SILK Cities 2019 International Conference: Reconstruction, Recovery and Resilience of Historic Cities and Societies

2019 marks the tenth anniversary of the L’Aquila earthquake which devastated the city and its historic centre, affecting over 100,000 people who lived in the city and its surrounding areas. While rebuilding work is ongoing, economic and social recovery is struggling. The conference aims to bring together global knowledge and offer new perspectives and strategies on linking urban processes, reconstruction approaches and heritage issues and to push the traditional theoretical and practical boundaries in order to improve the future of post-crisis reconstruction in historic cities. The city and its people stand to benefit from the global, dispersed, knowledge on the subject matter that will be gathered in the city during the conference.

This will be the third Silk Cities international conference and it is designed to address the issues surrounding reconstruction in historic cities at two levels. At a local level the conference will provoke conversation and reflection on the rebuilding work already carried out and consideration of the next ten years of reconstruction and recovery in L’Aquila. At a wider level, the conference seeks to influence the way in which risk is considered in historic cities and to promote a holistic approach to resilience which takes account of social, cultural and psychological factors.

A limited number of conference grants for students is available.