Monthly Archives: September 2019

Transforming Peripheries: Philipp Rode to speak at first Urban Land Conference

25 September 2019

Philipp Rode, Executive Director of LSE Cities, will be speaking at the very first Urban Land Conference on 26 September in Ulm, Germany.

While much has been said about traditional European urban cores, the peripheral suburbs and small to medium-sized cities that are home to millions of people remain underexplored. The Transforming Cities conference, organised by the Institute for Architecture and Urbanism at the Biberach University of Applied Sciences, will bring together
policymakers, urban planners, business leaders, academics and community groups to investigate various ways to shape the future of the urban periphery’s dynamic, yet fragmented, landscape.

Rode will join Suzanne Potjer (Project Lead at Urban Futures Studio, Utrecht) for the CONNECTED + BALANCED session, focussing on systematic experimentation and drivers for real innovation. Other sessions will include discussions on new governance, sustainability, and challenging inherited conceptions of the urban.

More information on the Urban Land Conference can be found here.

Coalition for Urban Transitions launches new report ahead of UN Climate Action Summit

24 September 2019

Just ahead of the UN Climate Action Summit, a new report titled Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity was launched by the Coalition for Urban Transitions. This report, a collaborative effort of more than 50 organisations that includes LSE Cities, outlines the immense social and economic benefits of creating compact, connected and clean cities with net-zero emissions, and presents a clear six-part action plan for national governments around the world.

The  Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, accepts the ‘Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity’ Report from Lord Nicholas Stern, Christiana Figueres, Ani Dasgupta and Mark Watts at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York.

The report clearly illustrates the imperative for national governments to support the development of clean, connected, and compact cities to drive economic prosperity and address the global climate emergency. The report shows that cutting 90% of emissions in cities is possible using proven technologies and would generate returns worth almost US$24 trillion by 2050 based on direct cost savings alone. But that city governments cannot drive a zero-carbon transition without the cooperation and support of national governments. Inclusive, zero-carbon cities must therefore be at the heart of countries’ long-term economic & social development planning. The main message of the report is that thriving cities make prosperous countries, and national governments must embrace this transition or risk being left behind.

LSE Cities has been a member of the Coalition for Urban Transitions since its inception, co-leading the workstream on national policy frameworks together with the OECD.

Learn more about our research and the work of the Coalition in the new report.

UrbanNext features Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode in new video.

4 September 2019

In a new video produced by UrbanNext, Ricky Burdett, Urban Age and LSE Cities Director, and Philipp Rode, LSE Cities Executive Director discuss findings from LSE Cities’ recent book Shaping Cities in an Urban Age.

“One of the reasons why we have an accelerated conversation around global urbanisation goes back to a rather artificial shift, which some people argue happened in 2007, others 2008, which is the famous, 50 per cent to urban. By which I mean, more than 50 per cent of the world’s population living in urban areas.” – Philipp Rode

Interviews and film are by Ian Garrick Mason from UrbanNext.