Anna Paola Pola
Job Title: Director Urban Planning and Research Fellow
Institutional affiliation: WHITRAP Shanghai (the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO)
Anna-Paola Pola is an architect and urban planner (PhD), specialising in urban conservation and sustainable rural development. She is Director of Urban Planning and Research fellow at the UNESCO Category II Centre, WHITRAP Shanghai, in Tongji University. Currently, her research focuses on the protection and development of small settlements and rural areas. She collaborates on grassroots projects in remote villages and acts as a planning consultant for local governments, institutions and NGOs. Previously, she conducted comparative research on urban conservation plans for historic towns in Italy, Latin America and the Middle East and worked as an urban planner on post-earthquake reconstruction in Central Italy. She is a UNESCO expert on the HUL Recommendation and urban heritage, a member of the HeritAP Network of Heritage Practitioners for the Asia and Pacific Region, a member of the Built Heritage Journal editorial board, and the OurWorldHeritage (OWH) Foundation Advisory Panel.
Publications
Pola, AP. “Let the Past Serve the Present. Rural Development and Soft Power in the Preservation of Chinese Villages.” RAS Journal, no. 80 (2020): 123-148.
Pola, AP. “When Heritage Is Rural: Environmental Conservation, Cultural Interpretation and Rural Renaissance in Chinese Listed Villages.” Built Heritage, no. 3 (2019): 64-80. https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03545728
Pola, AP. “L’America Latina, dal restauro urbano alla tutela integrata della città storica.” In Esportare il centro storico, edited by B. Albrect and A. Magrin, 302-311. Rimini: Guaraldi Engramma Editrice, 2015.
Pola, AP. “La tutela della città storica nei paesi extra europei, l’esempio dell’Iran.” In Esportare il centro storico, edited by B. Albrect and A. Magrin, 324-429. Rimini: Guaraldi Engramma Editrice, 2015.
Anna-Paola Pola (2022) Global experts for historic towns: Leonardo Benevolo and Giorgio Lombardi’s contributions to UNDP/UNESCO Andean region programme, Planning Perspectives, 37:5, 1051-1072, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2022.2116351