Special Notes on Sichuan Earthquake:
Ten million people are directly impacted by the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, China, with the death toll mounting to 40 thousand and five million left homeless. CPN has received a lot of letters offering help and condolence. Thank you sincerely for your care and support to China! The China Planning Network has undertaken to:
- Introduce, to the CPN China Week, “CPN City Resilience Roundtable: Rebuilding and Restoration After Earthquake in Sichuan”. A massive task in the aftermath of the earthquake is how to shelter the 5 million people left homeless. The roundtable focuses on what city planners, housing and transport professionals can do to help the rebuilding of the destroyed towns and village and the restoration of the normal life activities. We want to emphasize that the impact of this earthquake will be lasting and after the immediate relief effort we need to prepare the tasks of rebuilding and restoration for the long term (details below)
- Donate 15% of the conference registration fee to the China Red Cross to help rebuild after the disaster; and introduce the donation channels to the CPN members (details below)
CPN China Week 2nd announcement
Beijing July 14-19, 2008
Thank to the tremendous support from over one hundred scholars, professionals and students, the preparation of the CPN China Week 2008 has been going well. We’d like to report you the latest progress and warmly welcome you to Beijing and the CPN China Week.
The CPN China Week 2008 is the 5th year continuation of CPN’s effort to fuse western knowledge on urban development with China’s unprecedented experience. CPN China Week 2008 will be held in Beijing on July 14-19, including four main activities:
- CPN Urban Housing Congress 2008..........................................................................................July 14-15
- CPN Cross-Cultural Planning Education Roundtable...................................................................July 15
- CPN City Resilience Roundtable: Rebuilding and Restoration?After Sichuan Earthquake..........July 16
- CPN Urban Transport Congress 2008.........................................................................................July 18-19
Logistics:
Conference website and registration
The official conference website is http://ChinaPlanningNetwork.org
About CPN: http://chinaplanningnetwork.org/english/about.htm
CPN Conference 2004: http://mit.edu/dusp/chinaplanning/cpn2004
CPN Conference 2005: http://mit.edu/dusp/chinaplanning/cpn2005/program.htm
CPN Conference 2006: http://chinaplanningnetwork.org/english/CPN3rdAnnual.htm
CPN Conference 2007: http://chinaurbantransport.com/english/index.htm
Please register for the 2008 CPN China Week at: http://chinaplanningnetwork.org/english/Registration.htm
Conference venue and hotel
The conference will be held in Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing, China. The guest hotel is Wenjin Hotel, which is 10 minutes walk away from Tsinghua campus.
Wenjin Hotel
Tsinghua Science Park, Haidian District, Beijing, China
Tel: +86-10-62525566
http://www.wenjin.com.cn
Visa application
Depending on your nationality and legal status, you may or may not need a visa to enter China. Please consult your local Chinese embassy or consulates for the definite policies.
To facilitate your visa application, we can provide you with an official conference invitation letter and a hotel reservation letter for you. Please give us the following information so that we can prepare the letter for you:
- Your full name as shown on your passport
- Your passport number and issue country
- The embassy from which you will apply for the visa
Conference languages
English and Chinese are both official languages in the conference. We will provide simultaneous translation for all the presentations.
China Urban Transportation Congress 2008
The CPN Urban Transport Congress 2008 is built on the success of the 1st China Urban Transport Congress held in Beijing in 2007 with the widest support from MIT, TRB, UITP, WCTRS, Elsevier, AGS, World Bank, UNDP, ACSP, APA, TfL, CTA, APTA and four ministries from China. The three day congress welcomed over 80 presentations in the plenary conference and 10 parallel sessions. All the speaker bios and presentations are available online:
The CPN Urban Transport Congress 2008 aims to bring together academics, government officials and industrial leaders from both the West and in China to discuss the critical urban transport issues in China. We would like to present to China 1) the various models in which urban transportation are managed in world cities and their corresponding implications on accessibility, affordability, social inclusion, urban structure, life style, energy consumption etc; and 2) the cutting edge thinking on transport research, technology, financing and policies. We also want to present to the West: the latest development and challenges in China's urban transport and the chances these development has brought to the world's community and the opportunities that policy innovations can be implemented in China.
The discussion topics include managing congestion, public transport development, green transport, integrating land use and transportation, social aspects of urban transport, financing urban transport projects in China, mega-city transportation planning, and Olympic Games: last minute observation and what happens afterwards.
China Urban Housing Congress 2008
The main question the Housing Congress aims to ask is: is the urban housing price in China too high? Can Chinese families, both urban residents and rural migrants, afford it? Are government policies to stabilize housing price effective? Five points of view will be examined in this Congress:
- Urban households: the house price to income ratio has shifted from disproportionately low in China prior to the housing reform to disproportionately high nowadays—e.g. 9.4: 1 in Beijing in 2005, which is much higher than the 5: 1 ratio considered by World Bank as affordable for local residents or 3:1 by the United Nations. How have Chinese families managed to afford housing? By distorting their expenditure pattern in favor of housing, by inter-generational borrowing, by significant mortgaging…?
- Rural migration to cities: if it is difficult for urban residents to afford housing, it is almost impossible for the rural migrants, who not only cannot afford commercial housing but also are not eligible for affordable housing provided by local government. Is affordable rental housing a good long-term solution? If so, what options are there for delivering it effectively?
- Central government: the State Council and Ministry of Construction and 8 other ministries have been jointly publishing series of national policies aiming to stabilize the housing price. Have these macro controls and regulations been effective? Looking from a larger context, how do we evaluate the whole transition from welfare housing provision to market-driven housing provision? Have we recognized the boundaries beyond which the market mechanism will fail and has failed? And how shall we respond to it sufficiently?
- Local government: local governments control all the land and land inflation has opened up a new channel of funds for city development. 30-40% of local government revenues are estimated to originate from property, either directly or indirectly. They have powerful incentives to promote the property sector as a means to raise revenues. Is reforming local government finance one key aspect to the housing price problem?
- Experience from outside: what aspects of efforts to develop affordable housing in other countries can be considered relevant for China?
CPN Cross-Cultural Planning Education Roundtable
There has been a great number of planning education interchanges between students and faculty from universities in China and the West since 1980 such as joint design studios. One key assumption which underlies these interchanges is that such an exercise would be richer intellectually because of cross fertilization of ideas between two different sets of experiences, cultural practices and design/planning traditions. These cross-culture interchange are also expected to facilitate questioning of commonly held ideas through intellectual interrogations of one group by another thereby breaking conventional knowledge boundaries of each set of students and faculty.
Drawing on the cumulative experiences of such interchanges over the last twenty years, what do we know about such a process of knowledge production? How are the processes of problem definition, analysis and the deriving of solutions different in jointly run design studios as compared to the standard studios? Do the two groups of students actually question each other's conceptual premises? Do they alter their previously held views? What facilitates such evolution of ideas through contestations? What hinders, and why certain forms of interactions hinders cross cultural communications?
The panelists will draw on their experience of managing these interchange programs to provide some insights, particularly the surprising ones, about co-production of knowledge, and, hopefully, will generate some recommendations about how to further improve this innovative system of cultural encounters.
CPN City Resilience Roundtable: Rebuilding and Restoration After Earthquake in Sichuan
10 million people are directly impacted by the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, China, with the death toll mounting to over 40k and 5 million left homeless. A massive task in the aftermath of the earthquake is how to shelter the 5 million people left homeless. We want to emphasize that the impact of this earthquake will be perennial and we need to prepare the tasks of rebuilding and restoration for the long term. The China Planning Network has undertaken to organize? the City Resilience Roundtable: Rebuilding and Restoration After Earthquake in Sichuan”, focusing on what city planners, housing and transport professionals can do to help the rebuilding of the destroyed towns and village and the restoration of the normal life activities.
We have invited, Prof. Lawrence Vale, MIT, author of The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster to speak in and Chair the Roundtable. We have also sent out our invitation to International Disaster and Riske Conference, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, United Nations Environment Programme, National Earthquake Conference, General Global Humanitarian Forum, National Disaster Reduction Center of China, Academy of Reduction Disaster and Emergency Management, Global Alliance for Disaster Reduction, etc to join the roundtable and share their experiences. We welcome advices and suggestion to the roundtable and call for speakers who have particular knowledge and practical experiences in this field. We will do our best to accommodate these presentations and discussion in the CPN China Week.
Donation Channels to the Sichuan Earthquake Relief
- MIT Chinese Student and Scholar Association (CSSA) has setup a secure and convenient online donation channel that accepts US dollar payment by credit card. MIT is a 501(c)(3) institution, and your gift is tax-deductible within the limitations of U.S. federal income tax laws. The tax identification number is 04-2103594. http://cssa.mit.edu/
- Through Chinese Consulate General, NY, (Tax deduction not available)
Check Payable to:
Chinese Consulate General in New York
( Please make sure that you write down "Earthquake Relief Donation")
Address: Lei LIU, 520 12th Ave, New York, NY 10036.
- Through International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
http://donate.ifrc.org/
You are welcome to submit original and high quality papers around the above topics. The deadline for submitting the paper is May 25th, 2008. The paper should be written in English, and should be no more than 6,000 words. Papers will be selected by the review committee for conference presentation and publication in the proceedings.
Thank you very much for your support to China Planning Network. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions and suggestions about the CPN China Week. We look forward to meeting you in Beijing!
Best,
Ming Guo, Zhan Guo, Jinhua Zhao
Executive Commissioners
China Planning Network
http://www.ChinaPlanningNetwork.org
Faculty Advisor
Lawrence J. Vale, Head and Professor of Urban Design and Planning
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Conference Speakers
The CPN China Week 2008 has confirmed so far over 50 leading scholars and professionals to speak in Beijing such as:
- Alain Bertaud, independent consultant, former Principal Urban Planner, World Bank
- Rachel Bratt, Professor and Former Chair, Department of Urban and
Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University
- Xavier Briggs, Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning, MIT, Former
Acting Assistant Secretary, U.S. HUD
- Robert B. Cervero, Chair and Professor of City and Regional Planning, Department
of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley
- Yung-Ho Chang, Professor and Head, Department of Architecture, MIT
- Bernard Cohen, Secretary of Transportation, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- Randall Crane, Acting Director and Professor of Urban Planning, Institute of
Transportation Studies, UCLA
- Ralph Gakenheimer, Professor of Urban Planning, MIT, Chair, International Scientific Committee of CODATU (Collaborative on Urban Transport Improvement in the Developing World)
- Lawrence Hannah, Lead Economist, World Bank
- Michael Hibbard, President, ACSP, Professor and Director, Institute for Policy Research and Innovation (IPRI), University of Oregon
- Bohumil Kasal, Hankin Chair of Residential Building Construction, Professor
of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Professor of Architectural Engineering,
Director of Research, Pennsylvania Housing Research Center
- Mickey Lauria, Past President, ACSP, Professor of City and Regional Planning, Clemson University
- Alven Lam, Director, Office of International Affairs, and Office of Policy
Development and Research, U.S. HUD
- Si Ming, Li, Chair Professor in Geography, Director of Centre for
China Urban and Regional Studies, Hong Kong University
- Hugo Priemus, Professor and Dean Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management,
Delft University of Technology , Netherlands
- Nicolas Retsinas, Director, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Former
U.S. HUD Assistant Secretary
- Werner Rottengatter, Ex-President of the World Conference on Transport Research Society, Head of the Institute of Economic Policy Research, University of Karlsruhe
- Bish Sanyal, Former Head and Professor of Urban Development and Planning, Chair of Faculty, MIT
- Lawrence Vale, Head and Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT
- Dave Wetzel, Vice-Chair of Board, Transport for London , Fellow, Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport
- Michael Woo, Los Angeles Planning Commissioner
- Fulong Wu, Professor of East Asian Planning and Development, Director of Urban China Research International Network, Cardiff University, UK
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