Free Public Lectures
The Life and Death of Cities: Accounting for Environmental and
Social Sustainability
Date: April 30, 7 pm
Venue Change: Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver. This event is not at SFU Harbour Centre.
Reservations: Admission is free; reservations are required.
Email cstudies@sfu.ca or call 778.782.5100.
For all their vibrancy and liveliness, cities face a growing challenge of providing secure and sustainable places to live. Even the world’s most ‘liveable cities’—Vancouver, Melbourne, Helsinki etc.— are currently in world-historical terms utterly unsustainable. Unless we rethink the ways that we present sustainability to ourselves and learn to act differently, crisis will become a way of life.
Speaker: Paul James is Director of the Global Cities Institute (RMIT) and Director of the UN Global Compact—Cities Programme. He is Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity in the Globalism Research Centre, and on the Council of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies. He is an editor of Arena Journal, as well as an editor/board-member of nine other international journals, including Globalizations and Global Governance. He has delivered invited addresses in over twenty countries and is author or editor of nineteen books including most importantly, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism (2006). And Nation Formation (1996). He has been an advisor to a number of agencies and governments including the Helsinki Process, the Canadian Prime Minister’s G20 Forum (2004), the National Economic Advisory Council of Malaysia, and the Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor. His work for the PNG Minister for Community Development became the basis for their Integrated Community Development Policy (2004–08).
Co-sponsored by SFU Urban Studies Program and SFU City Program.