China Planning Network (CPN)

City Resilience Roundtable: Rebuilding and Restoration after the Sichuan Earthquake

CPN Sichuan Field Trip and Chengdu Forum

Beijing/Chengdu July 16-18, 2008

Roundtable Theme:

Over forty million people are directly impacted by the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, China with five million left homeless. The aftermath of the earthquake entails many massive tasks.

The CPN Roundtable emphasizes the long term nature of the rebuilding and restoration after the disaster, focuses on the role of planning, and asks how the academic community can contribute to the rebuilding of the destroyed towns and villages and the restoration of normal life activities.

We also want to encourage positive thinking on what opportunities that disasters may bring about that would not otherwise have been available and promote critical thinking on what disasters help to expose: problems and complexities that would not otherwise have been noticed.

Roundtable Organization:

Despite of such a short notice, we have received great encouragement and prompt responses from the invited scholars and professionals:

MIT President Hockfield wrote a letter to CPN, calling the City Resilience Roundtable the first collective response from the world academic community to contribute to rebuilding towns and villages and restoring life routines to the impacted people in China. (President Hockfield's letter)

Mr. Jan Egeland., Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (2003-2007) wrote us to thank for organizing the City Resilience Roundtable and emphasize “It is now of utmost importance to stress to domestic and international decision makers that the rebuilding will take years and be a massive collective challenge.”

MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay will offer his condolence, support and encourage on behalf of Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the opening remarks of the City Resilience Roundtable.

Mr. Sálvano Briceño, Director of the United Nation’s International Strategy for Disaster 
Reduction has confirmed to come to Beijing and speak in the CPN City Resilience Roundtable.

Prof. Lawrence Vale, co-editor of The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster, head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, will speak in and chair the Roundtable.

Confirmed speakers include

• Tridib Banerjee, James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning, University of South California
• Sálvano Briceño, Director, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, United Nations
• Steven P. French, Professor of City and Regional Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Haruo Hayashi, Professor, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan
• Ede Jorge Ijjasz-Vasquez, Sector Manager, China and Mongolia Sustainable Development Unit, East Asia and Pacific Region, the World Bank
• Feng Min Kan, Senior Coordinator, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, United Nations
• Alven Lam, Director, Office of International Affairs, and Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. HUD
• Itsuki Nakabayashi, Professor and Dean of Graduate School of Urban Science at Tokyo Metropolitan University
• Robert B. Olshansky, Professor, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Hugo Priemus, Professor and former 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
• Richard Stone, Asia news editor, Science Magazine
• 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

Roundtable Agenda: July 16, 2008

Roundtable Logistics:
The CPN City Resilience Roundtable and Sichuan Field Trip and Chengdu Forum will be held as part of the CPN China Week 2008, 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 six main activities:

• CPN Urban Housing Conference 2008...July 14-15 (detail)
• CPN World Planning School Open House...July 15 (detail)
• CPN Cross-Cultural Education Roundtable...July 15 (detail)
• CPN City Resilience Roundtable: Rebuilding and Restoration After Sichuan Earthquake..July 16 (detail)
• CPN Sichuan Field Trip and Chengdu Forum...July 17-18 (detail)
• CPN Urban Transport Congress 2008...July 19 (detail)

Website and registration
The official CPN website: http://ChinaPlanningNetwork.org
About CPN: http://chinaplanningnetwork.org/english/about.htm
CPN 2004: http://mit.edu/dusp/chinaplanning/cpn2004/
CPN 2005: http://mit.edu/dusp/chinaplanning/cpn2005/program.htm
CPN 2006: http://chinaplanningnetwork.org/english/CPN3rdAnnual.htm
CPN 2007: http://www.chinaurbantransport.com/english/fur_ppt.htm
CPN China Week registration: http://chinaplanningnetwork.org/english/Registration.htm 

Venue and hotel
The CPN China Week 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.hotelwenjin.com

Follow-up activities:
Beyond the CPN City Resilience Roundtable, China Planning Network (CPN) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are planning to engage the whole Institute and the world planning community in Sichuan's restoration process: such as long-term field work, design/planning studios and workshop, student internship, visiting scholarship etc. We want to bring the academic research and education to the forefront of the after-disaster restoration practices.

If you have any suggestions and advices to the Roundtable themes, speakers and other activities, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thank you very much for your continued support to China Planning Network!

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

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/

About CPN
China Planning Network (CPN) was established in 2004 and has since advanced from simply an academic interest group to become an independent voice that affects the education, research, practice and policies in China’s urban development. CPN has moved forward on its mission to systematically introduce western knowledge and experiences to China and more importantly CPN has started pursuing its vision of cultivating China's own discourse on urban development. As MIT President Susan Hockfield wrote in 2006: "Through the efforts of the China Planning Network, MIT and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, continue to lead the world to bring the advanced knowledge on urban planning and development to bear on China's urbanization challenges."  

For information about CPN, please visit: www.ChinaPlanningNetwork.org

Contact Methods:
Organizing Committee MIT Office:
Jinhua Zhao: jinhua@mit.edu Tel: (857) 350-0079
Zhan Guo: guozhan@mit.edu Tel: (617) 230-4090
Room 7-337, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139 U.S.A.

Organizing Committee Beijing Office:
Ming Guo: guoming@mit.edu Tel: +86-(0)10-82150296 Fax: +86-(0)10-82150269
Block A, Room 607, Building 8, Science Park Tower
Tsinghua Science Park, Beijing, China