1st day program


October 1st, Elbphilharmonie

12:00 – 14:00 The Power of Without
Lord Norman Foster
Followed by conversation with Gesa Ziemer and Kent Larson

14:00 – 15:30 Lightning Talks

The Opening Key Notes will take place at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg where Lord Norman Foster (Architect) will discuss the Power of WITHOUT and how these ideas could improve the lives of people living in informal settlements without access to conventional infrastructure. Following their keynotes, they will join a conversation with Gesa Ziemer (City Science Lab Hamburg) and Kent Larson (MIT, City Science Group).

Keynote by Lord Norman Foster – The Power of WITHOUT.

By 2050, 68% of the population will be urban, which means that most of the global population growth, wealth creation, innovation, energy consumption, and CO2 generation will be concentrated in cities. How cities develop over the next twenty years will largely determine our ability to address the grand societal challenges of our era, from climate change to public health.

90% of 21st century urban growth is expected to happen in the vast shantytowns of informal settlements, or in cities with almost nonexistent or collapsing infrastructure. What if heavy infrastructure can be replaced WITH lightweight, distributed and ultimately autonomous systems? Lord Norman Foster will explore a future WITHOUT top-down and increasingly obsolete systems in his opening keynote.

Lightning Talks

Guadalupe Babio, MIT Media Lab

Tilo Böhmann, Hamburg University

John Clippinger, MIT Media Lab

Heba Allah Essam E. Khalil, Cairo University

Maja Göpel, German Advisory Council on Global Change

Don Ingber, Wyss Institute at Harvard

Marketta Kyttä, Aalto Univeristy

Maarit Kahila-Tani, CEO Maptionaire

Michael Lin, MIT Media Lab

Tod Machover, MIT Media Lab

Jörg Noenning, CityScienceLab, HCU

Ariel Noyman, MIT City Science

Joëlle Pianzola, ETH Zürich

Atefeh Riazi, Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Information Technology Officer 

Michael Uwemedimo, Collaborative Media Advocacy Platform