Executive Director Dr Erica Harper to speak at City Debates Conference in Beirut

From March 2 - 4, Dr Erica Haper will be speaking at the American University of Beiruit's City Debate Series: Urban Policy Mobilities and International Aid; Lessons from Regional Planning and Refugee Policies.

City Debates 2016 stems from a relational and multi-scalar understanding of urban policy as an assemblage of ideas and tools that circulate and transform. It seeks to examine how international aid promotes the mobility of urban policy ideas, and mobilizes a range of stakeholders, and technologies in the process. City Debates explores these questions by investigating two sets of urban policies: regional planning, and refugee policies. How is international aid promoting state rescaling, and an approach to urban planning which is decentralized, territorial, or regional? How is humanitarian aid conceiving refugee policies, and to what extent is it able to conceive them in dialogue with the local and urban scales, rather than generically? By analyzing case studies from across the world, with a focus on the Middle East region, City Debates contributes to critical reflection, and informed practice related to regional planning, and refugee-ness. The Debates also highlight the social and political opportunities that international aid may produce, when conceived in relation to inclusive urban and local governance dynamics, and when embedded in flexible institutional configurations that prioritize livability.

City Debates is made possible by the support of the Middle East Centre at the LSE, the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at AUB, the AUB Issam Faris Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, the Institut Francais du Proche-Orient, and The Embassy of Canada, and is an AUB 150th Anniversary event.