What makes cities sustainable? Soft infrastructures for sustainable urban societies

How can cities become more sustainable, just and resilient when technology alone cannot address the challenges they face?

Cities around the world are investing in new technologies and physical infrastructures in response to climate change, digital transformation and growing social inequality. But sustainable urban futures depend on more than technological innovation. They also depend on less visible forms of infrastructure: institutions and relationships, networks of learning and care, collective knowledge, rights, trust and the capacity of people to act together. This public roundtable asks: what actually makes sustainable urban societies possible?

Bringing together leading urban scholars from five cities and institutions, the roundtable discussion will explore the social and institutional foundations of sustainable urban transformation. The speakers will consider how cities generate and share knowledge; how institutions respond to misinformation and uncertainty; how networks allow ideas and practices to travel; how care is organised across urban space; and how rights and collective struggles shape who can participate in, benefit from and contest processes of urban change.

This event is supported by the Global School of Sustainability, LSE.

Meet our speakers and chair

• Karen Chapple is Professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto and Director of the School of Cities.
• Loretta Lees is Professor and Faculty Director of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University.
• Cathy Oke is Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne and Director of the Melbourne Centre for Cities.
• Orlando Woods is Professor of Geography and Director of Urban Institute at Singapore Management University.
• Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at LSE. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Urban Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Chulalongkorn University.

Together, the five speakers are co-convenors of the Global Alliance on Sustainable Urban Societies, an international partnership connecting urban research institutions at LSE, Boston University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Toronto and Singapore Management University.

Organisers

This event is organised by the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE, in collaboration with the Global Alliance on Sustainable Urban Societies, with support from the LSE Global School of Sustainability.

It forms part of the two-day workshop Soft Infrastructures for Sustainable Urban Societies, bringing together researchers from the Alliance's five founding institutions and invited contributors to develop a comparative research agenda on the social and institutional foundations of sustainable urban change.

More about this event

The Department of Geography and Environment is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change.

The Global School of Sustainability is the interdisciplinary centre for sustainability research impact at LSE. GSoS works in partnerships to advance pioneering sustainability research, global policy engagement and world-leading educational opportunities. Grounded in LSE’s interdisciplinary excellence across the social sciences, GSoS’s global networks target the systemic challenges to sustainability embedded in the world’s economies, politics and societies.

The Global Alliance on Sustainable Urban Societies brings together five leading urban research institutions to advance interdisciplinary and people-centred research on sustainable urban change.

LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of the London School of Economics and Political Science.