More than 40 speakers from 25 cities of Asia, Africa, Europe, South and North America will meet in Venice to discuss a main critical problem of the XXI century: how to shape cities, facing the tricky issues of inequality, climate change, growth and urban expansion, administration, sustainability.
The meeting scheduled for July 14 and 15 (Teatro alle Tese, Biennale Arsenale), during the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, will consist of the Urban Age” conference, organized in collaboration with United Nations Habitat III and hosted by the Biennale as part of the Special Project “Report from Cities: Conflicts of an Urban Age”. Since 2005, 14 Urban Age conferences have been held in several cities including Istanbul, Delhi, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg, attended by over 6,000 people including speakers and participants.
The speakers taking stock will be the mayors and leaders of Barcelona (Spain), Bogotá (Colombia), Kampala (Uganda), Venice (Italy), Paris (France) and Safed (Israel). They will face the issues together with key figures of international and national organizations, including the United Nations, UN Habitat, Cities Alliance, the Indian National Institute of Urban Affairs and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Moreover, well-known architects and designers will participate to discuss practical issues.
Alejandro Aravena, who collected the most stimulating and socially interesting projects from all over the world, will talk about the social relevance of design and the related level of intervention with Kunlé Adeyemi (Lagos) and Rahul Mehrotra (Mumbai), along with emerging and established designers working in Delhi, Mexico City, Cape Town, Singapore and several European cities.
The sociologist Saskia Sassen and Richard Sennett, the ethnographer and anthropologist AbdouMaliq Simone and the economist Edward Glaeser will meet the newly elected mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau, the Executive Director of Kampala Jennifer Musisi and Enrique Peñalosa, recently re-elected mayor of Bogotá.
Thanks to the hundreds submitted projects, Venice is an ideal setting to contribute with new ideas to the United Nations Habitat III conference on sustainable cities, to be held in Quito in October 2016. For this purpose, Joan Clos, director of Habitat III and Undersecretary of the United Nations, will attend the conference and will give the closing speech, suggesting what messages carry on in the formulation of a New Urban Agenda right to shape the future of the twenty-first century.
