Different Urbanisations / Critical Dialogues Series: The New Urban Agenda 'on the ground'

This is the second event in the Critical Dialogues Series conceptualised by Katleen De Flander, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam (IASS), and co-curated with ANCB, focussing on the practicalities of implementing the New Urban Agenda in the political context of the Habitat III process.

Following the launch of the United Nations' Post-2015 Development Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, 2016 is the year of Habitat III – the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to take place in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016 – in which the New Urban Agenda will be set for the coming 20 years. Habitat III is the continuation of an important process to secure a renewed political commitment for sustainable urban development. However, the major question and the key to success is how to approach and implement such a New Urban Agenda ‘on the ground’.

This second dialogue in the series focusses on the role and limits of the import and export of knowledge, technology and urbanisation patterns between different regions of the world, and questions how 'culturally different' the processes of urbanisation are or should be. These questions will be discussed using the example of Africa.

Africa is at the beginning of a major wave of urbanisation and is theoretically still in a position to take decisions on how the African Urban Transition will take shape. But what happens when we export European or Asian urbanisation patterns and technologies to African cities (which is already happening)? Which approaches can be shared (imported) and which cannot? What influence do ‘different urbanisations’ have on the resulting urban resource flows?

PROGRAMME

  • Introduction
  • Katleen De Flander, IASS, Potsdam
  • Áine Ryan, ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, Berlin
  • Keynotes
  • Susan Parnell, African Centre for Cities; Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa
  • Serge Salat, President, Urban Morphology and Complex Systems Institute, Paris, France
  • Ricardo Ruiz Freire, InCiti – Federal University of Pernambuco; 3ecologias and LABCEUS, Recife, Brazil
  • Commentator
  • Remy Sietchiping, Leader, Regional and Metropolitan Planning Unit, UN-Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya
  • Podium Discussion
  • Moderated by Astrid Ley, Director, Chair of International Urbanism, Stuttgart University

The event will be in English. Admission is free upon registration.1

  • 1. iass-potsdam.de/dialogues