The Global Urban Lecture series is an  online repository of 15 min video lectures that make available knowledge and experience of world renowned scholars and experts associated with UN-Habitat’s work.

The series is offered as a free resource by UN-Habitat, aimed at universities, urban practitioners, and policy makers, as well as the general public who is interested in cities and sustainable urbanization.

Each lecture package consists of a synopsis of the lecture, biography of the speaker, links to associated materials for in-depth study, and the 15 min video. The packages can be applied either for personal use, as additions to ongoing or new university courses, or for screening in public events as introduction to debates on subjects relevant to cities and urban development.

The series was launched with 20 lectures, and more to follow shortly. Currently available lectures include: ‘Making room for a planet of cities’ - Shlomo (Solly) Angel – Stern School of Business, New York University; ‘Slums: past, present and future’ - Eugenie Birch – University of Pennsylvania; Citizen roles in resilient cities’ - Ron Dembo – Zerofootprint; ‘Incremental Housing – The new site & services’ - Reinhard Goethert – Massachusetts Institute of Technology; ‘Participation in practice’ - Nabeel Hamdi – Oxford Brookes University;  ‘Value Capture as a land based tool to finance development’ - Martim Smolka –Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Find the full, free packages of the lectures here

The series will be formally launched at the World Urban Forum 7 in Medellin, Colombia:

April 8, 17:00-18:00 - UNI Booth at the WUF7 Exhibition - Formal Launch and presentation of the Global Urban Lecture Series

April 10, 17:15-18:30 - WUF7 Cinema Room - Screening of the series

April 11, 09:00-12:00 - UNI Booth at the WUF7 Exhibition - Screening of the series

The Global Urban Lecture Series is part and parcel of Habitat UNI, UN-Habitat’s partnership with academia which currently involves 149 university partners and 1,359 individual members, financed by the Governments of Sweden and Norway.

We welcome you to use this series in your work. For feedback, questions and suggestions, contact UNI@unhabitat.org