The Urbanism Hour: Creating Meaningful Urban Futures
Exploring the urban future through Keynote Conversations
The Urbanism Hours are virtual lunch time events that explore a given theme within the built environment, with two speakers and a Q&A discussion. For January's Urbanism Hour we'll be joined by Gustav Magnusson, author of Keynote Conversations: 100 Interviews for Reinventing the City, and contributor Lia Ghilardi AoU.
Keynote Conversations is a collection of 100 interviews with urban experts from around the world. The book has been described as "a Pecha-Kucha urban planning festival in book form" and includes city directors from cities such as Toronto, Nuuk (Greenland), Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Copenhagen; advisors to mayors in Paris, Sydney, and London; and professors from Harvard, UNESCO, and the London School of Economics.
Through the book, the author asks the experts about the challenges today’s cities face, the attitude we need to address them, how to manage urgent issues, how to create urban visions, take action, and ultimately envision the futures of our living environments. But is it really the future we are looking for? Or are we perhaps searching for ourselves?
Speakers:
Gustav Magnusson
Gustav Magnusson is an urban planner, FPR/MSA, certified EU-Urbact expert, board advisor, and founder of the urban planning studio For Elize in Malmö, Greater Copenhagen, Sweden. He has lived and worked in seven countries across twelve cities and has led and advised international teams in early complex urban planning for prominent architectural firms in Europe. In 2024, he was awarded the Europe 40 Under 40 prize, highlighting Europe's most promising young architects and designers. He is a keynote speaker and the third generation in a family of architects and journalists. With a passion for showcasing the diversity of ideas and perspectives within urban planning, he hopes to inspire new ways of thinking about the environments where we spend our lives together.
Lia Ghilardi (session chair)
Lia is the founding director of Noema, a UK-based company working to deliver place DNA mapping and strategic cultural planning projects. She is internationally recognized as a leader in this field and has been working for more than twenty years with civic leaders, cultural organizations, and communities to provide creative and equitable solutions to the challenges faced by cities. She studied urban sociology in Italy, then moved to London in the late 1980s to study at the Bartlett School of Planning. A long-standing Academician and a Fellow of the RSA, she lectures across Europe on creative and cohesive cities, and ways of engaging communities in urban regeneration.
This event is virtual and will take place via Zoom. You can find the Zoom link in your booking confirmation, and a reminder will also be sent out on the morning of the event.
