LSE Cities celebrates ten years of Urban Age

The world’s most respected climate change economist, Nicholas Stern, world-leading architect Norman Foster, and Andrew Adonis, the recently appointed Chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, are among those speaking at a series of debates at LSE from 19 November to 3 December 2015.
The Urban Age 10 Global Debates mark a decade of the Urban Age project. They are presented by LSE Cities and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society, in association with Guardian Cities, to celebrate ten years of the Urban Age programme. 
The debates will question how we can live better together in cities, examining the role that they play in high-level international and national policy debates on climate change, sustainability and infrastructure, to more grounded concerns on how to regulate, design and manage cities and neighbourhoods that are more inclusive, tolerant and open. Speakers include leading environmental and urban experts, mayors and policy-makers, architects, writers, sociologists and urban thinkers who will offer a global perspective on the social and spatial dynamics of 21st century urbanisation. 
Nicholas Stern (author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change) will confront the fundamental role that cities can play in reducing global energy demand and limiting carbon emissions supported by urban experts and policymakers working across the globe, including Bruce Katz, Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, and Vice-President, Brookings Institution.
The head of UN Habitat Joan Clos, who is coordinating the world’s most influential urban policy convention Habitat III in 2016, will exchange global experiences with practicing architects, including Alejandro Aravena, curator of the influential Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, to identify whether the design and planning professions are up to the task of designing a new generation of cities that contribute to wealth creation and social equity. 
Leading urban sociologist Saskia Sassen – who identified the global cities dynamic – will argue that new and tacit patterns of ownership are having a negative impact on the ‘cityness’, vibrancy and accessibility of urban systems by cutting off parts of the city from public use. 
Norman Foster, who has been at the forefront of urban change in cities across the world, will focus on the role that design can play in tackling social, economic and environmental futures, providing the context for the examination of the broader challenges of using infrastructure to help improve quality of life and the environment in cities in the UK and abroad. Andrew Adonis will provide insight into the nations’ big infrastructure plans.  
Eminent urban sociologist Richard Sennett and author Suketu Mehta raise questions of identity, grounding and belonging in the contemporary city. By exploring the urban experiences and narratives of migrant communities and their inextricably linked connections with both new and home environments, this debate will consider one of the greatest challenges for any city builder today: how do we form a community within these enormous, historically unprecedented, and continuously mobile agglomerations of people? Can we create cities and neighbourhoods which perhaps are not fully inclusive but at least are not exclusive to particular groups? 
The Urban Age Global Debates are open to the public and will take place in the Sheikh Zayed Lecture Theatre at the London School of Economics. They will be live-streamed and presentations will be available on the LSE Cities website.
Ends
Contact:  LSE Cities Emma Rees, Communications Coordinator Tel: +44 (0)20 7107 5232, Email: e.j.rees@lse.ac.uk
Bolton and Quinn Erica Bolton/Jane Quinn Tel: +44 (0)20 7221 5000 Mobile: +44 (0)7711 698 186 Email: erica@boltonquin.com or jq@boltonquinn.com
For more information on LSE Cities, see www.lsecities.net or follow us on twitter @LSECities  #UrbanAge10
Notes
The Urban Age Global Debates
Confronting Climate Change: can cities be the solution?
Thursday 19 November, 6.30-8pm
Speakers: Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chairman of the Grantham Institute for the Economics of Climate Change, London School of Economics and Political Science, author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (2006); Karen Seto, Professor of Geography and Urbanization, Yale University; adviser to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Panel: Bruce Katz, Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, and Vice-President, Brookings Institution; Philipp Rode, Executive Director, LSE Cities/Urban Age and Senior Research Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science
Chair: Tessa Jowell, former MP and UK Government Secretary of State, Professor in Practice, LSE