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At the Habitat III Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development held in Quito, Ecuador (2016), our President Luisa Bravo was selected among several scholars all over the world to give a lecture, to be included in the season 4 of UN Habitat Global Urban Lectures, a free resource of video lectures open to use for academic, professional or personal purposes.
The lecture is finally published! This is a great opportunity for us to address public space as one of the most relevant, yet somehow still neglected, topics for sustainable urban development.
City Space Architecture wants to spread awareness on the importance of public space in cities. Join us, join our global campaign, Stand up for Public Space! - www.standupforpublicspace.org

The synopsis of the lecture and a list of reading materials are available here: https://unhabitat.org/stand-up-for-public-space-luisa-bravo/

With over 100,000 views, UN Habitat Global Urban Lectures are the most viewed videos of UN Habitat. Every 15 min video lecture documents sustainable urban development knowledge of urban experts associated with UN Habitat and shares it across UN Habitat’s wide partner base across the globe. These lectures are part of Habitat UNI, which is UN Habitat’s partnership with universities worldwide. UNI (previously HPUI – Habitat Partner University Initiative) was introduced as a means of promoting cooperation between UN Habitat and institutions of higher education, as well as facilitating exchange and cooperation among universities globally. UNI promotes universities becoming closer partners of cities, actively engaged in problem solving, thus closing the gap between academia and practice and encouraging collaborative learning. UNI promotes and facilitates the dissemination of educational and research products of its members and involve scholars, researchers and students in a number of activities. The collaborations aspire to create the next generation of urban leaders, managers, researchers and practitioners. UN Habitat acts as a catalyst, facilitating partnerships between universities and other agenda partners.

For more info regarding UNI Habitat: http://uni.unhabitat.org/

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We are very excited to be part of the upcoming Boston Mobility Summit promoted by Meeting of the Minds, which will take place on June 20 at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center on Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus. Our President Luisa Bravo and our Honorary Member Mirko Guaralda from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia have been selected to attend, after a very highly competitive process. 
Meeting of the Minds is a global leadership network and knowledge sharing platform. Since it was founded, it has been dedicated to a singular proposition: bring together a carefully chosen set of key urban sustainability and technology stakeholders and gather them around a common platform in ways that help build lasting alliances.
Only 120 leaders in mobility, climate and equity solutions will be attending the summit in Boston, which has been sold out for months. This day-long leadership summit will bring together C-suite executives and entrepreneurs, public sector and non-profit leaders, and academics to share local and global best practices applicable to the Boston region. The focus will be on transformative new technologies, policies, financing mechanisms, design and collaboration models with a particular focus on low-carbon and equitable solutions. 

Check the full agenda of the Boston Mobility Summit: 
http://meetingoftheminds.org/events/boston#agenda

Being in Boston will be an opportunity for us to visit some of the inspiring and cutting-edge laboratories at MIT campus, including the MIT Senseable City Lab and the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, the Engagement LAB at Emerson College and also the GSD - Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

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After several weeks of intensive work, we are finally ready to leave for the upcoming international workshop 'Entrepreneurial City Lab' which will take place in Berlin on May 22-28, 2017 at ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory. The workshop is organized by the School of Architecture of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. City Space Architecture is proud to be among partner organizations, together with U-Lab, University of Technology Berlin (TU Berlin) and the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence, Italy.

This workshop offers the opportunity to explore the city of Berlin as a case study of an Entrepreneurial City. Throughout its turbulent history, Berlin has been an urban laboratory.  From Karl-Friedrich Schinkel’s 19^th century planning, to speculative tenement blocks, modernist “Siedlungen”, the international building exhibitions of the 1950s and 1980s, to recent co-operative housing and working projects, the city has continually experimented with new approaches addressing changing urban issues. Most recently, it developed innovative approaches to integrate a new arriving migrant population. The 'Entrepreneurial City Lab' will interrogate how this has been achieved and how we can learn from Berlin for contemporary approaches in urban designs.
The workshop will focus on six exemplary urban forms in Berlin, that can advance our understanding of how this contemporary Entrepreneurial City developed:
    1) City of the 19^th Century and its 1980s (IBA 1987) and recent regenerations
    2) Siedlungen of the 1920-30s
    3) Socialist City of the 1950s-80s 
    4) Interbau Berlin-West of the 1950s
    5) Gross-Siedlungen of the 1960-70s and their regeneration
    6) Co-housing projects of the 1990-2000s
The workshop offers an intensive learning experience by combining field studies of different areas of the city as well as lectures and seminars helping the students to understand the various aspects of Berlin’s urban form and implications for quality of living, social inclusion and economic opportunities.

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We are extremely proud to be part of the upcoming twenty-sixth session of the Governing Council of UN-Habitat (GC26), that will take place on 8 – 12 May 2017, at the UN Habitat Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. The Governing Council is an intergovernmental decision – making body for UN Habitat, the United Nations Agency on Cities and Human Settlements. 
This session of the Governing Council follows the adoption of the New Urban Agenda during the Habitat III Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016. 
Participation in the Governing Council is open to all Member States and relevant stakeholders, including parliamentarians, civil society organizations, local authorities, professionals and researchers, academia, foundations, women and youth groups, trade unions, indigenous peoples organizations, financial institutions, and the private sector; as well as organizations of the United Nations system and Intergovernmental Organizations.

Our President Luisa Bravo was named for accreditation at the GC26 and was granted with an ad-hoc accreditation by Member States. In Nairobi, she will be an active participant, engaged in the discussion with governmental and local authorities and other stakeholders, contributing with an oral statement related to our commitment to implement contents of the New Urban Agenda related to public space, through our global campaign 'Stand up for Public Space!' and our academic journal 'The Journal of Public Space', that we founded in collaboration with the Queensland University of Technology and in partnership with UN Habitat.

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We are extremely excited to announce that we are among partner organizations of the 10th IFoU conference, The Entrepreneurial City, which will be hosted by the School of Architecture of The Chinese University of Hong Kong on December 14-16, 2017 - https://ifou2017.com/.
IFoU is the International Forum on Urbanism, a network of universities, research institutes and knowledge centers with the task to strengthen the international collaboration in the field of Urbanism. Members of IFoU are academic institutions that are involved in research and education in the field of planning, design and management of the built environment.
Our President Luisa Bravo is included in the conference committee panel and will deliver a keynote speech at the conference to introduce The Journal of Public Space, our non-profit research project that we established in collaboration with the Queensland University of Technology and in partnership with UN Habitat, the United Nations Agency on Cities and Human Settlements.
After nine successful conferences, in Beijing (2006), Delft (2007), Taipei (2008), Delft (2009), Singapore (2011), Barcelona (2012), Tainan (2013), Incheon (2015) and Buenos Aires (2016), the 10th conference is inviting international planners and designers to deliberate on theories, design and practices related to the entrepreneurial city. In face of global and local environmental, social and economic challenges, following the goals of UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda, the 10^th IFoU Conference ‘The Entrepreneurial City’ explores: how to create urban prosperity and an inclusive economy?

The deadline for abstract submission is May 1, 2017 -> EXTENDED May 15, 2017

Read more about the call for papers on the conference website.