Miguel Rivas

Summary

30-year career fully devoted to place-based economic development and innovative urban policies, with a special focus on the growing role of cities as key actors for change. In 2007, I start as international expert through my own advisory boutique TASO. Since then, and in parallel to numerous technical assistances and assignments, I´ve regularly been appointed (four times so far) as Lead Expert for URBACT  —in URBACT Kairos, the ambition was to fully realize the potential of heritage as a driver for sustainable urban development through an ad-hoc integrated approach; in URBACT InFocus, we addressed smart specialisation as an overarching approach capable to re-invigorate the local economic agendas; in the pioneering URBACT CityLogo, the ambition was re-learning city branding from an integrated and participatory urban development perspective; URBACT Creative Clusters was a systematic exploration on how to promote local creative ecosystems in small and medium-sized cities.

Thus, needless to say I enjoy a lot the ever challenging work of designing and conducting large-scale, transnational peer learning and capacity building projects leading to concrete action planning. In this framework (also including Interreg and H2020) I have supported over 40 cities, including Dublin, Oslo, Liverpool, Bologna, Vilnius, Frankfurt or Skopje. Further to Lead Expert, I have been engaged in other URBACT short-term missions, such as Ad-Hoc Expert or facilitator in past editions of the URBACT City Festival and the URBACT Summer University. It´s worth mentioning that, previous to my work as international expert, I was hired as CEO to launch Seville´s brand new Local Development Agency, where I promoted a renovated local economic agenda and had the opportunity to introduce a number of innovations on how Development Agencies are governed in Spain.

Thematic expertise:

• Communication > city branding

• Culture > urban heritage, cultural and creative industries

• Knowledge economy > innovation ecosystems, innovation spaces, smart specialisation

• Local economy > entrepreneurship and SMEs, cluster development, creative economy

• Strategic urban planning > urban agenda, urban regeneration, multi-level governance, small/medium-sized cities