Rate My Professor Alessandro Rigolon

Alessandro Rigolon is an Associate Professor and the Master of City and Metropolitan Planning (MCMP) Program Coordinator in the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah. He holds a B.Arch. and M.Arch. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Bologna, a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Bologna, and a Ph.D. in Design and Planning with a focus on Sustainable and Healthy Environments from the University of Colorado Denver, completed between 2011 and 2015. Before joining the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor in 2019, where he was promoted to Associate Professor, Rigolon served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at California State University, Northridge from 2015 to 2017 and in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2017 to 2019. His specializations include ecological planning, smart growth involving land use, transportation, and accessibility, as well as urban design.

Rigolon's research centers on the intersections of urban planning, urban green spaces, environmental justice, gentrification, health equity, and climate change. He investigates policy factors driving inequities in green space provision, mechanisms of green gentrification and strategies to resist it, and the public health benefits of green spaces for low-income communities of color. Notable publications include 'A complex landscape of inequity in access to urban parks: A literature review' (Landscape and Urban Planning, 2016), which has received over 1,100 citations; 'Inequities in the quality of urban park systems: An environmental justice investigation of cities in the United States' (Landscape and Urban Planning, 2018); 'Green gentrification or 'just green enough': Do park location, size and function affect whether a place gentrifies or not?' (Urban Studies, 2020); 'Green space and health equity: a systematic review on the potential of green space to reduce health disparities' (Environmental Research, 2021); and contributions to the book Urban green spaces: Public health and sustainability in the United States (Springer, 2019). Rigolon serves on the editorial board of Landscape and Urban Planning and was named among the world's highly cited researchers in 2025 by Clarivate. His work has shaped academic discourse and planning practices on equitable greening and anti-displacement policies.