Rotterdam’s Air Foun­da­tion has a promis­ing lineup of debates as part of their Urban Meet­ings series of public dia­logues. I would espe­cially love to see the debate ques­tion­ing, “Are cities more impor­tant than countries?”
Down­load the Eng­lish Pam­phlet (pdf).

Urban Meet­ings
With over half of the world’s pop­u­la­tion now living in cities, and up to two-​thirds by the middle of the cen­tury, the issue of how to run a city is becom­ing increas­ingly impor­tant. Rapid urban­iza­tion is having a strong impact on com­mu­ni­ties, cities, economies, urban ecolo­gies and policies.

How to develop and run a city as an engine for for bal­anced, inclu­sive and sus­tain­able growth?? How to con­nect the chal­lenges of man­ag­ing and of design­ing a city in order to fur­ther that urban sustainability?

In the con­text of its 50th anniver­sary the Insti­tute for Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Stud­ies (IHS) has teamed up with the Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale Rot­ter­dam (IABR) and the Archi­tec­ture Insti­tute Rot­ter­dam (AIR), to present a series of Urban Meet­ings to explore the out­lines of an Urban Agenda for the 21st century.

By jux­ta­pos­ing the global with the local per­spec­tive, and by trig­ger­ing an exchange between urban man­agers and devel­op­ers, and urban design­ers and archi­tects, the series of Urban Meet­ings hopes to shed light on where our cities may be head­ing if headed right.

Among the speak­ers are Jan Pronk (former Dutch Min­is­ter of Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and former Min­is­ter of the Envi­ron­ment), Anthony Williams (former mayor of Wash­ing­ton DC), Ivo Opstel­ten (cur­rent mayor of Rot­ter­dam), Jaime Lerner (archi­tect and former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil), Vedran Mimica (Direc­tor of the Berlage Insti­tute, Rot­ter­dam and cura­tor of the 3rd Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale Rot­ter­dam) en Kees Chris­ti­aanse (archi­tect, and cura­tor of the 4th IABR).

Urban Meet­ings:
Wednes­day 8 okto­ber - Are cities more impor­tant than coun­tries?
Tues­day 14 okto­ber - Sus­tain­able cities
Tues­day 28 okto­ber - Lead­ing cities
Thurs­day 13 novem­ber - Safe cities
Thurs­day 20 novem­ber - Inclu­sive cities
Wednes­day 26 novem­ber - My city

The Urban Meet­ings will be mod­er­ated by Felix Rot­ten­berg and will take place in Zaal Staal, in the World Trade Center Rot­ter­dam (Beur­splein 33).

They are free of admis­sion and will be held in Eng­lish. We do rec­om­mend that you make reser­va­tions: info@airfoundation.nl. Please state your name, the name of your orga­ni­za­tion, the date of the meet­ing you wish to attend and how many people will accom­pany you.