Sustainable Cities with Saskia Sassen, Carlos Moreno & Martha Thorne

Copenhagen Architecture Festival is proud to present the three internationally esteemed urban thinkers, Carlos Moreno, Martha Thorne and Saskia Sassen.

Through individual presentations and in conversation, they will all address the most urgent questions around creating sustainable cities.

Sassen, Thorne and Moreno approach cities and the city space from very different perspectives. Yet, their analyses of the most pressing challenges our cities are currently facing present significant points of convergence: the need for more sustainable urban spaces and social practices, the need for a closer, less alienated experience of the city, unmediated by traffic, pollution, long distances, unaffordability or income inequality—the need to reclaim our cities.

But how? Which concrete steps can be taken to create better cities, for everybody? Which policies and urban designs should be implemented? Which architectural solutions can be introduced?

Cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Copenhagen constitute virtuous examples of how higher liveability can be achieved through top-down processes of urban change.

However, what actions do we take when the interests of policy-makers and other big agents of urban transformation are not aligned with the people’s? How do we tackle environmental degradation, spatial neoliberalization and the decrease in life quality caused by modernist urban planning?

The interconnection between architecture, economic forces and society in the making of the city of the future will be explored by our three keynote speakers in dialogue on September 21st from 14:00 – 16:30 at Cinemateket.

Entrance fee: 100 Danish kroner.

The session will be moderated by Manuel Perez Romero, Chair of the Center of Sustainable Cities, IE University Madrid as well as invite Copenhagen-based thinkers and practitioners on stage to offer a Danish perspective to the conversation.

• Saskia Sassen is a sociologist and Co-Chair of The Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University.
• Carlos Moreno, scientist and university professor, is the driving force behind Paris’ 15-minutes city plan and 2021 Obel Award Winner.
• Martha Thorne, architect, curator, author/editor, is the Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design in Madrid.

Thank you to Malene Freudendal, The Spanish Embassy, Obel Award and the festival’s primary funds: Copenhagen Municipality, Realdania, The Danish Film Institute and Dreyers Fond for supporting the event.