Francesca Froy leads on Executive Training at Space Syntax, helping city leaders and urban masterplanners to understand how cities operate as ‘systems of systems’. Francesca also contributes to Space Syntax projects through her analysis of emergent economic growth in cities and the spatial underpinnings of agglomeration economies.
Alongside her role as an Associate, Francesca is a practising academic, lecturing on sustainable urban development and writing for journals such as the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society; European Planning Studies; Environment and Planning A; Local Economy; and The Journal of Urban Design. Her latest book Rebuilding Urban Complexity: A Configurational Approach to Postindustrial Cities published by Routledge weaves in strands from architecture, economics, history, anthropology and ecology to explore the evolution and destruction of complexity in cities.
She trained in space syntax at the Space Syntax Lab of The Bartlett, University College London, where she undertook the Bartlett Masters in Space Syntax from 2012-14, and went onto completing a PhD which linked space syntax to local economic geography in 2021. She is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture and an Honorary Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Planning.
Francesca developed an interest in the influence of architecture and the built environment in cities when working as a Senior Policy Analyst at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where she led international reviews on local policy implementation and governance from 2005-2015. Before that she evaluated European Commission-funded urban and regional policies based in Brussels from 2001-5, after working on regeneration and housing initiatives for Reading Borough Council (1997-2001).
2016 Member of the Editorial Board for the Local Economy Journal.
2022- MSc in Sustainable Urban Development, University of Oxford
2017-22 The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London
2017-22 The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
2012-2019 London School of Economics.
2023 Honorary Lecturer, The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London
2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
2017 Honorary Research Fellow, The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.
2021 PhD in Architecture, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
2014 MSc in Advanced Architectural Studies (Distinction), The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
1996 MA in The Body and its Representation (Distinction), University of Reading
1994 BSc Anthropology (First Class Hons), University College London.
