SPEAKER : Peter Newman C. Julia Huang SYNOPSIS : Green urbanism is a way to describe settlements that are smart, secure and sustainable. They are smart in that they are able to adapt to the new technologies of the 21st century, secure in that they have built-in systems that enable them to respond to extreme events as well as being built to last, and sustainable in that they are part of the solution to the big questions of sustainability, such as climate change, peak oil, and biodiversity. This paper assesses Green Urbanism in terms of seven criteria: Renewable City, Carbon Neutral City, Biophillic City, Distributed City, Eco-Efficient City, Place-based City and Sustainable Transport City. Peter Newman is the Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and was recently a Visiting Professor in Architecture at NUS. He is on the Board of Infrastructure Australia that is funding infrastructure for the long term sustainability of Australian cities. His two new books in 2009 'Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change' and 'Green Urbanism Down Under', were both written with Tim Beatley. In Perth, Peter is best known for his work in saving, reviving and extending the city's rail system. Peter invented the term 'automobile dependence' which is now part of most planning practice and theory. Peter's book with Jeff Kenworthy 'Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence' was launched in the White House in 1999. Paul Barter is an Assistant Professor in the LKY School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore where he teaches infrastructure, urban and transport policy. His earlier research focused mainly on international comparisons of urban transport policy and its interactions with urban policy with an geographical emphasis on eastern Asia, especially Malaysia and Singapore. His current research interests are innovation in transport demand management policy, public transport regulation and fundamental priorities of urban transport policy. This seminar series is brought to you by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore in collaboration with National Library Singapore. Charisma and Compassion: A Genealogy of NGO-ness from Taiwan to the Globe Dr. C. Julia Huang, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan Dr. Juliana Finucane, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore Criticisms that religious NGOs do not fit into the conventional patterns of welfare NGOs often attribute it to a matter of accountability rather than a need for limit on religious freedom. Drawing on fieldwork in Taiwan and Malaysia, ethnographic descriptions of "engaged religions" shed light on the multicultural and versatile facets of their NGO character: a combination of transnational networking and pilgrimage, a spectrum of roles between the provider and the facilitator of services, a variety of engagement from benevolent charity to active advocacy, rendering secular environmentalism into issues of the sacred, a rising religious cosmopolitanism that is technologically savvy and abundant in its welfare delivery, a new global arena for women and charismatic leadership. I will argue that a cultural perspective will contribute to unfolding of the multiple genealogies of the NGO character of religious organizations and contribute to understanding of the relationship between religion and civil society. C. Julia Huang is Associate Professor of Anthropology at National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. She was a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions, the Harvard-Yenching Institute, and the International Institute for Asia Studies in the Netherlands. Her research interests include religion, culture and globalization. Her recent book is Charisma and Compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Movement (Harvard University Press, 2009), which examines the development and organization of a transnational Buddhist NGO that originated in Taiwan. Juliana Finucane is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Religion and Globalization cluster of the Asia Research Institute. She graduated from Syracuse University, New York, in Religion, and her dissertation was titled, "When 'Bodhisattvas of the Earth' become Global Citizens: Soka Gakkai in Comparative Perspective." Her research focuses on new forms of missionary activity in global and globalizing cities; the use of media by religious groups to promote "cosmopolitan values like religious pluralism; and the relationship between freedom of the press and the free exercise of religion. DATE : TIME : ORGANISER :

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