In October 2014, Senior Fellow Jim Kostaras was invited, to teach a graduate course for advanced career professionals, entitled, Governance and Negotiation, in the Master of Science in Habitat Program as a visiting professor at la Universidad de La Salle School of Architecture in Bogotá Colombia. Students participating in the program were architects and development professionals working primarily in local and national government agencies in cities throughout Colombia.
In the course, students learned new theories of leadership and management of urban development for the purposes of creating sustainable communities to meet the demands of the 21st century. Students considered new ways of exercising leadership, influencing public policy and leading political change to meet the challenges of rapid urbanization and urban poverty. Mr. Kostaras presented important tools of governance including: innovative approaches to strategic planning; the implementation of urban plans through zoning, urban redevelopment investment strategies, and public-private partnerships; and the dynamic of community participation in the contemporary city. Students studied the consensus-building process, mediation, and participatory planning as a form of “public negotiation”.
Students were also introduced to the practice of leadership and governance through negotiation and mediation. The most important premise of the course was that leadership in modern urban governance depends on the ability to negotiate solutions and mediate conflicts over land use and urban development policy. Disputes over urban development, housing and land use are some of the most challenging conflicts facing local governments today, both in Latin America and the United States. Architects, urban planners and officials in government must be adept at negotiating consensus and agreement among many competing stakeholders. The ability to build consensus and mediate competing interests depends on a mastery of negotiation skills and an understanding of negotiation theory. The course was highly interactive, involving a practical application of theory and learned skills in simulations and group exercises. Students learned basic negotiation and mediation skills and fundamentals of negotiation analysis through simulated negotiation exercises involving “conflicts” over land use, urban design, and development decisions, which lend themselves to resolution through the design process.
Ximena Samper de Neu – a former graduate student of I2UD’s President François Vigier, Vice-President Mona Serageldin and Senior Fellow Jim Kostaras at the Harvard Graduate School of Design – is Director of the Habitat Program at la Universidad de La Salle. She is also the Assistant Director of the architecture firm, G.X. Samper Arquitectos, and professor at la Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia.
During his visit to Bogotá, Jim was also invited to lecture at the Conference on Urbanism and Participation (III Foro de Urbanismo y Participación – poster above), sponsored by the Universidad de la Salle, the Colombian Society of Architects, Corporación Vida de Barrio and the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The theme of conference was “The Neighborhood as an emerging political entity” and the lecture presented was entitled, “Strategies of Neighborhood Revitalization in Boston” (“Estrategias de revitalización de barrio en Boston”).