Currently Louise works for The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in the specialist open space directorate CABE Space. Louise leads on streets work across CABE, in particular managing the enabling support CABE Space provides to local authorities who are making improvements to their streets and public spaces. She represented CABE on the steering group for the recently published Manual for Streets.
John Henry is a Chartered Engineer, and Director and Chief Executive of the Dublin Transportation Office
He has had a wide-ranging career in the area of transportation in both the public and private sectors in Ireland and abroad.
One of the highlights of his career to date was the development, by his team at the DTO, of the most comprehensive transport strategy ever devised for Dublin “A Platform for Change”. Implementation of the first stage of this strategy is now underway as part of the Government’s Transport 21 funding programme.
Julian Hine is Professor of Transport at the University of Ulster. Prior to moving to Northern Ireland to take this post in 2001 he was based at the Transport Research Institute, Napier University in Edinburgh. He has written extensively on the linkages between transport disadvantage and social exclusion, and transport policy. He has conducted research on the social aspects of transport funded by EPSRC, DFT and the Scottish Executive. He has also conducted research for Children's Commissioner in Northern Ireland, DRD, and the Consumer Council on School Transport. He is currently part of a team of researchers on an Australian Research Council funded project based at Monash University looking at the linkages between well-being, social disadvantage and transport.
Jeff Kenworthy is Professor in Sustainable Cities in the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University in Perth. Professor Kenworthy teaches courses and supervises postgraduate research students in the area of urban sustainability. He has 28 years experience in urban transport and land use policy with over 200 publications in the field. He is particularly noted for his international comparisons of cities around the theme of reducing automobile dependence.
Kevin M. Leyden, PhD is an Associate Professor of Political Science at West Virginia University and Director of the Institute for Public Affairs. Dr. Leyden’s current research examines how the built environment affects individuals socially, politically, and physically.
His work on the relationship between neighborhood design and social capital in Galway was published in the American Journal of Public Health. He serves as a partner with the World Health Organization’s Large Analysis and Review of European Housing and Health Status (LARES) and is currently completing a study of the relationship between community design, housing quality and health in eight European cities. Dr. Leyden is also a member of an international research team examining the quality of life in ten major metropolises for the National Academy of Science of the Republic of Korea and is in the process of completing an analysis of transport planning for the Irish Environmental Protection Agency.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor of The Irish Times. He has won several awards, including one for Outstanding Work in Irish Journalism, and is the author of The Destruction of Dublin (1985), Saving the City (1989) and The Construction of Dublin (2000). He is also joint author with James Nix of Chaos at the Crossroads (2005), a book documenting the environmental destruction of Ireland. In October 2006, he was awarded an honorary DPhil by Dublin Institute of Technology. He is also a founder member and Writer in Residence of the Academy of Urbanism of Great Britain and Ireland.
Based in Lyon, Pascal Pochet is a researcher at Transport Economics Laboratory (LET) and Professor of Transport at the ENTPE (Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l’Etat).
He works on travel behaviour, both in the context of French cities (daily mobility of the elderly, transport and inequalities, sustainable mobility), and Sub-Saharan African cities (daily mobility and accessibility in situations of poverty).
John Pucher is a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. For over three decades, he has examined differences in travel behavior, transport systems, and transport policies in Europe, Canada, and the USA. Currently, Pucher's research focuses on ways to promote safe and convenient walking and bicycling for daily travel and thus improve overall public health.
Scottish architect David Sim is a senior consultant at Gehl Architects. He has practiced the UK, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
Well-known in Swedish professional circles as an educator, he has taught at architecture and design schools the world over, while his work at Lund University expanding and developing teaching methods has led to a number of pedagogical awards and distinctions.
While in Lund, David also researched and developed patterns for greater density and diversity in urban areas. This research has been successfully applied in urban design projects and competitions.
His main area of work at Gehl Architects is urban design, collaborating with other professionals in the planning and building process, applying Jan Gehl’s theories to large-scale projects.
James Wickham studied sociology at the London School of Economics and the University of Frankfurt; he took his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex. He has been awarded a Jean Monnet Professorship in European Employment Studies at Trinity College Dublin where he is a Fellow and directs the Employment Research Centre in the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy. He is also Acting Director of the Policy Institute. He has published in journals such as Social History, Work Employment and Society, Gender Work & Society, Journal of Education and Work, Innovation, European Journal of Education and European Societies. He is the author of Gridlock: Dublin's transport crisis and the future of the city.