The Global Urban Lecture Series gathers expertise and experience from renowned international scholars and professionals who excel in their fields, and shares this knowledge with a wide audience of urban actors.The lecturers are associated with UN-Habitat, universities, think-tanks, governments, NGOs, and private sector institutions.
The Series aims to demonstrate a sound evidence-based analysis of a given problem and issues at stake, identify propositions to address them and provide examples that demonstrate how such propositions actually work, are being tested or have been implemented.
Each lecture package is comprised of a 15-minute video about a subject related to cities and urbanisation, a short biography of the speaker, a synopsis of the session as well as references to additional reading materials through which the viewer can expand his/her knowledge on the subject of the lecture.
All Global Urban Lectures are available online, free of charge. For the full package, see the ‘Current and upcoming lectures’ section below.
The lectures in the series can be used either separately as stand-alone sessions, or as a group of thematic sessions to meet the needs of different users and purposes. Examples of how to use the series:
1. For self-learning and as a refresher course
2. In addition to existing curricula and regular courses offered by universities and training institutions (eg. using the videos as ‘guest lecturers’ or teasers in the syllabus of regular courses)
3. As resource material for new curricula and course development
4. To screen in public events as an introduction to debates on subjects relevant to cities and urban development
The Global Urban Lectures target a wide and global audience comprised of universities, urban practitioners, researchers and policy makers, as well as the general public interested in cities and sustainable urbanization.
In his opening session of the Global Urban Lecture Series, Dr. Joan Clos introduces the lecture series and its goals. UN-Habitat aims not only to raise the level and quality of the discussion around sustainable urbanization but also to increase awareness and narrow the gap between urban knowledge production and its direct implementation in cities. In order to achieve this, UN-Habitat has developed several new tools for information dissemination and active knowledge sharing amongst its partners. The Global Urban Lecture Series is one of these tools. It allows easy access to the urban knowledge and experiences developed by UN-Habitat and its associated prominent experts and world class thinkers, doers and city builders. View introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP9IZtEocXM
The strategy brought forward by Claudio Acioly (UN-Habitat) uses streets as the natural conduits that connect slums spatially and physically with the city and treats streets not only as a physical entity for mobility and accessibility -- through which water and sewerage pipes, power lines, and drainage systems are laid – but also as the common good and the public domain where social, cultural and economic activities are articulated, reinforced and facilitated. View lecture:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k12XNVzCUvY
The lecture is based on the realization that the current urban planning paradigm championed in the United States and Europe—the Containment Paradigm, also known as urban growth management, smart growth, or compact city—is inappropriate in the rapidly-urbanizing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Instead, it calls for a new paradigm for coming to terms with rapid urbanization: The Making Room Paradigm. View lecture:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GknqMC4B2o
In this lecture, Eugenie Birch draws heavily on history to illustrate the location, pace, trajectory, documentation and varied solutions of historic slum conditions in Western Europe and North America; tracking contemporary slum development in Latin America, Asia and Africa, and outlines the commonalities and differences with past experience. Birch places slum development in stages that correspond to the urbanization rates and peak growth of slums of the places in question, and discusses adaptations, their benefits and costs. View lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFD7hPJ37Iw
