In this special event, the renowned urbanist and demographer Professor Joel Kotkin, Chapman University, California will present some of his thoughts and concerns on the future of our urban centres post-Covid, post(?)-recession. Focusing on the American experience, but also using examples from Europe and the Far East, he explores whether cities can survive. As their business model is killed off, as city councils face bankruptcy, as online becomes the go-to commercial experience, as rents become extortionate, as growth, manufacturing, commerce and consumerism become problematic concepts, are we witnessing the end of the Metropolitican Age? If cities survive this onslaught, what will be their purpose?

Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures and R. Hobbs Professor in Urban Studies and has written widely on economic, political and social trends. His books include “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050“, which explores how the US might evolve in the next four decades. “The City: A Global History” and “The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us” and his latest book is “The Coming of Neo-Feudalism.”

Joel Kotkin will present his ideas on the need to rethink what cities are for. Predominantly focusing on the problems in US city as forerunners of our own, he examines the causes and consequences. We then have a panel of respondents who will comment on and question the premise. Then we will go out to the audience for Q&A.

This event is a satellite of the Battle of Ideas festival

Speaker:
Joel Kotkin, R.C. Hobbs Professor of Urban Studies at Chapman University in California, executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism

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