Julián Castro is an international Urban development expert at the World Bank, working with the Latin America and Caribbean team and based in Bogotá, Colombia. With 14 years of professional experience, his expertise spans city planning, resilient urban infrastructure, housing, land value capture, and public policy. Julián has extensive experience in managing complex investment projects, coordinating across levels of government, and promoting inter-agency collaboration to drive urban development in both large metropolitan areas and smaller cities.
Since joining the Bank in 2023, Julián has provided operational and technical support to national and subnational governments in Colombia, Mexico, and Bolivia. Passionate about the transformative power of cities, he is particularly interested in leveraging infrastructure as a catalyst for reducing inequality, advancing social mobility, enhancing climate adaptation, and improving overall well-being.
Prior to the World Bank, Julián worked in different public agencies such as the Ministry of Housing in Colombia, the Financial Institution for Development -FINDETER, the National Agency for Infrastructure, and the Habitat Secretariat of Bogotá, as well as private consulting firms in London in the UK. Over the past three years Julián has also served as Local partner and visiting professor at the University of Texas in Austin.
Julián holds a Master’s in Urbanism and Social Sciences from the London School of Economics -LSE, a postgraduate certificate in Urban and Regional Economics from Universidad Externado de Colombia, and a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Universidad de Los Andes.