HUMAN HABITAT 2010 Lecture Series is an open platform on the theme of Sustainable Cities, engaging a wide audience including specialists and lay people. This Lecture Series was designed and is being coordinated by the SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION Initiative in partnership with OCEANÁRIO DE LISBOA, Parque Expo and the Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente.

The lectures will focus on our human habitat and on learning a common language that will help us share and embrace our responsibilities to contribute to sustainable development.

The ten lectures to be held in 2010 will propose alternative frameworks for sustainable urban development in four strategic areas: urban resilience, the human dimension, metabolisms of the systems that support our cities and the real expected change.

The internationally renowned, speakers will deliver their holistic and powerful visions and share their knowledge and experience, with the aim of empowering each of us in our capacity as decision makers, to promote our city’s sustainable development.

In an effort to respond successfully to the local challenges and specific responsibilities of sustainable urban development in Lisbon, these lectures promote the open and direct dialogue between speakers and participants.

Sustainable cities are robust and resilient, able to withstand and overcome extreme and catastrophic events. Ensuring our cities’ survival and their populations’ well being, requires a holistic vision, competence and meticulous intervention in urban planning, tough mitigation measures and creative and decentralized regeneration capacities.

Cities are for people, and people need to identify with the built environments they inhabit. Although urban identity is in the eye of the beholder, urban planners must contribute to make cities more attractive, well performing and thus sustainable. Compact, multifunctional, healthy and diverse cities must provide a balanced habitat for the majority of the planet’s population.

Food is waste is food in the urban metabolism. Over centuries, materials have been accumulated in our cities and their usefulness forgotten. It is our challenge to ensure that these forgotten resources feed the continuous cycle of urban regeneration and that we make use of the best available technologies to systematically improve the quality of all that nature lends us.

Life is change and change is driven by the unyielding drive to improve our human habitat’s living conditions. It is our capacity to adapt to paradigm shifts, aided by technological development that will generate a positive and continuous transformation in the way we live and prosper.