The University of Toledo

IEW Convocation Speaker

The Urbanization Nexus:  Mega-Cities/Mega-Change  

All the growth of the world population in the coming decades will be urban growth in the cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America; and almost all of that growth will be concentrated in the slums and squatter settlements known as the 'informal sector'.  There are currently one billion people living off the grid in these communities and that will double by the year 2030.  This talk looks at the promise and energy of these marginalized people, based on a longitudinal study in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the learnings of the Mega-Cities Project, a transnational NGO working to find and share approaches that work in  urban problem-solving.

 Tuesday, Nov 13 at 2 p.m. in the Student Union Auditorium

The Toledo and UT campus community are welcome to attend. 
FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Following her talk there will be a Book Signing with refreshments

Janice Perlman a leading researchers on urban marginality, and her book Favela is an exceptional analysis of the evolution of an originally informal settlement over four decades in Brazil. A recommend read for students, urban practitioners, and policy makers.

Location: Office of Multicultural Student Success, Student Union, Room 2500
Time: 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

JANICE ELAINE PERLMAN

Janice Perlman is the President and former Executive Director of a non-profit organization, an independent scholar, teacher and consultant. One of her recent projects has been for “Keep Rockland Beautiful”, a local non-profit “working together for a cleaner, greener Rockland---organizers of the local “Great American Cleanup”.

She is the Founder and President of The Mega-Cities Project, a non-profit research/action organization created to “shorten the time lag between ideas and implementation in urban problem solving.” Now in its 25^th year, the project identifies, documents and shares innovations at the intersection of poverty and place. It’s focus has been environmentally sustainable and inclusive cities in the United States and around the world. The non-profit has brokered over forty transfers across neighborhoods, cities and regions; been adapted by UN-Habitat and inspired the current Smithsonian exhibit on Cities: Design with the other 90%”. Its current focus is the transition to the next generation of urban planners, practitioners, and policy-makers---seeking to involve them in the commitment to greener, healthier and more livable cities,. This new phase is called: Mega-Cities/Mega-Change or MC² (pure “energy”).

Dr. Perlman’s recent book, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (Oxford University Press, 2010; paperback, 2011), won the 2010 PROSE Award for best book of the year in two categories: “Excellence in the Social Sciences” and “Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Sociology and Social Work”. The book is based on longitudinal research on migrants and squatters over four generations. The Foreword is by former Brazilian President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In 2005 Dr. Perlman was awarded The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. For her fieldwork she received two Fulbright Awards and grants from The World Bank, The Tinker Foundation, The Ford Foundation and several bi-lateral agencies. Her earlier book, The Myth of Marginality (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1976), won the C. Wright Mills Award and has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Perlman was a tenured professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley and has since taught at Columbia University, New York University, Trinity College, the Federal University of Rio, the Getulio Vargas Foundation and the University of Paris. Among her most quoted publications are: “Marginality from Myth to Reality”, “Misconceptions about the urban poor and the dynamics of housing policy evolution” (first winner of the Chester Rapkin Award- Association of the Collegiate Schools of Planners), “A Dual Strategy for Deliberate Social Change in Cities” and “Grassrooting the System”.

Among her other positions, Perlman served as Coordinator of an Inter-Agency Task Force on National Urban Policy; US Delegate to the Habitat II Summit; Director of Strategic Planning for the NYC Partnership; Director of Science, Technology and Public Policy at the New York Academy of Sciences and external evaluator for the Gates and Kellogg Foundations, the World Bank and CHF International. She has just completed a study of the favela “pacification” program in Rio and an evaluation of nine slum upgrading projects in Bangalore, Pune and Nagpur.

Perlman holds a BA in Anthropology and Latin American Studies from Cornell University and a PhD in Political Science with a minor in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT.  

For further information see www.mega-cities.net