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Richard Sennett argues that learning how to live in cities made up from disparate groups represents the biggest challenge facing society today." - There is debate about which of the world's cities is the largest because it all depends on the criteria you decide to use. Among the contenders are Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City while the Chinese port of Beihai was recently named as the city showing the most rapid expansion. What is certain is that cities around the globe are getting larger as they act like magnets drawing people from ever-widening surrounding areas into suburbs and slums, tenements and tower blocks, ghettos and gated communities. The ways in which we live in close proximity to each other, and navigate our lives within and without networks and neighbourhoods, has long been a subject of fascination to the distinguished American-born sociologist Richard Sennett.With a background in a range of overlapping disciplines, he is currently professor of sociology at the London School of Economics. He will be in Cambridge on Thursday 21 February to give a public lecture titled The Open City - the last talk in the Understanding Society series organised by CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities). Sennett will focus on the relation of social life to physical design, exploring what shape cities should have to absorb the complexities and conflicts of the people who live together.
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