Professor John Friedmann has won the first United Nations Human Settlements Lecture award. The recently launched UN-HABITAT Lecture series is organized through the Global Research Network on Human Settlements (HS-Net), an international board that advises UN-HABITAT on its Global Report on Human Settlements. The award seeks to recognize outstanding and sustained contribution to research, thinking and practice in the human settlements field. A key component of the award is the delivery, by the award winner, of a lecture before a live audience. The delivery of the lecture is intended to stimulate global debate and provoke new thinking in the field of human settlements. Professor Friedmann delivered the first annual lecture during the third session of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver, Canada (19 to 23 June, 2006). The lecture will be disseminated through a multi-media DVD, as well as hard copy and web publication. John Friedmann is currently Honorary Professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is also Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at UCLA, USA. Professor Friedmann is one of the most well-known urban planners in the world today. He has worked in, and written about Latin America, North America, Europe and China. He was founding professor of the Programme for Urban Planning in the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at UCLA, and served as its head for a total of 14 years between 1969 and 1996. He has, among other honours, honorary doctorates from the Catholic University of Chile and the University of Dortmund. Just before coming to Vancouver, he was Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Professor Friedmann has published 15 individually authored books, and co-edited 11 books, 150 chapters, articles and reviews. Some of his important books include: Territory and Function: The Evolution of Regional Planning (with Clyde Weaver, 1976); Empowerment: A Theory of Alternative Development (1983); Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society (with Mike Douglass, (1998); The Prospect of Cities (2002); and China’s Urban Transition (2005). Professor Friedmann is the epitomic progressive planner - influential intellectually and in practice to generations of planning students and practitioners from around the world. His ideas on regional development, world cities, participation and empowerment, and the importance of civil society in relation to planning and governance have been extremely important in the evolution of ideas on planning in both the developed and developing world. Download electronic copy of Professor Friedmann's lecture:
The Wealth of Cities: Towards an Assets-based Development of Urbanizing Regions [PDF] |
