Conference on the Future of Urban Asia
Experts from around the country on Asian cities and on Urban trends gathered at Boston Univeristy at an all-day on October 8, 2014. The conferecne titled “The Future is Now: Urban Asia in the 21st Century” was co-sponsored by Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, the Initiative on Cities, the Center for the Study of Asia, Global Programs India Initiatives, and the Center for Global Health and Development, in collaboration with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and BU’s Metropolitan College.
The event opened with remarks from the co-sponsoring organizations, including from Prof. Eugenio Menegon, the Director of the Center for the Study of Asia, now part of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, who outlined the program for the day. This was followed by three panels that looked at various aspects of Urbanism and how it is evolving across Asia.
The first panel, titled “The Idea of the City,” was moderated by Deepti Nijhawan (India Initiative, Boston University) and including talks by Prof. Bish Sanyal (MIT), Prof. Annette Kim (University of Southern California) and Prof. Adil Najam (Boston University). In his remarks, the Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Prof. Adil Najam, laid out a set of key challenges for urbanism in general and for Asian cities in particular. He argued that we cannot think of cities without thinking very deeply about human development and the contexts in which the citizens inhabit the city. He proposed that while there is great fascination with the modern city, there is also the danger of this fascination turning into fetish.
The second panel titled “The Politics of the City,” was moderated by Prof. Julian Go (Boston University) and included talks by Prof. Gavin Shatkin (Northeastern university), Prof. Abidin Kusno (University of British Columbia) and Dr. Mona Serageldin (Institute for International Urban Development). The final panel of the day was titled “The City and its Environment,” was moderated by Prof. Edward Cunningham (Boston University) and included talks by Prof. Karen Seto (Yale University), Prof. Madhu Dutta-Koehler (Boston University), and Prof. Susan Foster (Boston University).
The day closed with a wrap-up session with a discussion moderated by Prof. Anthony Janetos, Director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.
A video of the conference is available here.