Hey there and welcome to my blog! My name is Gavin Montalto, and I’m from the Woodlands, Texas, studying to complete a double major in Finance and Econ here at the amazing university of Penn State. You can frequently find me playing tennis, ping-pong, hiking, or going to the creamery to retrieve some delicious ice cream. However, I will never turn down a good hike. The longest trek I’ve participated in was over 20 miles over the course of a couple of days in Enchanted Rock State Park, Texas. In the winter, I enjoy powder skiing or building igloos, so if you see a few of them pop up around campus, you know I had a hand in building them.

Furthermore, I really appreciate good architecture, and I’m most fascinated by buildings from the renaissance, neo-Gothic, and Victorian eras. This architectural interest is only a prelude to my passion posts (PAS) in this blog: effective urban planning. I lived in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, and Calgary, Canada for 5 years each, so our constant travels and adventures allowed me to cultivate an opinion on effective urban planning (and how many US cities don’t have it). Besides my passion project, the second main purpose of my blog is to answer RCL prompts posted by Dr. Freymiller for our Rhetoric and Civic Life class.