New Horizons for Cities and Regions in a Changing World
- Opening Plenary (Professor Vanessa Watson, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
- Industrial Policy in the UK’s North-South Divide (Professor Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge, UK)
- Brexit Coincided with Peak UK Economic Inequality – Causes and Effect? (Professor Danny Dorling, University of Oxford, UK)
- EU Budget Post 2020 (Marc Lemaître, Director-General for Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission, Belgium)
- EU Regional Policy in the United Kingdom and the Prospect of Brexit (Early Career Plenary Speaker:
Marco Di Cataldo, London School of Economics, United Kingdom )
The Return of the City-region in the New Urban Agenda: another Global Imposition on Southern Cities?
Professor Vanessa Watson, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Vanessa Watson is professor of city planning in the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). She holds degrees from the Universities of Natal, Cape Town and the Architectural Association of London, and a PhD from the University of Witwatersrand, and is a Fellow of the University of Cape Town.
Her research over the last thirty years has focussed on urban planning in the global South and the effects of inappropriate planning practices and theories especially in Africa. Her work seeks to unsettle the geo-politics of knowledge production in planning by providing alternative theoretical perspectives from the global South.
She is the Global South Editor of Urban Studies and an editor of the European Journal of Development Research. She on the editorial boards of Planning Theory, Built Environment, Planning Practice and Research, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Progress in Planning. She is a senior editor of Oxford Bibliographies Online: Urban Studies.
She was the lead consultant for UN Habitat’s 2009 Global Report on Planning Sustainable Cities and is on their global reports Advisory Board. She was chair and co-chair of the Global Planning Education Association Network (2007-2011). She is a founder of the Association of African Planning Schools and is a founder and on the executive of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town.
Current research interests
Over the last decade have focused on the development of a particular area of planning theory which also links theory to practice. There are two aspects to this: placing power and conflict as inevitable and central to planning processes, and grounding planning ideas in an understanding of social diversity and difference. My focus is a response to the problem that most mainstream planning theory has been developed in the global North, and explicitly or implicitly claims universality, while in fact it is often not helpful to planning practitioners working in the rather different conditions of the global South and East.
My practical concern with the future of African cities has directed my interest over the last decade to planning education on the continent, and how the next generation of professional planners is being educated and produced. Hence my role in setting up the Association of African Planning Schools and the various projects which have emerged through this network.
More recently I have developed an additional interest in the new economic forces re-shaping African cities, in particular the private-sector driven property development initiatives, often originating with international developers and built environment professionals. These new forces are likely to greatly exacerbate processes of marginalisation and exclusion of the poor in cities of Africa.
Other areas
Founder member of the Association of African Planning Schools and PI of project on revitalising planning education in Africa (2008-2014)
ACC Healthy Cities City Lab.
PI of ESRC/DFID project: Consuming Urban Poverty (2015-17)
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Industrial Policy in the UK’s North-South Divide
Professor Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge, UK
Diane was previously Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester and has held a number of public service roles including Vice Chair of the BBC Trust (2006-2014), member of the Competition Commission (2001-2009), and member of the Migration Advisory Committee (2009-2014). She is currently a member of the Natural Capital Committee, an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. She was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the public understanding of economics in the 2018 New Year Honours.
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Brexit Coincided with Peak UK Economic Inequality – Causes and Effect?
Professor Danny Dorling, University of Oxford, UK
Danny Dorling joined the School of Geography and the Environment in September 2013 to take up the Halford Mackinder Professorship in Geography. He was previously a professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield. He has also worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand, went to university in Newcastle upon Tyne, and to school in Oxford.
Much of Danny’s work is available open access (see www.dannydorling.org). With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty. His recent books include, co-authored texts The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live and Bankrupt Britain: An atlas of social change.
Sole authored books include, So you think you know about Britain and Fair Play, both in 2011; in 2012 The No-nonsense Guide to Equality, The Visualization of Social Spatial Structure and The Population of the UK; Unequal Health, The 32 Stops and Population Ten Billion in 2013; All That is Solid in 2014; and Injustice: Why social inequalities persist revised in 2015. In 2016 with Bethan Thomas he authored People and Places: A 21st century atlas of the UK, A Better Politics: How government can make us happier and with Carl Lee: Geography: ideas in profile. In 2017 with Dimitris Ballas and Ben Hennig he produced The Human Atlas of Europe and in 2017 he also wrote the sole authored book The Equality Effect: Improving life for everyone.
Before a career in academia Danny was employed as a play-worker in children’s play-schemes and in pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, a former Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a current patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.
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EU Budget Post 2020
Marc Lemaître, Director-General for Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission, Belgium
Marc Lemaître studied at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Bruges (College of Europe) and holds a Master in European Economics. He brings 20 years of profound experience in European Affairs, both in the European Commission and in the diplomatic service of Luxembourg. Between 1996 and 2006, he worked in the Permanent Representation of Luxembourg to the European Union, dealing with budgetary, trade and general affairs issues. He joined the Commission in 2007 as Head of the private office of Regional Policy Commissioner, Danuta Hübner, and then her successor, Paweł Samecki. Between 2010 and 2013, he led the private office of Budget Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski. Since 2013, he has managed, as Director, the Office for Administration and Payment of individual entitlements (PMO). Since 1 September 2016 he is Director-General for Regional and Urban Policy.
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EU Regional Policy in the United Kingdom and the Prospect of Brexit
Early Career Plenary Speaker:
Marco Di Cataldo, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Marco Di Cataldo is a Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Geography and Environment of the London School of Economics. He holds a PhD in Economic Geography and an MSc in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics; a BA in Political Science and an MA in Development Economics from the University of Bologna. He is currently part of the European Research Council project on ‘Multinationals, Innovation and Institutions in Europe’ coordinated by Professor Riccardo Crescenzi, and a member of the Editorial board of the LSE GILD blog. His main research interests lie in public and economic policy analysis, political economy, economic geography and regional development. His articles on these topics have appeared in journals such as Regional Studies, Papers in Regional Science, Journal of Regional Science and Journal of Economic Geography.
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