Join Us August 7th for “Informal Settlements and the Search for Climate Change Solutions”

Please join the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization as we welcome our guest speaker Dr. Theresa Williamson, Ph.D., and moderator Lance Jay Brown, FAIA on Wednesday, August 7, 2024 from 12 PM – 1 PM ET for our next Green Cities event of 2024!

Talk abstract:

Residents across Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities have been adapting to climate change and coming up with development solutions in the absence of public investment for a century. Today, hundreds of grassroots organizers have come together as the Sustainable Favela Network, to recognize, strengthen, consolidate and produce these solutions at scale.

Within the network, Climate Memory Circles realized by favela museums produced a traveling exhibition that emotionally communicates the interconnected, historic and ongoing injustices favela residents face with climate as a pretext. Grassroots green roofs, solar, sewerage and agroforestry projects inspire a picture of future development that holds nature at the center while addressing systemic inequality. Community youth take data generation into their own hands, understanding that without data, there can be no policy, and that data produced and owned by the community is more accurate, nuanced and powerful in producing change. And incipient Favela Community Land Trusts give us a peek into how land rights can be structured to guarantee the basic needs to belonging and rootedness, heritage and environmental preservation, and economic development, without speculation and displacement.

Through a social justice lens on history, this presentation flips the script on informal settlements, with Rio’s favelas lighting the way. Are informal settlements simply the present-day form organic human settlements take? Could it be that in this way they are more aligned with natural rhythms and systems than formal architecture? Is there a double-standard towards them, produced through the mounting systems of structural inequality our cities have amassed over several centuries? Dr. Williamson’s talk will provide a fresh look at informal settlements that centers them in the search for solutions to climate change and social justice.

Date: Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Time: 12:00 PM–1:00 PM ET
Virtual event on Zoom, Free
Registration: bit.ly/GreenCitiesFavelaTalk