In 2005, Francois Vigier, Mona Serageldin, and John Driscoll, with the support of I2UD Board members, founded I2UD to continue their decades-long collaboration at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. They engaged networks of talented and dedicated academics and professionals to work together to promote sustainable urban development on the ground, in academia, and in fostering policy development among international development institutions.
Dr. Francois Vigier, President (2005-2020)
B. Arch (MIT), MCP (Harvard), PhD (Harvard), AICP
François Vigier was the president of the Institute for International Development as well as the founding Director of the International Centre for Local and Regional Development. A member of the Harvard faculty since 1962 and Chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design from 1992 to 1998, he was the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he directed the School’s Center for Urban Development Studies from 1987 to 2005. He was responsible for numerous planning and design projects in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. His international activities focused on building local capacity to manage a sustainable urban environment. Professor Vigier was also an expert in the preservation of the non-monumental cultural heritage, notably the rehabilitation of the Medina of Fez, medieval Baku, and, most recently, Old Damascus. He also pioneered the creation of an interactive database on the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1995, he was made a Knight of the National Order of Merit (France). Dr. Vigier passed away in Cambridge, Mass., in 2020.
Dr. Mona Serageldin, Vice President (2005-2018)
B.S. in Architecture (Cairo University), M.C.P. (Harvard), PhD (Harvard), AICP
Mona Serageldin was Vice President of the Institute for International Urban Development. She retired in June 2008 from her position as an Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she had been a member of the faculty since 1985. Dr. Serageldin had over 35 years of professional experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. She specialized in local development, strategic planning, social inclusion, and policy and program assessment. She worked on: decentralization; municipal finance of urban development; participatory urban planning and management; land regularization and infrastructure services; migration patterns and the impacts of remittances on land and housing markets; microcredit in housing and infrastructure; community-based development; and revitalization of the historic urban fabric. Dr. Serageldin worked on projects sponsored by UNDP, UN-HABITAT, the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, and various foundations. In 2003 and 2004 she served as one of the experts on the Millennium Project Task Force 8 on Improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. In 2008, she served on the Higher Council in Urban Planning and Development in Egypt.
In 2018 Mona was posthumously awarded an UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour award for promoting practical research-based approaches to address a broad spectrum of development challenges in a wide range of settings.
View UN-Habitat’s press bulletin:
Online: UN-Habitat.org Press Release, 28 September 2018, Nairobi Kenya
PDF: UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour winners Press Release 28 Sept 2018
John Driscoll
B.A. (University of Maryland), M.A. (American University), AICP