Venue: Hungarian Society for Urban Planning, 1088, Budapest, József körút 9. 

Language: English 

Lobo examines how sustainability can be reconciled with prosperity, while Strumsky asks why invention and knowledge creation are so strongly concentrated in large cities. Two leading international scholars, two short talks, and a joint discussion on cities, innovation, sustainability, and economic development. A must-attend event for anyone interested in the future of cities and economies. 

José Lobo is an internationally recognized scholar whose research lies at the intersection of urban science, economic development, technological change, sustainability, and complex systems. As a key figure in urban scaling research, a faculty member in Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability and a member of the US National Academies’ Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, Professor Lobo brings a unique perspective that bridges physics, regional science, urban economics, and complexity science to understand how cities generate innovation, productivity, and broader patterns of socioeconomic change. 

Deborah Strumsky is a professor in the Economics Department the Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) in Jönköping, Sweden. She has longstanding interest in the study of technological change and its relationship to economic growth. Her current research is focused on how AI can foster entrepreneurial opportunities in sustainable technologies. Deborah received her PhD from Cornell University. She worked as an Energy Market Analyst at Energy Security Analysis in Boston, Massachusetts before completing a post doc at the Harvard Business School. Deborah previously taught at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte and Arizona State University.  

Abstracts of the presentations 

JOSÉ LOBO 

Beyond Trade-Offs: Reflections on an Emerging Debate over Sustainability and Prosperity in U.S. Academia 

The publication of Our Common Journey in 1999 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences is widely regarded as a foundational moment in the emergence of sustainability as a field of inquiry in the United States. Since then, sustainability has become a successful interdisciplinary field in American academia, generating a substantial body of research and motivating the creation of schools, degree programs, and curricula across the country. Yet this academic success has not been matched by comparable influence on public policy or broad public support. This presentation examines the ongoing reassessment of sustainability research, education, and practice in the United States, focusing on a central challenge: demonstrating that pursuing sustainable development is not a constraint on prosperity but rather a means of advancing economic opportunity, human well-being, and environmental quality. 

Deborah Strumsky 

Invention in Cities: What do we know? 

Invention is one of the most geographically concentrated of all economic activities. Patenting, R&D employment, and inventor populations cluster in a small number of large urban regions, far more than population or production does. Urban scale continues to drive an increasing superlinear relationship between population and inventive activity. This presentation will highlight how agglomeration – the spatial concentration of individuals – fosters invention and the creation of new knowledge. 

The language of the event is English. The organisers do not provide translation into Hungarian. 

Organized in cooperation of Corvinus University of Budapest and the Hungarian Society for Urban Planning, Principal organizer: János B. Kocsis, associate professor, Corvinus University of Budapest; vice president, Hungarian Society for Urban Planning.