Iván Tosics is an “urban explorer”, eager to find interesting examples and good practices of cities to innovate urban development, for the sake of public interest and keeping the balance between social, environmental and economic interests.

Iván is one of the principals of Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI), Budapest. He is sociologist (PhD) with long experience in urban sociology, strategic development, housing policy and EU regional policy issues. Since 2011 he is one of the Thematic Pole Managers (Programme Experts) of the URBACT programme. He teaches at the University of Pécs, Department of Political Studies, Doctoral School.  He is vice chair of the European Network of Housing Research (ENHR), executive committee member of the European Urban Research Association (EURA). He is the Policy Editor of the journal ‘Urban Research and Practice’.

He publishes extensively on integrated urban development, urban renewal, metropolitan areas topics. He works regularly for the European Commission, DG Regio, related to the Urban Development Network and the EU Urban Agenda. He was working for DG Regio in the Cities of Tomorrow programme, preparing an issue paper on ‘Governance challenges and models for the cities of tomorrow’. He was member of the Selection Committee of the 2014 Bloomberg Mayors Challenge for European cities. He represented for many years the Municipality of Budapest in EUROCITIES, as chair of the Economic Development Forum in 2007-2008 and as member of the Executive Committee in 2009-2010. He was the leader of a consortium working on the medium and long term Urban Development Strategy of Budapest.