Giovanni Padula

Giovanni Padula is the director of CityO Srl. He founded the company in 2002. He is a specialist in urban economics, with expertise in economic analysis and feasibility studies for urban development projects and real estate investments.
He teaches at the Università Carlo Cattaneo - LIUC (Castellanza, Varese) "Economics and the City. How to use financial and economic analysis to make territorial investment projects successful".  In 2005 and 2006 he teached at LIUC “Cities and Economics of Innovation”.
Padula participates regularly as a speaker for workshops, conferences and seminars – in Italy and abroad – on the economies of cities and regions, on creative industries and on strategic territorial and urban projects.
He was director and partner of Creativity Group Europe Srl, a company founded in 2004 with the American economist Richard Florida, author of the bestselling book “The Raise of the Creative Class”, and the researcher Irene Tinagli. Creativity Group Europe operated as a research laboratory on the creative economy and produced, among other reports, “Italy in the Creative Era” and “Sweden in the Creative Age”. 
Between 1991 and 2000 Padula lived in New York, where he covered US and international economics as a correspondent for Il Sole 24 Ore and for Il Mondo. In 1999 he launched La Stampa Web as co-editor. Then, as partner and CEO, he launched Polix, a Seat Pagine Gialle start-up and the most visited web site in Italy during the 2001 Italian elections.