30 \ 4 \ 2019
he Center for Local Governance at PSU organized a public lecture titled “Public Space in the New Urban Agenda: A changing Paradigm for Modern Development” on Tuesday, 25 Sha’ban 1440H, 30 April 2019 at 10 am University, Building 105, room G-C01, Ground Floor. The lecture was presented by Dr. Michael w Mehaffy, the Executive Director of Sustasis Foundation, a senior researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology based in Stockholm and a consultant to UN-Habitat for the New Urban Agenda.
Dr. Michael Mehaffy discussed the shifting paradigm of understanding the importance of public spaces in cities. He highlighted landmark initiatives of last two years such as COP21 Climate Agreement (December 2015), UN Sustainable Development Goals (October 2015), and Habitat III – defining the “New Urban Agenda” and underscored how they call for the development and improvement of public spaces as “drivers of social and economic development,”
He included various evolutionary stages and models of developing cities and related their critics and lessons for the emerging modern cities.
Highlighted that there is a growing understanding of the ways that people interact within public spaces and their adjacent private edges and why is it important to share this knowledge for practice. The increasing self-optimization of the network also promotes a resource-efficient way of life.
The lecture concluded with comments and questions form the participants, which were mostly concerned with the local application challenges and the importance of urban agenda in general in shaping our future.
