Conference

To strengthen the international collaboration in Urbanism, the International Forum on Urbanism develops international conferences to contribute to the international debate on Urbanism and to stimulate the exchange between academic and professional institutions.
The International Forum on Urbanism organizes at least once a year an international conference. The past few conferences in Beijing in 2006 on ‘Modernization and Regionalism’ and also the Permacity conference in 2007 were a great success.

Upcoming Conference

2022, Bordeaux, France
15th Conference of International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU): Internationalizing Education for the Ecological Transition Challenge
 

As societies all over the world face the challenges of global change, the paradigms for spatial intervention are evolving.In the realm of urban and architectural design, rampant productivism appears outdated and is progressively being replaced by an attitude that is more attentive to local environments and cultures. Different methods for space design at all scales are emerging locally, adopting new postulates in order to address global challenges.
In this context, the internationalization of higher education stands out as a powerful tool for helping our societies address current questions about the evolution of territories all over the planet in a spirit of complementarity and solidarity. As the internationalization of education has garnered widespread approval through its promotion of sharing knowledge between a wide diversity of countries, today it is a priceless vector for fostering the exchange of ideas and experiences about the ecological transition.
Broadly addressing these matters by studying what is done in different contexts would seem to be a fundamental task for higher education in architecture, urban design, planning, and spatial work in general carried out at all scales.

Past Conferences

2021, Delft, The Netherland
14th Conference of International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU): From Dichotomies to Dialogues
 

The 14th edition of the International Forum on Urbanism conference is a reflection on
and a stepping stone towards resilient urbanism. We would like to invites academics
and professionals from around the world to take the opportunity to deliberate on
theories and praxis and transcend and connect different discourses in urbanism, so as
to invent better ways of achieving resilience and sustainability.
The 14th IFoU conference would like to invite you to contribute to the following tracks of dialogues via our call for papers

2020, Nanjing University
13th International Forum on Urbanism “Urbanization in the Mobile Internet Era”
 

The conference will convene participants of scholars, advocates and policy makers to discuss about the most relevant research challenges related to urbanization, urban forms, urban-rural relations and urbanism in the mobile internet era. The conference proposes the growing concerns about the transformations including economic disparity, spatial fragments, social segments and governance changes from the network tension of the virtual and physical space. We urge to a sustainable paradigm of future urban and rural form under a new partnership.

Researchers, practitioners, multilateral agencies, civil society and urban-to-rural learning networks will collectively shape debates around how to critically understand and restructure the urban-rural integrated system, contributing to more economically and socially comprehensive relationship between urban and rural regions.

The conference will tackle issues related to urban and rural theories, frameworks, principles and paradigms in the mobile internet era, but also navigate the practices through the challenges. The call for panels and papers will focus on five main aspects of urban-rural urbanism research and implementation in the mobile internet era.

24th - 26th June, 2019 in Jakarta
12th International Forum on Urbanism “Beyond Resilience” in Jakarta
 

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Deadline : 10 January, 2019

The 12th Conference of International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU), “ Beyond Resilience”, will be held from 24th - 26th June, 2019 in Jakarta.

2018, Barcelona
11th International Forum on Urbanism: Reframing Urban Resilience Implantation: Aligning Sustainability and Resilience
 

The 11th International Forum of Urbanism 'Reframing Urban Resilience Implementation: Aligning sustainability and resilience', organized by the Urban Resilience Research Network, the School of Architecture of UIC Barcelona and UNHabitat​, to be held ​ on the 10,11 and 12 of December 2018 in Barcelona​.

The conference will help to bridge science and policy while supporting a consistent ​implementation of the New Urban Agenda and the 11th Sustainable Development Goal: “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.” Researchers, practitioners, multilateral agencies, civil society and city-to-city learning networks will collectively shape debates around how to critically understand and integrate different urban resilience implementation perspectives, contributing to more holistic and inclusive urban resilience approaches.
Likewise, it will tackle issues related to urban resilience theory development, frameworks, principles, indicators and metrics, but also navigate the practices through the shortcomings, challenges, learning and future challenges. The call for panels and papers will focus on four main aspects of urban resilience research and implementation:

Topic 1 – Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Resilience

Topic 2 – Climate Resilience Governance and Planning

Topic 3 – Urban Design, Infrastructures and Urban Services

Topic 4 – Community Resilience

Chinese University of Hong Kong
10TH IFoU Conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
 

2016, Buenos Aires University, Argentina
9th IFoU Conference in Buenos Aires
 

The 9th Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) with the title From
Knowledge to Development: New university challenges for a contemporary urban
development will be organized by the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of Buenos
Aires University (FADU/UBA) at Buenos Aires, Argentina, from October 26th to 28th, 2016. The
aim of this scientific conference is to contribute and discuss new ways to integrate academic
knowledge and governmental practice.
For universities, this relationship is crucial because it extends their educational role to a new one
-as urban policy decision makers’ key reference. This is why universities have, within and beyond
their abilities to recognize new urban questions and to theorize on them, the power to elaborate
paradigmatic development strategies. The opportunity for our schools is then to recognize this
new challenge and to understand and discuss ways to promote their proficiency to define socioterritorial empowerment initiatives.

The event will then be focused on opportunities to improve, from academic approaches,
alternative models for urban and territorial development and management. It will be organized
on five parallel sessions that, on multidisciplinary discussions, will survey university/government
collaborative models on:

INTEGRATION - think the marginal/integrate the marginal
EFFICIENCY and EQUITY - think the infrastructural/manage the infrastructural
COMPACTNESS - think density/manage density
BELONGING - think identity/support identity
SCALES - think territory/manage territory

Conferences and dialogues between professionals, politicians and researchers will be held in
order to present paradigmatic cases of urban transformation/development, defined on an
academic/public management collaborative basis. On comparable urban challenges, the aim will
be to promote tactics and strategies that integrate research concepts and management actions,
including those referred to migration processes, violence, labor, and environmental risk.

22-24 June 2015, Incheon, Republic of Korea
8th IFoU Conference: The Smart and Green City
 

True Smart and Green City?

The 8th International Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU)
True smart & green city? is the title of the 8th conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) that will take place from 22–24 June 2015 in the city of Incheon, Republic of Korea.

2013, Cheng Kung University
The 7th IFoU Conference: Creative Renaissance
 

The 2013 Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism will be organized by the Cheng Kung University. More detailed information will be published soon on this website.

January 2012, Barcelona
The 6th IFoU Conference: TOURbanISM-toURBANISM
 

TOURbanISM toURBANISM was the title of the 6th Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism that has been held on January 25th to 27th, 2012 at the Catalonian Politecnic University (UPC) in Barcelona. The Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB) and the Department of Urbanism and Regional Planning (DUOT) in collaboration with the Municipality of Barcelona, the Provincial Government of Barcelona and Casa Asia organized the conference within the framework of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU).With the title ‘TOURBANISM’ the conference addressed an even old as new issue: The development of tourism and its impact on the urban – the built – environment. The issue is old, because tourism is influencing already for centuries the development of cities and regions. At the same time it is new, because with the increasing participation of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America tourism got a new scale. Tourists no longer are counted in millions, but in billions.
The change in scale generates new opportunities, but also new threats for the urban and regional development. On the one hand tourism became a powerful part of the economy, offering new jobs and new sources of income. On the other hand in particular the mass tourism became a threat for many people, destroying nature as well as local cultures and local economies.
The conference discussed the impact of tourism on cities and regions as well as new ideas and concepts that are able to combat the destructive tendencies of mass tourism and to generate conditions for a sustainable urban and regional development, integrating tourism in a harmonious and healthy way.