The TU Delft Fac­ulty of Archi­tec­ture will soon host the 4th Inter­na­tional Sem­i­nar on Urban­ism and Urban­iza­tion, with pro­fes­sors from around the the world dis­cussing the theme of: The Euro­pean Tra­di­tion in Urban­ism -and its Future. From the 24th to 26th Sep­tem­ber, many par­tic­i­pants will be at the school address­ing issues of per­ma­nence and change, and con­for­mi­tites and dif­fer­ences within urban prac­tices within both a Euro­pean and non-​European context.

The main speak­ers will be: Bernardo Secchi, Joaquim Sabate, Marcel Smets, Zdenek Zavrel, Heng Chye Kiang, Jurgen Rose­mann, Chris­tine Boyer and Han Meyer. This is mainly a con­fer­ence for PhD stu­dents, other sci­en­tists, and pro­fes­sion­als in the field of urban­ism; and is jointly orga­nized with KU Leuven, UPC Barcelona and IUAV Venice.

One of the main events will be a round table dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing Urban­ism after the Wel­fare State, and is prob­a­bly quite impor­tant for con­texts such as the Nether­lands, which has over the past 10 years totally shifted public policy con­cern­ing the hous­ing cor­po­ra­tions. I know, it sounds quite dry, but this is urban planning-​speak. I can imag­ine that the heart of the matter can be good con­tent. As for the future of (Euro­pean) Urban­ism, the task of urban­ists in gen­eral is to make the pro­fes­sion much more user-​friendly, ugh.