Panel Discussion: "What does the future hold for cities, climate change and migration?"

Past Event

Date
27 October 2021, 5:00pm - 6:00pm

Location
Oxford Martin School & Online
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Event Recording:

55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050 this will rise to 70% - almost 2.5 billion people. Nearly one billion of these people live in informal settlements.

Cities will also be key in responding to climate change and transformation to sustainable consumption and production. Cities consume close to 2/3 of the world’s energy and account for more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Almost half a billion urban residents live in coastal areas, increasing their vulnerability even more.

So, how can we design and develop cities to be resilient to the effects of climate change? How can we provide for affordable housing and infrastructure, promote sustainable economic development and work towards a zero carbon future? And to add to all this, how can we factor migration into this urban management in the era of climate change?

Climate change has rarely, until now, been the sole factor prompting migration, but it most certainly exacerbates it. Yet, there remain gaps in our knowledge and evidence of this.

The Oxford Martin Programme on Informal Cities is collecting new and harmonising existing evidence including geospatial data and satellite imagery to study informal neighbourhoods, economies, health and climate change in cities. With diverse expertise in anthropology, geography, mathematics, data science and epidemiology, the team are investigating the migration effects of climate change and the implications for cities, with a specific focus on Addis Ababa and Delhi.

This panel discussion will look at these challenges, particularly in times of re-emerging conflicts and the global pandemic and investigate what urgent action can academics, policy-makers and the global community take.

Keith Michael 2

Professor Michael Keith
Lead Researcher, Oxford Martin Programme on Informal Cities

Michael Keith is Professor at COMPAS, University of Oxford, Director of the PEAK Urban Research programme, and Lead Researcher on the Oxford Martin Programme on Informal Cities.

His research focuses on migration related processes of urban change. He has experience outside the academy working in the community and voluntary sector and as a politician for twenty years in the East End of London, leader of a London local authority and founder, chair and board member of a wide range of urban regeneration companies and public/private partnerships.

Parnell Susan

Professor Susan Parnell
Deputy Principal Investigator, PEAK Urban

|Susan Parnell is the Deputy Principal Investigator with PEAK Urban. Sue is an urban geographer and holds a Chair in Human Geography at the University of Bristol. Her research is focussed on contemporary urban policy research, including local government, poverty reduction and urban environmental justice.

Her early academic research was in the area of urban historical geography and focussed on the rise of racial residential segregation and the impact of colonialism on urbanisation and town planning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1994 and democracy in South Africa her work has shifted to contemporary urban policy research and has involved liasing with local and national government, NGOs and international donors.

Tim Schwanen

Professor Tim Schwanen
Lead Researcher, Oxford Martin Programme on Informal Cities

Professor Tim Schwanen is Director of the Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford and Lead Researcher on the Oxford Martin Programme on Informal Cities. He previously held various research and lecturer positions in Oxford and at Utrecht University.

Tim’s research is international in outlook, interdisciplinary in scope and located at the intersection of urban, transport, cultural, political and economic geography. It covers a wide range of themes and topics relating to cities and the mobility of people, good and information, including processes of transition towards low-energy and just mobility systems.

Kazem Rahimi 1

Professor Kazem Rahimi
Lead Researcher, Oxford Martin Programme on Deep Medicine

Kazem Rahimi is a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Population Health, at the University of Oxford and a consultant cardiologist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. Kazem leads the Oxford Martin Programme on Deep Medicine at the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health with a major interest in the application of machine learning approaches to electronic health records.

He also leads the Blood Pressure Lowering Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration (BPLTTC), which is an international collaboration of all the major trials of blood pressure lowering drugs. He is also a Lead Researcher on the Martin School Programme on Informal Cities.