Richard C. Rockwell
Executive Director,
Institute for Social Inquiry/Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
Professor of Sociology, University of Connecticut
"Cities as Ecological Devices, Not Ecological Hazards"
Thursday, April 5, 2001, 4:00 pm
The Industrial Transformation science project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environment Change (IHDP-IT) has taken as a premise that it will be possible to improve the quality of human life while simultaneously reducing the human impact on the environment. Doing so will require a combination of social, cultural, political, technological, and infrastructural changes. The new and growing cities of the globe offer an opportune setting in which to test this interdisciplinary research. Were those cities to be built and operated as have been the older cities of the West, both the quality of life and the environment would probably be degraded. But cities need not be ecological hazards for the globe.
Richard Rockwell holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the member of the Scientific Committee of IHDP-IT and co-chairs Cities and Industrial Transformation focus, IHDP-IT.