Julia Skinner

Julia Skinner is an architect and urban social development specialist with 40+ years of professional experience. She gained experience mainly in developing countries, where she worked at various levels, from community architect to National Director. A major part of her work concerned slum upgrading and affordable housing through community participation. Since 2013, green cities and sustainability, including solid waste management, circular economy, energy transition, appropriate green building codes, and incentive mechanisms for sustainable housing. Besides these topics, she also lectures on social issues such as poverty, informality, livelihoods and how they are impacted by climate change, the sustainable development goals and the New Urban Agenda.

She obtained her MSc. at the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Erasmus University, Rotterdam, where the theme of her dissertation was the formalization of land titles to alleviate urban poverty in Peru. She was the Educational Programme Manager of the MSc in Urban Management and Development and she coordinated the Green Cities for Eco-efficiency short course. She also coordinated the Erasmus + Mobility Programme 2017 on “Smart and Green Cities Strategy” with universities in Kosovo, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova.

She was the National Head of Programme Development and Management in ENACE (the National Buildings Company) in Peru. Before that, she managed a project of over 3,000 supervised credits of core units through self-help and mutual aid in the largest marginal settlement in the Eastern cone of Lima, working with CBOs and heads of household (mainly women).

In El Salvador, she worked for four years with an NGO, applying local construction technologies and materials at the community level in rural areas. In Colombia, she was a housing adviser in a European Union project for slum upgrading in the Ciudad Bolivar district of Bogota. She has worked in Europe, Latin America, Asia and African countries.