Vanessa Mitteldorf

Vanessa is an urban planner, designer and researcher who acts as a mediator between people and places. Before joining the Spring Cohort 2023, she gathered a diverse range of international experiences that grounded her understanding of the complexities of city-shaping processes. Her initial experiences with the built environment led her to pursue sustainable and just urban developments.

Besides working on architectural refurbishments in her native Brazil, Vanessa has developed urban projects ranging from neighbourhood visions to strategic city-scale masterplans. She has also managed international tenders and stakeholders at practices like MVRDV in Rotterdam and Triptyque in São Paulo. She holds an MSc in Urban Development Planning, through which she worked closely with community-led initiatives in Liverpool and wrote a thesis on the ever-changing nature of the public realm.

Dacorum Borough Council

During her role as Planning & Design Officer at Dacorum Borough Council, Vanessa contributed to delivering Hemel Garden Communities (HGC) across multiple workstreams and tasks. Besides leading HGC’s Health & Wellbeing strategy, her role was also centred around enabling high-quality design and planning policy and delivering capital projects. Due to the programme's collaborative nature and holistic approach, her role involved daily dealing with different working and review groups through continuous engagement with a diverse network of partners, stakeholders and councillors across the three authorities.