On Cities
Norman Foster Foundation Public Debates Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies
On Cities
Norman Foster Foundation Public Debates Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies
On Cities | Introduction
The world is urbanizing fast. Most of this transformation, in terms of speed and scale, is occurring in Asia and Africa, where cities are struggling to accommodate and service hundreds of millions of people. This challenge is often characterized by vast informal settlements, which in cities like Mumbai or Lagos may house the majority of the population. National and International Sustainable Development plans call for an unprecedented fast transformation, which must be understood in the context of cities and their neighborhoods and promoted by new ways of thinking and acting. These public debates focus on new opportunities that integrate emerging technologies with local information and processes of architecture and design. A special challenge is to imagine scalable models of architecture and design that work along with vernacular forces in the built environment and can lead to fast and sustainable development in millions of neighborhoods over the next decade.
Luis Bettencourt Chair of the Public Debates Norman Foster Foundation
Public Debates
Chair of the Public Debates Luis Bettencourt, Pritzker Director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States Speakers
Celine D’Cruz, Founder member of Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers and Slum Dwellers International, Mumbai, India
Ian Goldin, Founding Director of the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Rajeev Kathpalia, Co-founder of Vastu Shilpa Consultants, Ahmedabad, India
Francis Kéré, Founder of Kéré Architecture and Kéré Foundation, Berlin, Germany
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Janice Perlman, Founder and President of The Mega-Cities Project, New York, NY, United States Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
Schedule Tuesday 28th May
12:30 p.m.
On Cities Public Debates
Lecture hall, Fundación Francisco Giner de los Ríos
Introduction by Luis Bettencourt Keynote by Francis Kéré Keynote by Celine D’Cruz Keynote by Rajeev Kathpalia
Debate between Francis Kéré, Celine D’Cruz and Rajeev Kathpalia, moderated by Luis Bettencourt
Questions-and-answers session
Keynote by Ian Goldin Keynote by Janice Perlman Keynote by Kenneth Rogoff
Debate between Ian Goldin, Janice Perlman and Kenneth Rogoff, moderated by Luis Bettencourt Questions-and-answers session
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Academic Body
Luis Bettencourt Luís M. A. Bettencourt is the Pritzker Director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago and Professor of Ecology and Evolution and the College. He is also Associate Faculty and Special Friend of the Department of Sociology and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He conducts interdisciplinary research on complex adaptive systems and leads several research efforts in the areas of the science of cities. This research focuses on the identification of cities’ systemic processes and properties as well as their local histories and contexts in identifying paths for a better quality of life for all, economic growth, and sustainable development. Towards this end, he works with international networks of researchers, local governments and NGOs to empirically understand and systematise urban knowledge and to create scientifically based solutions to many urban issues. His work has been influential in developing new theory and new empirical perspectives on cities and urbanisation worldwide and throughout history.
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Celine D’Cruz Celine is a founder member of Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (SPARC), a Mumbai based NGO that worked for the rights of pavement and slum dwellers from the 1980s to 2007. Today SPARC and National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) works in over 60 Indian cities and towns. Through the development of community savings and settlement profiling, communities develop capacity to create a robust strategy for the more difficult issues for securing housing and basic services. Celine is also one of the founding members of Slum/ Shack Dwellers International, a movement of the urban poor that started in 1996 in Africa. From 2009 to 2010, she worked in Washington at the World Bank with the Cities Alliance, with the Land Services and Citizenship Program for the urban poor. Since then, Celine continued to work with SDI/ACHR to support urban poor federations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and build capacity working with local and national governments to design, plan and implement city wide slum upgrading and resettlement projects.
Ian Goldin Professor Goldin is the Oxford University Professor of Globalisation and Development, the Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change and the founding Director of the Oxford Martin School. Ian previously was World Bank Vice President and the Group’s Director of Policy, after serving as Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Economic Advisor to President Nelson Mandela. Ian has served as Principal Economist at the EBRD and Director of Programmes at the OECD Development Centre. Goldin has a BA (Hons) and BSc from the University of Cape Town, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a MA and DPhil from the University of Oxford. Goldin has been knighted by the French Government and has published 21 books. He lectures at Oxford, Tsinghua and Harvard and provides advisory and consultancy services to a wide range of governments and leading global companies.
Rajeev Kathpalia Rajeev Kathpalia is a partner of Vastu Shilpa Consultants (VSC) a multi-disciplinary practice founded in 1955 by Balkrishna Doshi. His work there integrates frugal and responsible strategies of working with environmental and ecological systems and his net zero approach to campus design integrates the disciplines of architecture, landscape, ecology and energy generation. His is a practice that has a research based twin, the Vastu Shilpa Foundation, a not for profit research organisation in environmental and Habitat Design which deals with the poor and has dealt extensively with slums, squatter settlements, relevant standards for these and low cost housing. Kathpalia runs the Vastu Shilpa Foundation’s International Habitat Studio Program, where a mix of Indian students and students from various Universities from around the world participate. Kathpalia has been teaching for the past 30 years. He has lectured extensively in India and abroad and is a recipient of several honors and awards.
Francis Kéré Diébédo Francis Kéré was born in Gando, Burkina Faso and studied at the Technical University of Berlin. Parallel to his studies, he established the Kéré Foundation and in 2005 he founded Kéré Architecture. His architectural practice has been recognised nationally and internationally with awards including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2004) and the Global Holcim Award 2012 Gold. In 2017 the Serpentine Galleries commissioned him to design the Serpentine Pavilion in London and he accepted the professorship for ‘Architectural Design and Participation’ at TU München, Germany. Kéré continues to reinvest knowledge back into Burkina Faso and other sites across four different continents. He has developed innovative construction strategies that combine traditional building techniques and materials with modern engineering methods.
Janice Perlman Dr Perlman is Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University and President of ‘The Mega-Cities Project: Innovations for Urban Life’. Her book, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (2010) traces the life trajectories of informal settlement residents over four generations. It follows upon her seminal 1976 book, The Myth of Marginality. Janice is now completing the third volume of The Favela Trilogy, The Importance of Personhood. Her Awards include a Guggenheim; the Fulbright Scholar Award, the C. Wright Mills Award, the Chester Rapkin Award and two PROSE Awards for ‘outstanding contribution to the field’. Perlman was a tenured professor of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley; Director of Science, Technology and Public Policy at the NY Academy of Sciences; Coordinator of the National Urban Policy; and Strategic Planner for the NYC Partnership. She holds a BA from Cornell in Anthropology and a PhD from MIT in Political Science and Urban Studies. 10
Kenneth Rogoff Kenneth Rogoff is Thomas D. Cabot Professor at Harvard University. From 2001-2003, Rogoff served as Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. His 2009 book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly has been very widely cited by academics, policymakers and journalists. One regularity that Reinhart and Rogoff illustrate is the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in the run-up and the aftermath of severe financial crises. In general, they show that for financial crises, the differences between emerging markets and advanced countries are far less pronounced that previously believed. Rogoff is also known for his seminal work on exchange rates and on central bank independence. His treatise Foundations of International Macroeconomics (joint with Maurice Obstfeld) is the standard graduate text in the field worldwide. His monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published in over 50 countries. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Rogoff is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Group of Thirty. Rogoff is among the top ten on RePec’s ranking of economists by scholarly citations. He is also an international grandmaster of chess.
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Credits
Supported by
Bloomberg Philanthropies is proud to support the Norman Foster Foundation. Bloomberg Philanthropies works in over 120 countries around the world to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people. The organisation focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: Arts, Education, Environment, Government Innovation, and Public Health. Bloomberg Philanthropies encompasses all of Michael R. Bloomberg’s charitable activities, including his foundation, corporate and personal giving. The organisation’s government innovation programme works to promote public sector innovation and spread proven solutions among cities worldwide, and its arts initiatives utilise innovative partnerships and bold approaches to place arts at the centre of economic growth.
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