Each fall, an inaugural lecture presents the Vera List Center’s annual theme in the broadest sense, rooting the concept within The New School’s intellectual tradition and serving as a guide to the center’s programs throughout the year. The theme this year is the notion of “change,” specifically the descriptions, procedures, and perceptions of change that inform collective action, whether political, scientific, or cultural. The inaugural lecture will be delivered on Friday, October 16, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. by Michael A. Cohen, director of the graduate program of International Affairs at The New School.

The global economic crisis demonstrates the impact of globalization and competition for human and natural resources on economic welfare and political stability. Cohen will discuss cities both as sites of the greatest impacts of global change and as sites that provide solutions to some of the challenges that result from such change including: The economic paradox that cities generate income and opportunity at the same time as poverty and inequality; the geographic paradox that cities are quintessentially “local” and geographically specific yet also increasingly subject to global processes; the political paradox that people living in cities make up the majority of most nations but do not receive the political attention they deserve and require; and the sustainability paradox that cities pollute but also create opportunities for policy reform and the sustainable design of the material world.

Michael A. Cohen is director of the graduate program of International Affairs. He also works as advisor to the dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urban Planning of the University of Buenos Aires. From 1972 to 1999, he worked at the World Bank and was responsible for much of the bank’s urban policy development. From 1994 to 1998, he served as senior advisor to the bank’s vice-president for Environmentally Sustainable Development. He has worked in over fifty countries and was heavily involved in the bank’s work on infrastructure, environment, and sustainable development.

This program has been made possible, in part, by a generous grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, will take place in the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue. Admission is $8 to the public; it is free to all students and New School faculty, staff, and alumni with ID.