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Event track:
The Anthropocene: An urban planet

This event will explore the ways that cities are building resilience to extreme events like urban flooding, heat waves, coastal flooding, and drought. Climate change is resulting in uncertainty around future frequency and magnitude of these events. Extreme events especially challenge cities, where people and their built infrastructure are concentrated, often in areas such as coastlines or rivers that are more exposed. Infrastructures may present both problem and solution to this challenge, as they can be ‘locked in’ to rigid configurations that are difficult to change on one hand but have potential to be ‘opened up’ with a broader concept of infrastructure as social-ecological-technological systems (SETS). This concept includes ideas such as nature-based solutions to climate-adaptation challenges, public-private partnerships and development of anticipatory capacity, and insurance of equitable access to solutions across all segments of urban populations.

The event will also include a discussion from the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) project research and practice community reflects on experiences from over a decade of project operations. Panelists will share stories of urbanization and environmental challenges (and opportunities!) unique to the Americas, India and China, Asia-Pacific/SE Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The discussion will focus on co-production of knowledge for just and livable cities, climate adaptation and resilience planning efforts, the need for human rights linked to water governance, and much more. Finally, there will be an open dialogue with the audience to explore how research-policy-practice communities can better connect and produce innovative solutions to implement the New Urban Agenda across regions.

Speakers:
Rimjhim Aggarwal, Arizona State University, USA
Corrie Griffith, UGEC Project, USA
Darryn McEvoy, Climate Change Adaptation Program, RMIT University, Australia
Patricia Romero Lankao, National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA
Shuaib Lwasa, Makerere University, Uganda
David Simon, Urban Mistra Futures, Gothenburg, Sweden
Charles Redman (USA)
Erik Andersson (Sweden)
Xuemei Bai (Australia)
Nancy Grimm (USA)
Timon McPhearson (USA)

Organizers: Timon McPhearson

Tablet

Where to find us

The exhibition will take place at the National Assembly, 300 meters from Parque del Arbolito and the main conference venue, La Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana “Benjamin Carrion.”

Venue »

Image Credits:
Header image is a modified and cropped version of Old town of Quito by Simon Matzinger under CC - Some rights reserved.
Header image is a modified and cropped version of And when I go there, I go there with you... by Scipio under CC NC - Some rights reserved. Areal Photography via USGS's Landsat program, through the earth explorer interface.