The Future of Cities

Date: 

Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 3:30pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

Askwith Lecture Room, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge

Please join President Drew Faust and a panel of experts in a conversation about the future of cities.

Moderator: John Macomber, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School

Panelists: Diane Davis, Chair Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design; John Fernandez, Professor, MIT; Urban Metabolism Group, African Urban Metabolism Network; Christian Irmisch, Principal, Siemens AG Mobility Division; Stefan Knupfer, Senior Partner ,McKinsey & Compan, Leader Sustainability Resource Productivity Practice; Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group; Efosa Ojomo, Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation; Harriet Tregoning, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Planning and Development, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

What will the city of the future look like? How will contemporary urbanization challenges establish the groundwork for the next generation of innovations? Who will spearhead the investments and institutional arrangements needed to address such issues as sprawl climate change socio-spatial inequality and rapid technological change? This panel showcases a range of experts innovators and thought leaders in the fields of technology infrastructure and governance of cities. Drawing on experience from Africa Latin America Asia Europe and the U.S. panelists will share their views on how best to address the fact that more than 70% of the world’s population is projected to be living in cities by the year 2050 (with close to 90% of the increase coming from Asia and Africa). Debate will revolve around the impacts of intensified urban growth on the basic political economic and social arrangements that have come to define cities as well as on the role of new technologies and infrastructures in modifying urban footprints and quality of life.

Presented in collaboration with the Harvard Business School Global Initiative and Harvard Graduate School of Design. Free and open to the public. The website for this event: https://worldwideweek.harvard.edu/event/future-cities All of Worldwide Week at Harvard: https://worldwideweek.harvard.edu/

See also: Cambridge