Gildo Seisdedos

Cities are Gildo Seisdedos’s passion. As a marketing professor at IE Business School, he combines teaching, research and consulting activities in the fields of urban planning, local policies and city marketing. The success of his book “How to Manage Twenty-first Century Cities”, published by Prentice Hall, has impacted the way cities deal with the new competitive environment, advocating city development strategy approach, which relates traditional planning with strategic urban planning, city branding and city marketing.

Specialized in cities, marketing and development, Professor Seisdedos also holds a law degree and is the director of the Urban Innovation Club at IE Business School, a project led by the Madrid-based School and Philips and which enjoys the active support of leading Spanish companies in the field of urban services. He is also the technical director of mercoCIUDAD, the most complete and influential ranking of Spanish cities, and the most extensive benchmark of Spanish cities and the funding director of the Madrid Global Chair in International Urban Strategy, funded by Madrid City Council and designed to foster the city’s internationalization, having played an active role in IE Business School’s being named by Capital magazine as the corporate ambassador to Madrid. He collaborates with other media surveys, such as América Economía’s ranking of the best cities in Latin America in which to do business.

Gildo Seisdedos has participated in diverse international research projects centered on competitive urban strategy, urban management indicators and consulting projects for the urban and regional development of diverse cities and regions, including Spanish (Burgos, Zaragoza, Cuenca, Segovia, Barcelona, Xunta de Galicia and Irún) and international cities such as Bogotá, Cuenca-Ecuador, Andorra, Dublín, Novo Hamburgo-Brasil or Wien amongst the most recent. These works focused on the design of city branding and urban development strategies, or combinations of both. He is a partner of Design Convergence Urbanism (DCU), a consulting firm that helps territories evaluate their assets by identifying their comparative advantage within a regional and international context. DCU activities include the planning of a cultural district in the historic quarter of Nanjing, support for the conservation of Luang Prabang in Laos using planning tools, and the design of a revitalization strategy for Central Flushing in New York.

Seisdedos is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of City and Town Management. He has participated in multilateral organisms like the Asian Development Bank, the OECD, The Spain-Japan Forum, The Spain-China Forum, the Asia Europe Foundation, Asia Europe Foundation (ASEF), the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISoCaRP) and regional and local governments in diverse countries (including Austria, India, Singapore, Russia and Romania). He forms part of the Spanish arm of the Habitat Committee of the UN Centre for Human Settlements.