Juan Pastor-Ivars is a Research Fellow and Academic Associate with the UNU-IAS Operating Unit Ishikawa / Kanazawa (OUIK).
His areas of academic expertise are the fields of architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, and ecology. His research focuses on the sustainable conservation and resilient development of urban ecosystem services. These studies aim to have a positive effect on the pressing global problems of climate change, aging of societies, shrinking of cities, mass tourism, loss of biocultural diversity, and ecosystem fragmentation, among others. To address these global challenges, he is assessing the feasibility of a green-blue infrastructure through the inventorying, mapping, and monitoring of existing ecosystem services and the re-utilization of empty houses and vacant plots in cities. He is also interested in the management of urban ecosystem services through joint management and eco-tourism.
Dr. Pastor-Ivars was born in Dénia, Spain. He speaks Spanish, Catalan, English, and Japanese. He obtained a Master in Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He moved to the ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto, in 2009 where he obtained a Master in Landscape Architecture from the Kyoto Institute of Technology. He was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) fellow at Kyoto University and received his PhD in landscape architecture from the Polytechnic University of Valencia with a focus on Japanese gardens. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Ma and Oku, Ogawa Jihei and Japanese Gardens of the 19th Century”.
Prior to joining UNU, Dr. Pastor-Ivars worked for six years in a public government organization in Spain as an architect, urban planner and policymaker; held diverse internships in architecture firms, including Kengo Kuma and Associates; and provided part-time assistance for three years at Kyoto Gakuen University, focusing on the topic of “Nature and City.”
Research Interests
- Green infrastructure
- Japanese gardens
- Shrinking cities
- Sustainable conservation and resilient development of urban ecosystem services
- Urban ecotourism