Matias Echanove is a founding member of URBZ, a platform that promotes experimental research and collective action for urban development. Together with partner Rahul Srivastava, he is also co-director of the Institute of Urbanology which has offices in Mumbai and Goa, India.

More recently he co-founded ‘hood, a planning and design studio specializing in neighborhood-level interventions. ‘hood’s current projects include affordable housing, urban preservation, and mobility studies.

Matias Echanove studied economics and government at the London School of Economics (LSE), urban planning at Columbia University in New York, and urban information systems at the University of Tokyo.

He regularly lectures at the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has presented his research and projects at Berkeley University, the Max Planck Institute and the World Bank, as well as forums such as TEDx, Urban Age, Just Metropolis, and J-Store.

He has published essays and articles in Oxford University Press, Domus, Volume magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, The Times of India, Time Out, and Art India.

He was an expert in the workshop Local resources - Leveraging regional skills and metabolism at the 4th Holcim Forum “Economy of Sustainable Construction” held in Mumbai in April, 2013.