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Join our special DPU70 Dialogues in Development events throughout 2024 to discuss the most prominent contemporary challenges facing cities, planning and international development.
This event series of Dialogues is run by the DPU Research clusters to discuss the most prominent contemporary challenges facing cities, planning, and international development, with guest speakers across contexts and disciplines.
Explore our flagship DPU Dialogues in Development lecture series.
Past events
- Shaping pathways to urban equality: Planning methodologies for collective strategic action
The final session of the DPU70 Dialogues in Development series, where we celebrate the remarkable contributions of Professor Caren Levy to the Development Planning Unit (DPU) and to the broader field of urban development planning and urban equality.
Over the past few decades, the challenges of rapid urban change and unjust urbanisation have garnered extensive attention from urban scholars, practitioners, and policymakers worldwide. The DPU has been at the forefront centring urban equality in revised theorisation and practices of planning in rapidly changing contexts, significantly influencing international development policy and planning. At the DPU, Prof Caren Levy has been a pivotal figure in this endeavour, shaping the teaching, research, and practice in these fields – within the DPU and beyond. Her work challenges the de-politicization of policy and planning in post-colonial international geographies, grounding her efforts in the principles of social justice and equality. Throughout her career and her leading roles at the DPU, she has pushed boundaries of planning theory and practice, both professionally and institutionally. She has forged numerous local and international collaborations supporting and working with various urban institutions, local, national and international development agencies and community-driven initiatives, including the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) and local organisations like CCI (Tanzania) and the Alliance (Mumbai); United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), and bi-lateral aid organisations like SIDA and SDC; universities like CUJAE (CUBA), Makarere (Uganda) and IIHS (India), among many others. Over the past few decades, she has enabled and helped build the capacities and sensibilities of many generations of practitioners and scholars to become agents of change to advance more just forms of urbanisation and gender equality.
In this session, we celebrate Prof Caren Levy’s contributions to the planning discipline and the community of planning scholars, practitioners and educators. We will focus on some of the key issues she championed throughout her career, such as gender justice and urban equality across and within multiple organisation and sectors; strategic action planning in partnerships with equivalence with and between communities, the public and private sectors; operationalising transport justice and urban equality that challenges the foundations of traditional transport planning; and her innovative approach towards transdisciplinary co-learning and knowledge co-production.
The event features speakers from among the staff of the DPU and colleagues from around the world who have worked closely with Caren over the years, reflecting on their experiences and the impactful work they have done together.
Watch the event recording on YouTube.
- China-Africa Knowledge Exchange: Development trajectories and Shared Paradigms
Given their respective population size and potential for development, the relationship between China and Africa is one of the most consequential for the 21st century. The past two decades have witnessed a rapid ascent of the Chinese economy on the global stage and the country’s growing presence in the African continent. At the same time, African countries are grappling with poverty reduction and structural transformation, a task China has tackled in its own recent history. The expanding China-Africa relationship has the potential not only to change the two parties’ development trajectories, but also the way in which development is imagined and undertaken around the world. While most studies have focused their attention on flows of capital, people, goods or technology between China and Africa, this dialogue explores the exchange of ideas and knowledge for development between them. Key questions for the panel are: How are development trajectories and paradigms changing in Africa? What is the role of China in these processes? What has China learnt from its interaction with African countries?
Watch the event recording on YouTube.
- Dilemmas of development planning: Southern subjectivities in flux
This panel discussion engages with past DPU students, staff and friends who identify as 'southern' in some way and engages in a conversation on what does it mean to be 'southern' and think 'southernly' in contemporary development planning. What identities and practices are reified by the label 'southern'? What concepts and theories do 'southern perspectives' illuminate and/or debunk? What do 'southern subjectivities' really offer contemporary development planning? These questions push us further than using the idea of 'being southern' as geographical shorthand for knowing better or knowing differently for development planning.
Watch the event recording on YouTube.
- The Feminist-turn of Environmental Justice
What has a Feminist perspective brought to the pursuit of Environmental Justice as a critical enquiry, as a collective struggle and as a means to decolonise research and planning practice and theory? As a means to promote alternatives based on collective power, care and solidarity? As an interpretative framing and vibrant social movement, Environmental Justice (EJ) has expanded its scope over the years to encompass not just struggles for redistribution but also for parity of participation, recognition and rights.
This expansion has been heralded by a shift from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective, and a deeper critique of the entangled questions of patriarchy, contemporary capitalism and colonialism in and across cities. Feminist perspectives have been central to the opening of further possibilities in EJ, provoking new ways of seeing, feeling, and doing.
Drawing on their own trajectories as researchers, planners and feminist activists, the speakers will explore their own engagement with and reading of the Feminist Turn of Environmental Justice.
- Time to Walk the Talk: Forefronting Local and Regional Government Actions to Achieve SDG11
This DPU Dialogues in Development presents the main findings of four strategic papers developed by UCL The Bartlett DPU with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and partners from civil society organizations and academia worldwide. There papers were a contribution to the 7th Local and Regional Governments’ Report to the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) at the SDG Summit, a gathering Head of States and governments, which took place in September 2023. It focussed specifically on SDG11 as part of the SDGs’ four-year revision cycle under the auspices of the UN General Assembly). Since 2017 United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) representing LRGs and on behalf of the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments (GTF), have presented an annual report to the HLPF, entitled Towards the localization of the SDGs, analyzing the state of SDG implementation at the subnational level around the world.
As the next High Level Political Forum approaches in July 2024, the speakers will reflect on the key role and practices of LRGs as front liners in facing the global challenges of urbanization and the territorial manifestations of complex crises, with the overall aim of making our cities and territories more sustainable and resilient. In doing so, they will highlight the importance of retaining SDG Indicator 11.3.2 that measures civil society participation in urban planning and management which is currently at risk of being removed from the SDG Global Database. Particularly important in accelerating progress towards all the articles of SDG11, this Indicator is at risk due to lack of data with less than 30% of countries monitoring the target.
Watch the event recording on YouTube.
- (Local) actions shaping urban environmental trajectories in the global South
Urban environmental issues in the global south have garnered research and policy importance over the last decades and DPU has been one of the institutions at the forefront of teaching and research on these issues. David Satterthwaite has been a key person who has helped to shape the field. Throughout David’s career working for the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) he has supported and learned from colleagues across low and middle-income countries who champion community-driven and local processes, including the Federations of slum/shack dwellers (SDI) and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR). He uses his influence to help channel aid funds to support these local organisations and to influence policy and funding. David’s clear writing style and close connection with people most affected by environmental problems leads him to make insights into the fields of urban environmental change, climate change, health and disasters and he has taken these into important policy work with international organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), World Health Organisation, United Cities and Local Governments, and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, as well as publishing widely in journals and books. As one of the Editors of Environment and Urbanization, he has supported authors from different countries to publish their rich empirical insights, which has greatly enhanced the field. David Satterthwaite directed a module at DPU on environment and sustainable development in cities from 2001-2016 and introduced a new module on climate change and cities. He was awarded the Volvo Environment Prize in 2004 and was on the IPCC team that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
The event will feature speakers drawn from DPU staff and from colleagues he has worked with across the world to reflect on the field and on the work they have done with David.
- Post Growth: Planning After Capitalism
A DPU70 Dialogues in Development event on planning after capitalism.
In our next session, "Post Growth: Planning After Capitalism," we are pleased to welcome Carolina Alves, an Associate Professor in Economics at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, UCL, London, and a Fellow in Economics at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Carolina is the author of two forthcoming books Labour, Value and Capitalism: a Study of Karl Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy (1847) by Editora Dialética and Decolonising Economics: An Introduction by Polity Press. With her background in Macroeconomics and Political Economy, Carolina plays a crucial role in exploring alternative economic models and methodologies.
As a co-founder of Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-Econ), her commitment to promoting a more inclusive, equitable, and comprehensive understanding of economics is central to challenging entrenched biases and fostering global justice within the field. Carolina will share her insights on heterodox economics, highlighting the necessity to widen the discipline to embrace diverse perspectives and approaches. This dialogue is designed to confront the need of moving beyond traditional economic paradigms, with a focused lens on sustainability, equity and the decolonisation of economic theory.- Advancing gender justice in policy and planning: Current and future challenges
A DPU70 Dialogues in Development event on advancing gender justice in policy and planning.
Gender Equality has been taken up as a development objective by international development agencies and national governments from the mid-1980s and 1990s, promising increased support for, and action on, women’s rights, and gender justice. While some progress has been made globally since then, the UN Secretary-General recently declared that “achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is the unfinished business of our time, and the greatest human rights challenge in our world.”[1] Policy evaporation and manipulation, lack of political will and cases of outright resistance, combined with a tendency by development agencies and government departments to reduce gender equality to an institutional performance standard, has resulted in a displacement of core equality concerns. Intersecting with other critical challenges like climate change, political polarisation and conflict, along with widening socio-economic inequalities, makes national and international commitments to tackling gender justice more urgent than ever. Reflecting on the past 40 years since the DPU’s Gender Policy and Planning (GPPP) was created, this panel discussion will consider the current and future challenges of advancing gender justice in policy and planning.
Watch the event recording on YouTube.
- Valedictory talk from UN-Habitat Executive Director Maimunah Mohd Sharif
A public valedictory lecture with Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme on the topic of ‘Looking Back; Looking Forward - a reflection on the challenges and opportunities addressed and ahead in promoting equitable urban futures'.
- Housing as a verb: Treasuring the Legacy of John Turner
This DPU70 Dialogues in Development is a commemoration of the work of John Turner, who worked in the DPU from 1976 to 1982, but whose legacy is global and goes far beyond his time with us. He was a pioneer in the field of housing across the urban global South, challenging the dominant mode of state housing provision in the late 1960s.
His recognition of people as place-makers and a resource in the provision of their own housing was in stark contrast to the wholesale eviction of informal settlements practiced by many governments at the time. Furthermore, his promulgation of community-led and incremental housing development influenced international agencies and governments in a new generation of housing policies in the 1970s and 80s.
While recognising the need to explore the scaling up of housing solutions, John Turner did not see the production of state-led social housing projects and programmes as an appropriate response, advocating instead for the social control of ordinary citizens to realise their right to adequate housing.
This session will build on his ideas and practices, exploring his contributions to our teaching, research, capacity building and advisory work over time and their relevance to address the housing challenges that so many cities and urban areas face today.
Discover more from DPU70
DPU Photo Competition
This event will showcase the engagement of the DPU student community with their practice engagements, both overseas and in the UK, sharing their images and reflections.
DPU70 MSc Scholarships
These two scholarships aim to support applicants from Sub-Saharan Africa to study our Masters' Courses for the 2024-25 academic year.
DPU PhD Podcasts
Engaging with the DPU70 celebrations through 2024, the PhDs with DPU Research clusters, will produce a series of podcasts discussing international development and planning issues of importance to the PhD students.