Open Conference Systems
Cities, Nature, Justice
Cities Nature Justice: dialogues for social sustainability in public spaces
: a 3-day international symposium addressing the social science and science of sustainability.
Can social sustainability be achieved in cities at the same time as environmental sustainability?
Cities Nature Justice will bring together researchers, environmental activists, Indigenous advocates and communicators from India, China, South East Asia, Australia and the United States to discuss this question. They will be exploring new approaches to understanding city environmental issues by bringing both social science and science to bear on key questions of public space, water and social justice.
Key speakers:
* Setha Low (USA & Costa Rica: urban parks and cultural justice; author: The Politics of Public Space),
* Dai Qing (China: water environmental advocate: Three Gorges Dam & Beijing),
* John Maynard (Australia: Indigenous historian; author: For Liberty & Freedom),
* Amita Baviskar (India: Narmada River & Delhi: environmental politics: author: Waterscapes),
* Kartik Shanker (India: Marine biologist, editor Conservation and Society)
4Rs: Rights, Reconciliation, Respect, Responsibilities
'Be part of the future'
Sydney Australia Sept 30 - October 3 2008
Key speakers include:
Eleni Bereded
Tom Calma
Prof Robert Manne
Sharon Burrow
Susan Ryan
Prof Kevin Dunn
Prof Hurriyet Babacan
and over 100 others from universities, government, NGOS and community organisations
Australia remains the only Western democracy without a national human rights framework.
"Australia has entered a new political era and, while guarded optimism is appropriate, we are emerging from more than a decade of fear, suppression of debate and destruction of civil society. This conference will construct a framework for moving forward as a society and call on political commitment."- Professor Andrew Jakubowicz, conference convenor.
The conference organisers see the critical importance of understanding the many ways in which human rights are intertwined with social and political wellbeing. Many groups and individuals are directly involved, and moving for change. The 4Rs international conference at University of Technology Sydney, 30 Sept - 3 Oct 2008, will draw on the expertise and thinking of more than 100 speakers and many delegates from across Australia and overseas to explore opportunities for building a more inclusive and just society. The four themes of the conference traverse human rights, Indigenous reconciliation, inter-cultural relations and citizenship in a globalising world.
The themes explore opportunities for building a more inclusive and just society, recognising the value of cultural citizenship and the role of the arts in building creative cities, in Indigenous reconciliation, and a charter of human rights for Australia.
"This is a conference for scholars and activists, administrators and policy developers, artists and writers, community leaders and media practitioners, educators and students", says Professor Jakubowicz . "It's about connections - exploring how key dimensions of Australian life in a globalised world intersect and interact with each other. Its culturally diverse society - Indigenous people, early settlers and their descendants, and recent immigrants and refugees - tests both how to mobilise the qualities of this diversity to improve the well being of the whole society, and how to ensure that social inclusion can be properly extended to the full range of that diversity.
"The conference will bring both a public and scholarly role to advance debate and research on the interrelated issues of human rights, Indigenous reconciliation, citizenship and inter-communal relations. It's a timely endeavour to assist people from a diverse spectrum, to open a window of dialogue, and decide how to achieve a fair and just society." - Maqsood Alshams, conference secretary.
Association of Architecture Schools in Australasia
Papers are invited that deal broadly with technology in architectural history, education and culture as a site of moral, political and aesthetic disagreement. Specific technologies are continually transferred to architecture from fields such as logistics, psychology and medicine, media and entertainment, warfare, transportation, mining, food and agriculture. Technology transfer includes 'hard' material technologies of manufacturing and construction as well as 'soft technologies' of imaging and information that are taken up in the design process and penetrate the very structure of architectural practice. Such technology transfer is sometimes seen to threaten the supposed internal consistency and specificity of architectural techniques at the same time as it is keenly sought after. Its effect on notions of design intentions and their realization is a key problematic of interest to this conference.
More focused scholarship is also invited on the teaching of techniques for realizing and evaluating buildings. 'Architectural Technology' has become a qualification and specialist area distinct from architecture with, in Europe and North America, a three-year degree. These emerge with professional bodies, and far greater responsibilities than the traditional support role of producing working drawings under the direction of an architect. The emergence of the architectural technologist could be viewed as a response to increasingly complex building and information systems, but it might also be seen as further erosion of the architect's purview. How well are architects and architectural graduates prepared for the proliferation of new technologies of communication, representation, manufacture and construction? What historical events and theoretical arguments have led to technology being a distinct field of knowledge and practice in architectural practice and architectural education?
Scholarship addressing the challenges and potentials of new technologies in construction, manufacturing, design and documentation in architecture and architectural education is called for.