China Planning Network (CPN)

China Week 2008

MIT President Susan Hockfield

Letter of Support

(printable)

July 14, 2008

Dear Participants:

It is with profound sadness that I have heard the news of the tragic loss of human life and massive destruction caused by the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, China. On behalf of MIT, I extend our deepest condolences to the people of China, especially to the families of the victims and those affected by this disaster.

As part of this year’s China Week, the China Planning Network (CPN) has organized the City Resilience Roundtable to emphasize the long-term nature of the recovery process and the role of planning within it and to encourage positive thinking about potential opportunities that would otherwise not have been available. Through the initiative of the CPN, MIT and its Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) are calling for the first collective response of postdisaster planning researchers from the world academic community and are thereby contributing to rebuilding towns and villages and restoring life routines to the impacted people in China.

In addition to the City Resilience Roundtable, CPN China Week brings attention to China’s unprecedented urbanization process by organizing its annual conferences on urban transport and housing. In the last three decades of rapid development, China has faced issues similar not only to those like congestion and pollution that were encountered during the history of Western urban development but also to those like climate change that are new to our era. Urban transport and housing have a direct bearing on these challenges, and DUSP and MIT continue to be the core part of CPN initiatives.

I wish you great success with the conferences and in your continued effort to fuse Western knowledge of urban development and planning with China’s practice and to cultivate China’s own discourse on urban development and planning. As you mark the fifth anniversary of the China Planning Network, I am proud to say that the China Planning Network was born and continues to grow at MIT.

Sincerely,

Susan Hockfield

President

Massachusetts Institute of Technology