Carmelo Ignaccolo

Carmelo Ignaccolo, Ph.D., is an urbanist and educator whose work focuses on urban design, spatial inequalities, heritage, and technology. He obtained his Ph.D. from MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) in May 2024, with a doctoral dissertation titled “Behind the Waterfront: Enduring Inequities and Illusive Renewals in the Making of Mediterranean Port Cities.” His work has been awarded the “MIT DUSP Outstanding Dissertation Award” and supported by multiple grants, including two Harvard Center for European Studies year-long dissertation research grants.

Carmelo is an incoming tenure-track Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Policy Development at Rutgers’ Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. 

During his time at MIT, he worked as a Research Affiliate and Project Manager at the Civic Data Design Lab under Prof. Sarah Williams. He taught multiple editions of 11.001 (“Introduction to Urban Design and Development”) with Prof. Larry Vale and offered urban design studios with Prof. Brent Ryan in India and Italy. Carmelo also served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP, where he coordinated and taught the core GIS and technology class for Urban Design graduate students in 2019.

Carmelo’s work combines urban planning, spatial analytics, and digital humanities techniques to reveal overlooked narratives and materialize invisible trends, systems, and phenomena. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Cities, Magazine on Urbanism, and the Journal of Urban Technology. His digital mapping work has been featured in The New York Times and Bloomberg CityLab. Additionally, he has exhibited digital representations at Architecture Biennials in Seoul (2019), Shenzhen (2020), and Venice (2023).

Prior to MIT, Carmelo worked as an Urban Planner at the Urban Planning and Design Lab of the United Nations Habitat Programme in Nairobi. He was responsible for developing strategic recommendations on public transit networks, heritage preservation, and climate resilience for the future planning systems of several cities in the Middle East (e.g., Jeddah, Makkah, Tabuk). Carmelo also worked as an Urban Designer at AECOM’s Urban Design Studio in New York City. 

Carmelo received a Master’s degree in Urban Design from Columbia University GSAPP as a Fulbright Fellow, where he was awarded the GSAPP Prize for Excellence in Urban Design for the 2016/17 academic year. During his graduate studies, he worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for Spatial Research of Prof. Laura Kurgan and as a faculty member at the “Resilient Mozambique” GSAPP summer workshop, organized with the WWF and Prof. Kate Orff’s Columbia Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes. 

Prior to studying in the United States, he completed a five-year Master’s degree program in Architecture-Engineering at the University of Catania in Italy (2015), during which he was awarded a "Beyond Frontiers" fellowship for an academic exchange at Tongji University in Shanghai (2014).