Urban Studies @McGill Seminar Series
A Model of the City Based on Superblocks
Presentor: Salvador Rueda
Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona
Salvador Rueda is the director of the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona, founded in 2000. He currently heads an interdisciplinary team of about 50 people working in the following areas: land use, urban planning, mobility and public space, urban organization, economic and social cohesion, energy, water, waste, air pollution and noise. Before founding the UAEB, Salvador Rueda was Director of Environmental Services for the City of Barcelona and served on the European Union’s experts committee on the urban environment. He is recognized for his expertise in analyzing complex systems and future scenarios and his work on the urban metabolism.
The Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona is a public consortium made up of the City of Barcelona’s Council, the Council of the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona, and the Council of the province of Barcelona. The UAEB carries out mandates for different beneficiaries (public institutions, foundations, organizations and companies) in Spain and abroad to support the sustainable transformation of cities via solutions for mobility, energy management, water and waste, as well as urban planning, biodiversity, and social cohesion (http://bcnecologia.net).
The work done by the UAEB and its director, Salvador Rueda, is premised on a projective, systemic, and integrative vision of Barcelona’s future; its tries to establish the environmental, economic and social parameters of the city and to define its future. The UAEB’s vision promotes a mixed and compact, efficient and diverse city -- in other words a sustainable city. The agency has created new instruments and new policies related to mobility, biodiversity, social cohesion and the use of resources.
The Urban Studies @McGill Seminar Series invites speakers to present on a variety of ongoing research, projects, and issues related to urban studies. The seminars are hosted and organized by the McGill School of Urban Planning, with participation from the McGill School of Environment, and Department of Geography. The seminars typically run from noon to 1pm on Fridays throughout the semester and are open to students, faculty, and other members of the urban studies group.