A 46 segment × 3 exposure HDR panorama of the Hong Kong night skyline. Taken from Lugard Road at Victoria Peak, Hong Kong. Author Base64, retouched by CarolSpears.

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We are extremely proud to be among partner organizations of the 10th IFoU - International Forum on Urbanism conference “The Entrepreneurial City”, that will take place at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, at the Yasumoto International Academic Park, on December 14-16, 2017. Our President Luisa Bravo is part of the Conference Committee and she will deliver a keynote speech on December 16 in the afternoon, before the closing ceremony, on the social entrepreneuralism of City Space Architecture and the impact our work is having at the global level through a series of projects and events, with a particular reference to The Journal of Public Space, that we jointly established with the Queensland University of Technology, in partnership with UN-Habitat, the United Nations Programme on Cities and Human Settlements.
IFoU is a network of universities, research institutes and knowledge centers with the task to strengthen the international collaboration in the field of Urbanism. Members of IFoU are academic institutions that are involved in research and education in the field of planning, design and management of the built environment. IFoU was established in 2004 and today encompasses twenty-three distinguished universities in Asia, Europe and South America.
After nine successful conferences, in Beijing (2006), Delft (2007), Taipei (2008), Delft (2009), Singapore (2011), Barcelona (2012), Tainan (2013), Incheon (2015) and Buenos Aires (2016), the 10th conference is inviting international planners and designers to deliberate on theories, design and practices related to “The Entrepreneurial City”. This theme evolved in discussions during the run-up to the United Nations Habitat III Conference in Quito (2016). One year after nearly 170 countries adopted the UN-Habitat New Urban Agenda. The question remains how its ambitious goals can be implemented. One of the key goals of the New Urban Agenda is to achieve a fairer share of the prosperity, which is brought by urbanization. For this to happen, urban design, planning and policies need to find ways how in the current socio-political and economic environment opportunities for socially minded and innovative entrepreneurs can be created. At the conference, speakers from 21 countries will investigate these and related questions. We are confident that presentations and following discussions will motivate new initiatives to make our cities more inclusive and prosperous.

United Nations Headquarters in New York City, view from Roosevelt Island. Picture by Neptuul, Wikimedia Commons.

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After the Habitat III Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development in Quito (Ecuador, October 2016) and the 26th Governing Council of UN-Habitat in Nairobi (Kenya, May 2017) City Space Architecture will be among stakholders engaged in the upcoming High Level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly at the Headquarters in New York City, that will take place on September 5-6. Our President Dr Luisa Bravo has been selected to attend this meeting by a Committee appointed by UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS).
At the Habitat III Conference UN Member States adopted the New Urban Agenda, setting a new global standard for sustainable urban development, intended to rethink how we plan, manage and live in cities. To maintain momentum around the implementation of the New Urban Agenda and to reflect on the positioning of UN-Habitat in that regard, the President of the UN General Assembly H.E. Mr. Peter Thomson convenes in New York City a two-day high-level meeting to discuss best practices and success stories in relation to the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. It will also address the measures contained in the Report from the Secretary General’s Independent Panel to Assess, Enhance Effectiveness of UN-Habitat after Adoption of New Urban Agenda, which was published at the beginning of August 2017.

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The meeting will consist of an opening segment, panel discussions and a plenary debate. Member states will have an opportunity to engage with members of the Secretary General’s Independent Assessment Panel as well as representatives of local and municipal authorities, mayors, civil society, academia, members of the UN system.
City Space Architecture will address the importance of public space as a key element in sustainable urban development and will interact with other global stakeholders and UN bodies to engage them in the promotion of public space culture.

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The program of the event is available at this link.

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At the Habitat III Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development held in Quito, Ecuador (2016), our President Luisa Bravo was selected among several scholars all over the world to give a lecture, to be included in the season 4 of UN Habitat Global Urban Lectures, a free resource of video lectures open to use for academic, professional or personal purposes.
The lecture is finally published! This is a great opportunity for us to address public space as one of the most relevant, yet somehow still neglected, topics for sustainable urban development.
City Space Architecture wants to spread awareness on the importance of public space in cities. Join us, join our global campaign, Stand up for Public Space! - www.standupforpublicspace.org

The synopsis of the lecture and a list of reading materials are available here: https://unhabitat.org/stand-up-for-public-space-luisa-bravo/

With over 100,000 views, UN Habitat Global Urban Lectures are the most viewed videos of UN Habitat. Every 15 min video lecture documents sustainable urban development knowledge of urban experts associated with UN Habitat and shares it across UN Habitat’s wide partner base across the globe. These lectures are part of Habitat UNI, which is UN Habitat’s partnership with universities worldwide. UNI (previously HPUI – Habitat Partner University Initiative) was introduced as a means of promoting cooperation between UN Habitat and institutions of higher education, as well as facilitating exchange and cooperation among universities globally. UNI promotes universities becoming closer partners of cities, actively engaged in problem solving, thus closing the gap between academia and practice and encouraging collaborative learning. UNI promotes and facilitates the dissemination of educational and research products of its members and involve scholars, researchers and students in a number of activities. The collaborations aspire to create the next generation of urban leaders, managers, researchers and practitioners. UN Habitat acts as a catalyst, facilitating partnerships between universities and other agenda partners.

For more info regarding UNI Habitat: http://uni.unhabitat.org/

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We are very excited to be part of the upcoming Boston Mobility Summit promoted by Meeting of the Minds, which will take place on June 20 at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center on Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus. Our President Luisa Bravo and our Honorary Member Mirko Guaralda from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia have been selected to attend, after a very highly competitive process. 
Meeting of the Minds is a global leadership network and knowledge sharing platform. Since it was founded, it has been dedicated to a singular proposition: bring together a carefully chosen set of key urban sustainability and technology stakeholders and gather them around a common platform in ways that help build lasting alliances.
Only 120 leaders in mobility, climate and equity solutions will be attending the summit in Boston, which has been sold out for months. This day-long leadership summit will bring together C-suite executives and entrepreneurs, public sector and non-profit leaders, and academics to share local and global best practices applicable to the Boston region. The focus will be on transformative new technologies, policies, financing mechanisms, design and collaboration models with a particular focus on low-carbon and equitable solutions. 

Check the full agenda of the Boston Mobility Summit: 
http://meetingoftheminds.org/events/boston#agenda

Being in Boston will be an opportunity for us to visit some of the inspiring and cutting-edge laboratories at MIT campus, including the MIT Senseable City Lab and the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, the Engagement LAB at Emerson College and also the GSD - Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

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After several weeks of intensive work, we are finally ready to leave for the upcoming international workshop 'Entrepreneurial City Lab' which will take place in Berlin on May 22-28, 2017 at ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory. The workshop is organized by the School of Architecture of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. City Space Architecture is proud to be among partner organizations, together with U-Lab, University of Technology Berlin (TU Berlin) and the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence, Italy.

This workshop offers the opportunity to explore the city of Berlin as a case study of an Entrepreneurial City. Throughout its turbulent history, Berlin has been an urban laboratory.  From Karl-Friedrich Schinkel’s 19^th century planning, to speculative tenement blocks, modernist “Siedlungen”, the international building exhibitions of the 1950s and 1980s, to recent co-operative housing and working projects, the city has continually experimented with new approaches addressing changing urban issues. Most recently, it developed innovative approaches to integrate a new arriving migrant population. The 'Entrepreneurial City Lab' will interrogate how this has been achieved and how we can learn from Berlin for contemporary approaches in urban designs.
The workshop will focus on six exemplary urban forms in Berlin, that can advance our understanding of how this contemporary Entrepreneurial City developed:
    1) City of the 19^th Century and its 1980s (IBA 1987) and recent regenerations
    2) Siedlungen of the 1920-30s
    3) Socialist City of the 1950s-80s 
    4) Interbau Berlin-West of the 1950s
    5) Gross-Siedlungen of the 1960-70s and their regeneration
    6) Co-housing projects of the 1990-2000s
The workshop offers an intensive learning experience by combining field studies of different areas of the city as well as lectures and seminars helping the students to understand the various aspects of Berlin’s urban form and implications for quality of living, social inclusion and economic opportunities.

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