Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities

Oxford University•www.futureofcities.ox.ac.uk

The Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities seeks to understand how cities can be made more flexible to face the challenges of the next fifty years. This seminar series brings together researchers from across the University of Oxford to discuss the ways in which urban flexibility may be theoretically conceptualised, empirically researched and operationalised in practice.

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Episodes

Resilience and adaptation in complex city systems

James Simmie (Department of Planning, Oxford Brookes University) develops an evolutionary economics approach to adaptation and change in urban economies. Abstract: In this lecture, James Simmie develops one of the evolutionary economics approaches to understanding adaptation and change in the economic trajectories of urban economies. Neo-classical equilibrist versions of resilience and adaptation are rejected in favour of an evolutionary perspective. He argues in particular for an explanation ba...

Dec 15, 2010•43 min

Sustainable development and crime in the urban Caribbean

David Howard (University Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Development, University of Oxford) looks at larger concerns over social and spatial equity, conceptual approaches to sovereignty and the practical interpretation of sustainable forms of justice. Abstract: Recent urban policy initiatives in the Caribbean have shifted from producing material infrastructural change to a greater emphasis on confronting 'civil disorder' via new forms of policing and surveillance. Just as development policy witnes...

Dec 15, 2010•46 min

Global migration and the future of le droit à la ville

Michael Keith (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford) interrogates how we think about urban change and normative theory in cities experiencing high levels of international migration. Abstract: The modern city has conventionally received and integrated new arrivals, but the scale of international migration in the 21st century challenges the ethical and social settlement of the metropolis. As cities increasingly mediate global networks and flows of information, capital and ...

Dec 15, 2010•50 min

New business models for low-carbon cities

Mark Hinnells (Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford) explores the impact of policy measures to deliver a low-carbon economy on the development of new business models for low-carbon cities. Abstract: This research explores the impact of policy measures to deliver a low carbon economy (both near term and more extensive policy change) on the development of new business models for low carbon cities. Buildings account for around 47% of UK Carbon emissions (including both residential a...

Nov 16, 2010•52 min

Sustainable urban development to 2050 - complex transitions in the built environment of cities

Tim Dixon (Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development, Oxford Brookes University) looks at 'critical success factors' that need to be in place for cities to be more sustainable by 2050. Abstract: The majority of the world's population now live in cities. This poses great challenges, but also great opportunities in terms of tackling climate change, resource depletion and environmental degradation. Policy agendas have increasingly focused on how to develop and maintain 'integrated sustainable ur...

Nov 16, 2010•42 min

The paralyzed frog, water supply services and sustainable cities

Rob Hope (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford) gives a talk on institutional innovations and new financial models for sustainable water as part of a seminar series on the Future of Cities. Abstract: Any notion of a sustainable city is premised on a secure water supply for human, productive and ecosystem demands. With global urban residents now out-numbering rural dwellers, urban water delivery systems are creaking and leaking under decades of under-investment, new compe...

Nov 16, 2010•41 min