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The Sir Peter Hall Lecture: Place Making in the Metaverse
26 May 2022, 6:00 pm–7:00 pm
All are welcome to our annual Sir Peter Hall Lecture and last public lecture of the year.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Victoria Howard
This is a virtual event held on Zoom. Register to receive the join link.
The prestigious annual lecture pays tribute to the late Sir Peter Hall, a global figure in the study of cities and regions and their planning and BSP professor.
The current explosion of interest in the “metaverse,” a loosely related assemblage of new technology, financial instruments, and user experiences, spurs deep skepticism among many observers and passionate advocacy from true believers. Will it really transform the cities and places where we live and work? Or does the shadow world of crypto finance, NFTs, and game-like graphics merely transport the power hierarchies that we know into another spatial dimension? In this talk, the sociologist Sharon Zukin expands the framework of her recent book, The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech, and the New Economy, to enter the new world of metaverse speculation.
About the Speaker
Sharon Zukin
Professor Emerita of Sociology and of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Sharon is the author of the classic study Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change and other books about the contemporary urban experience from The Cultures of Cities to Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Her book Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World won the C. Wright Mills Award, Naked City won the Jane Jacobs Award for Urban Communication, and Zukin received the Robert and Helen Lynd Award for career achievement in urban sociology. Her latest book, The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech, and the New Economy (Oxford University Press, 2020), has recently been published in China.