Urban Futures: the Challenge of Sustainability
The AGS Annual Meeting organised jointly with the Competence Center Environment and Sustainability of the ETH Domain (CCES).
The AGS Annual Meeting is distinguished by its commitment to sustainability values. The conference organisation has set targets to minimize the environmental footprint of the event.
Today, around 50% of the present world population - composed of about one billion people in the developed world and 5.5 billion in the developing world - lives in urban areas. And by 2050 - when the population will have grown to around nine billion - this proportion will have risen to 70%, so that twice as many people will live in cities as do today.
This extraordinary increase in urban population comes mainly through the migration of poor from rural areas into urban areas that are ill prepared to absorb them. How will these urban areas provide education, food and shelter, clean water and air, energy, transportation, employment, security, and economic advancement? Scenarios range from utter chaos as the urban areas and their surrounding areas are inundated by uncontrollable masses, to an optimistic technology future in which major advances in science, technology, systems, management and policy provide the needed tools for evolving structures and institutions to provide for this massive shift.
The challenge posed by the transition to urban living is to harness the process to ensure progress towards sustainability. With this in mind, two key propositions have guided the planning of the AGS Annual Meeting 2009:
- that cities, properly managed, can be transformative arenas in which natural resources are used more efficiently and economically, contributing to a high quality of life for everyone;
- that reinventing cities offers one of the most effective ways of reducing human impacts upon the environment and achieving greater sustainability.
The goal of the meeting is to develop a research strategy to help achieve these outcomes.
The AGS recognizes the educational, practical and symbolic value of universities setting an example as models for a sustainable society. The Annual Meeting highlights this commitment in the programme, and through the sustainability pledge of the conference organisation.
The programme includes keynotes, panel discussions, workshops, posters and demonstrations.
The AGS AM 2009 kicks off on Monday 26 January with the Student Summit for Sustainability S3, organised by the World Student Community for Sustainable Development (WSC-SD), and the AGSME 2009 workshop on global modeling.
