Please join us for a symposium presenting case studies from the Spring 2024 seminar, The Design-Politics of Inhabited “World-Heritage” Sites, supported by student travel grants from the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism’s Charles Correa Fund for Housing and Urbanization.

The symposium will highlight case studies that focus specifically on the ways that urban design politics infuse the urbanization of inhabited places that have been recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage sites in the Global South.

Increasingly, the heritage value of urban centers is being recognized by global institutions such as UNESCO and also state actors, heritage experts, and local resident communities. However, the designation of living residential environments as heritage is regularly accompanied by socio-cultural and economic implications that communities are ill-prepared to anticipate and address. By exploring a range of cases, student investigations into this topic have the potential to improve and inform conservation and planning practice in these contexts to enable more just outcomes.

The symposium will open with a keynote co-presented by professors Lawrence Vale and Aarthi Janakiraman, followed by panels where students will present their research.

Lunch will be provided. Please forward dietary restrictions to lcau@mit.edu beforehand.

The course and symposium are supported by the Charles Correa (1955) Fund for Housing and Urbanization

Schedule:

10:15-Introductions and opening

10:30 – Keynote (Lawrence Vale, Aarthi Janakiraman): The Urban Design-Politics of Housing ‘World Heritage’

11:15 – Panel: Housing World Heritage

Rohit Sanatani, Courage Dzidula Kpodo, Milan Chuttani, 

12:45 – Lunch

1:30 – Panel: Urbanization of/and World Heritage

Dina Taha, Arezo Hakemy, Shubhi Goyal, Joan Barcelona

3 PM – End