De Lange Conference will bring together mayors, scholars, activists to discuss sustainable cities

De Lange Conference will bring together mayors, scholars, activists to discuss sustainable cities

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

A panel of mayors from around the world will headline a March 2-4 conference at Rice to discuss how cities can be more livable environments.

Houston Mayor Bill White will be joined by Mustafa Syed Kamal, mayor of Karachi, Pakistan; Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá; and Shuki Forer, mayor of Rehovot, Israel, to discuss innovative solutions to urban problems at the biennial De Lange Conference. This year’s theme is “Transforming the Metropolis: Creating Sustainable and Humane Cities.” The three-day event will begin each morning at 8:30 in Alice Pratt Brown Hall.

For the first time in human history, most of the world’s population now live in cities, said conference chair Michael Emerson, professor of sociology and director of Rice’s Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life. “The way they organize themselves in this new, more crowded reality will have lasting effects on the lives of a majority of people around the globe,” he said. “The worldwide urbanization trend poses social, ecological and economic questions for the 21st century.”

In addition to the mayors, experts from a wide array of fields will debate globalization, governing, engineering, education, architecture, transportation, planning, technology, climate change and the role of faith communities in building better cities.

Among those experts are Ray Anderson, founder and chair of Interface Inc. and one of Time magazine’s 2007 “Heroes of the Environment,” and Majora Carter, an environmental activist and executive director of Sustainable South Bronx. Anderson will give the after-dinner keynote at 7:30 p.m. March 2. Carter’s keynote will be the next evening, also at 7:30, and is free and open to the public.

De Lange Conference
Need a schedule of events? Click here for more details about the three-day event
The first day of the conference will also feature a panel discussion on a variety of issues facing urban development. Perry McCarty, the Silas H. Palmer Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford, will join Amy Myers Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, for a dialogue on cities’ use of water and energy.

Other speakers will look at the social consequences of urbanization. Elijah Anderson, the William K. Lanman Professor of Sociology at Yale, will discuss ethnographic and demographic challenges. Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, will give a presentation titled “Do We Need a Middle Class?”

Cameron Sinclair, co-founder and executive director of Architecture for Humanity, will present the keynote speech March 3 on “Strategies of Hope.” Sinclair is co-editor of “Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises.”

Later that day, a panel on design frameworks for sustainable and humane cities will feature Gary Lawrence, urban strategies leader of London-based Arup. Lawrence is also the former planning director for the city of Seattle, where he led development of “Toward a Sustainable Seattle,” the first sustainability-focused municipal comprehensive plan in the world. He will be joined by David Crossley, president of Houston Tomorrow.

Other architects who will speak March 3 include Lars Lerup, dean of the Rice School of Architecture, and Ken Yeang, principal of Llewelyn Davies Yeang. William Mitchell, professor of architecture and media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak on urban infrastructure March 4.

Two religious leaders, Wayne Gordon, founding pastor of Lawndale Community Church in Chicago, and Harvey Clemons Jr., pastor of Pleasant Hill Ministries in Houston, will address neighborhood revitalization efforts.

Students with a current student ID can attend the conference for free, but they must preregister. Other attendees must pay the registration fee of $35, which includes two lunches.

The De Lange Conference is organized and hosted by the Scientia Institute, the Center for the Study of the Environment and Society, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Rice School of Architecture, the Rice Design Alliance, the Department of Sociology, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice’s Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life, and the University of Houston College of Architecture.

This conference is supported by the De Lange Endowment at Rice University, given by C.M. and Demaris Hudspeth, in memory of her parents, Albert and Demaris De Lange.
  
For a more detailed conference agenda, go to http://www.delange.rice.edu/.