Maria Buhigas is an architect and urban planner. She is the founder of Urban Facts, an interdisciplinary platform that develops projects focused on spatial strategy development and urban planning with a focus on the economic and social issues related to cities and metropolitan areas. Prior to that she worked at Barcelona Regional from 1999 to 2013, where she was Director of Urban Strategy from 2008. She has participated in numerous international forums and worked with diverse local and regional governments in addition to collaborating with agencies such as the World Bank and UN-Habitat. She holds an architecture degree from the ETSAB-UPC and a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University, and she is currently an associated professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.