*ONLINE* Bloomsbury Festival: Envisioning Urban Futures

** At the time of announcement this is an ONLINE only event — however, subject to future government guidance, Conway Hall and Bloomsbury Festival may make physical tickets available. If this becomes possible we will announce it here, and existing ticket holders will be contacted directly. Please register for an online ticket using the “Book Now” link **

** Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation of at least £5 when registering. **

As we increasingly come to inhabit cities, this panel sets out some ideas for what our urban futures may look and feel like, featuring case studies from around the world. A key theme is how we can shape socially just urban futures. Dr Mara Nogueira engages with this question by examining growing forms of precarity, such as the gig-economy, within systems of waged work in urban Brazil. Many cities now also face a housing crisis, for which ‘micro-living’ is being promoted as a solution, targeted at populations ranging from the homeless to middle-class professionals. Dr Ella Harris draws on current research into Tiny Homes in Austin, Texas, to explore whether this is a desirable model, especially after lock-down policies revealed the difficulties of life in small spaces.

Dr Srilata Sircar will continue the focus on size by examining the place of small cities, marked by fragmented infrastructure, restricted services and truncated planning budgets, in India’s smart urban age. Returning to London, Prof Melissa Butcher uses the Olympic redevelopment to illustrate how different urban visions, such as the ‘smart’ or ‘creative’ city, come to dominate planning, limiting the complexity of a place and rendering alternative possibilities invisible.

FREE – but pre-booking is essential