Based on her work experience in post-Katrina New Orleans and post-Sandy New York City, the Municipal Art Society of New York's Director of Urban Resilience and Livability, Mary Rowe, discusses the role of self-organization and granular innovation in urban resilience-building.  Highlighting examples from New Orleans, New York City, and cities around the globe, Ms. Rowe focuses on the need for a collaborative process to build resilience that takes advantage of the systems and features already in place in the urban ecosystem.

In his lecture on "Post-industrial dynamics and urban housing", Hugo Priemus advocates a mixed urban housing strategy to provide high-quality urban housing for knowledge workers and affordable housing for middle- and low-income households. 

In this lecture, Janice Perlman discusses urban informality against the background of 40 years of research in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The lecture lays particular emphasis on how the changes over this timespan have affected the lives of the people in the favelas. She concludes by introducing the Mega-Cities project strategy to 'shorten the lag time between ideas and implementation' in urban problem solving.

In this lecture, Edgar Pieterse, professor at the University of Cape Town and the founding director of the African Centre for Cities, puts forward the concept of the underlying logic of slum urbanism. This logic in turn manifests in an overall urban form that can be characterised as 'extreme splintered urbanism'—a pattern of urban development that manifests in sharp urban divides, the privatisation of key urban services and infrastructure linked to large-scale slum neglect over long periods of time. 

Urban Jonsson - Executive Director at The Owls and former regional director of UNICEF, in this lecture outlines a human rights based approach to sustainable urban development. Starting from the basic premise that 'all humans are born good', he discusses how this applies to the ongoing global efforts to achieve a sustainable urban future.

In this lecture, Anna Heringer presents a series of projects where the choice of building materials and techniques has had a major influence on distribution of resources, participation and equality. Emphasizing that 'we cannot build houses of only steel and concrete for seven billion people' she proposes a strategy of bringing global creativity to the local materials, local skills and local potentials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KQhbx3e_JM

This lecture outlines the impact of participation on practice, in particular how it can expand the scope and nature of practice in order to add strategic value to practical work. Nabeel Hamdi introduces the issues of equity and efficiency and their convergence in participatory work, and articulates the value of participation in building community and in human development.

Mohamed Halfani (UN-Habitat) outlines the notion of prosperity as it relates to the work of UN-Habitat. This introduction to the theme of urban prosperity highlights the disjuncture between current developmental dynamism of cities as exhibited in high levels of material generation and exponential growth in innovation coterminous with abysmal poverty, inequality and environmental degradation. A paradigm shift is suggested which calls for encompassing development dimensions which transcend a narrow economistic focus.

Informal builders provide the bulk of affordable housing and define large areas of our cities. Originally created for those long considered as poor and unable to house themselves, over time the resultant informal housing generally matches higher income standards. This incremental process has been adopted by governments into programmes called 'site and services', focusing on housing and land development, and embracing process as the key. A methodology to capture this process has been developed which offers a base for developing effective policies in supporting the incremental builders.

This lecture focuses on the role of citizens in developing cities, and shows that without the right behaviour and an engaged population even with the best infrastructure, cities will not be resilient. Ron Dembo explains how software, targeted incentive schemes and a sharp focus on the demographics of the city can be used to facilitate engagement and highlights examples where a top down drive and a zero tolerance on unsocial behaviour can help cities achieve resilience.