Explore every episode of the podcast Autumn 2010 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf

Contributor(s): Professor James Ladyman, Professor Martha Nussbaum, Lord Rees of Ludlow, Richard Smith | James Ladyman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol and co-editor of the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science. Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. Lord Rees of Ludlow is President of the Royal Society, Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College Cambridge. Richard Smith is a Former editor of the British Medical Journal and Director of the Ovations Institute. Mark Lawson from BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian.

Contributor(s): Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Professor Timothy Garton Ash, Professor Mary Kaldor, Amartya Sen, Maung Zarni and others | Aung San Suu Kyi, the recently released Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate, speaks live via videolink and telephone from Burma to an audience of LSE academics and students about Myanmar's generals, why they maintain power, the country's youth, and puts forward her vision for Myanmar.

Contributor(s): Lord Browne, Dr Bates Gill, Professor Mary Kaldor, Baroness Shirley Williams | London launch of the 2010 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook on Nuclear Weapons in Europe, which this year considers world military expenditure increases despite the financial crisis. Lord Browne of Ladyton is convenor of the Top Level Group. He served as parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office 2001-03; Secretary of State for: Defence 2006-08, Scotland 2007-08 and was the Prime Minister's Special Envoy to Sri Lanka 2009. Bates Gill is director of SIPRI. Mary Kaldor is co-director of LSE Global Governance. Shirley Williams served as adviser on Nuclear Proliferation to prime minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. She served as leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2001-2004. She is also Professor Emerita of Electoral Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Contributor(s): Professor Anthony Seldon | Gordon Brown's three years at No.10 were the most turbulent of any premiership in the postwar history of Downing Street. In 'Brown at 10', Anthony Seldon tells for the first time the full, compelling story of the astonishing end of Gordon Brown's tenure, and with it the demise of the New Labour project. This will be a frank, authentic and penetrating account of a remarkable political era by one of Britain's foremost political and social commentators.

Contributor(s): Professor Emeritus Heinrich August Winkler | A lecture to mark the intellectual legacy of Ralf Dahrendorf, director of LSE from 1974 to 1984, and one of Europe's most eminent sociologists and public servants of the post-War period. Lord Dahrendorf passed away in June 2009. Heinrich August Winkler is an internationally acclaimed scholar and one of the most distinguished historians of modern Germany.

Contributor(s): Nicholas Phillipson, Professor Lord Skidelsky | Robert Skidelsky and Nicholas Phillipson discuss how the philosophies of Keynes and Smith helped shape their influential economic ideas and examine how each has influenced social and political change.

Contributor(s): Professor Costas Douzinas, Professor Conor Gearty, Professor Francesca Klug, David Lammy | Conor Gearty joins invited guests to initiate 'The Rights' Future' a collaborative writing project aimed at the production of a book to be launched at LSE's literary festival early in 2011. Starting this evening with his RIGHTS' MANIFESTO, Gearty will release a series of weekly essays onto the web which will probe the history of human rights, address their present state in the world and map out some of the possible futures that await this morally important but highly contested phrase.

Contributor(s): Howard Davies | Howard Davies delivers an orientation lecture to LSE students giving an insiders perspective on monetary policy and the mechanics of policy making. Howard Davies is the Director of LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Ha-Joon Chang | We may like or dislike capitalism, but surely we all know how it works. Right? Wrong. Today, most arguments about capitalism are dominated by free-market ideology and unfounded assumptions that parade as 'facts'. This lecture in which Ha-Joon Chang will talk about his new book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism| tells the story of capitalism as it is and shows how capitalism as we know it can be, and should be, made better.

Contributor(s): Professor Stuart Diamond | You're always negotiating. Whether making a business deal, talking to friends or even driving a car, negotiation is going on. And most of us are terrible at it. Experts tell us to negotiate as if we live in a rational world. But people can be angry, fearful and irrational. To achieve your goals you have to be able to deal with the unpredictable. Negotiation expert Stuart Diamond reveals the real secrets behind getting more in any negotiation - whatever 'more' means to you - in his new book Getting More|, published on the 7th October by Portfolio Penguin, and joins us at LSE to offer accessible, jargon-free and innovative insights into negotiation.

Contributor(s): Andrei Soldatov | Andrei Soldatov – a journalist who has covered Russia's security services for more than a decade – penetrates the secret world of the FSB to illustrate how, abetted by their most famous alumnus Vladimir Putin, the security services were given unprecedented rein, and emerged a more shadowy and powerful force than the Soviet KGB. Andrei Soldatov and his The New Nobility co-author Irina Borogan are-founders of Agentura.ru, a highly respected website covering the Russian security services. Soldatov and Borogan worked for Novaya Gazeta from January 2006 to November 2008.

Contributor(s): Steve Ballmer | The pervasive nature of technology and the ever increasing pace of development are rapidly changing the way we work, live and play. These changes bring enormous opportunity for individuals, organisations and society. For more than three decades, Microsoft, and current CEO Steve Ballmer, have played a vital role in leading a technology industry that has transformed the world of business in dramatic fashion. In one of the opening public lectures of the LSE term, Ballmer will discuss what's next, how cloud computing is radically altering paradigms, and new business opportunities enabled by the cloud. Steve Ballmer is Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation. He joined Microsoft in 1980 as the first business manager hired by Bill Gates. Since then, Ballmer's leadership and passion have become hallmarks of his tenure at the company. Ballmer and the company's business and technical leaders are focused on continuing Microsoft's innovation and leadership across each of the company's core businesses. Variously described as ebullient, focused, funny, passionate, sincere, hard-charging and dynamic, Ballmer has infused Microsoft with his own brand of energetic leadership, vision and spirit over the years.

Contributor(s): Larry Elliot, Jon Cruddas MP, Professor Chandran Kukathas | Is it possible – or desirable – to reform capitalism so that it behaves better? A panel of speakers discuss the issues raised in Larry Elliot's new book Crisis and Recovery: ethics, economics and justice| (cowritten with Rowan Williams). Larry Elliott is the economics editor of The Guardian. Jon Cruddas is the Member of Parliament for Dagenham and Rainham. Professor Chandran Kukathas holds the chair of Political Theory in the Department of Government at LSE. He is the author of The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom, Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (with Philip Petit), and Hayek and Modern Liberalism.

Contributor(s): Professor Yezid Sayigh | Professor Sayigh will examine Palestinian political dynamics, as a critical element in what will happen in the wider context of relations with Israel and of what outside powers can or should do. Yezid Sayigh is professor of Middle East Studies, King's College London. In 1990-1994 he was an advisor and negotiator in the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks with Israel, and has been a consultant on the permanent status negotiations and on Palestinian reform since 1998. His most recent publications include Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian transformation in the West Bank and Gaza, Carnegie Paper, 2010 (forthcoming); Hamas Rule in Gaza: Three Years On, Middle East Brief, No. 41, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, March 2010; "Fixing Broken Windows:" Security Sector Reform in Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen, Carnegie Paper, October 2009; and 'Inducing a failed state in Palestine', Survival, Vol. 49, No. 3, Autumn 2007.

Contributor(s): John Tsang Chun Wah | John Tsang Chun Wah, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will discuss post-financial crisis changes to Hong Kong's financial services sector and the potential benefits of these changes to markets around the world. How can Hong Kong maintain its competitive edge as an international financial and business centre in Asia?

Contributor(s): Janusz Lewandowski | With its member states cutting spending sharply, what are the prospects for the EU's budget to 2020? Will Europe be able to meet pressing global challenges? Janusz Lewandowski is European commissioner for financial programming and budget, a position he has held since February 2010. He served as Polish Minister for Privatisation in 1991, and from 1992-93. He received both his Phd (economics) and Masters degree (economics) from the University of Gdańsk.

Contributor(s): Lord Hattersley | David Lloyd George became the authentic radical of British politics in part because of intellectual conviction, but, more significantly, because his birth and upbringing had made him contemptuous of the establishment and its values. He did not so much break the rules of conventional society and politics as refuse to acknowledge their existence. He remained an "outsider" to the end. This event celebrates the publication of Lord Hattersley's new book David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider.

Contributor(s): Professor Anne Phillips | We commonly use the language of body ownership as a way of claiming personal rights, though we do not normally mean it literally. Most people feel uneasy about markets in sexual or reproductive services, and though there is a substantial global trade in body tissues, the illicit trade in live human organs is widely condemned. But what, if any, is the problem with treating bodies as resources and/or possessions? Is there something about the body that makes it particularly inappropriate to apply to it the language of property, commodities, and things? Or is thinking the body special a kind of sentimentalism that blocks clear thinking about matters such as prostitution, surrogate motherhood, or the sale of spare kidneys?

Contributor(s): Professor Michael A. Cusumano | This is an overview of Professor Cusumano's new book Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World|, prepared for the 2009 Oxford Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies. The focus is on how managers can tackle the simultaneous challenge of "innovation and commoditization" in markets often subject to unpredictable change and disruption. Professor Cusumano positions each principle against other concepts associated with 'best practices' and competitive advantage but which he believes are less valuable than they seem.

Contributor(s): Howard Daves, Robert Peston | There is still no consensus on who or what caused the financial crisis which engulfed the world, beginning in the summer of 2007. A huge number of suspects have been identified, from greedy investment bankers, through feckless borrowers, dilatory regulators and myopic central bankers to violent video games and high levels of testosterone among the denizens of trading floors. There is not even agreement on whether the crisis shows a need for more government intervention in markets, or less: some maintain that government encouragement of home ownership lay at the heart of the problem in the US, in particular. In this public event to mark the launch of his new book 'The Financial Crisis: Who is to Blame?' Howard Davies charts a course through these arguments, and the evidence advanced for each of them.

Contributor(s): Dr Ulf Axelson | Dr Axelson draws from leading academic research to shed light on the controversial role of private equity in the economy.

Contributor(s): Nadeem ul Haque, Michael Keen, Dr Masihur Rahman, Rama Sithanen, Professor Joel Slemrod | To reduce reliance on foreign aid and financial inflows, policymakers across the developing world are seeking to improve domestic resource mobilisation. But doing so effectively and efficiently presents a huge policy challenge. More is at stake, however, than just revenue raising to fund socially valuable investments. Effective fiscal systems are a core element of state building and a barometer of state legitimacy and effectiveness.

Contributor(s): Professor Simon Schama | Simon Schama's latest book a selection of his writings titled Scribble, Scribble, Scribble, explores, amongst other subjects, Shakespeare, contemporary art, Hurricane Katrina, cheese soufflés, "The Fate of Eloquence in the age of Ozzy Osbourne," Barack Obama and baseball.

Contributor(s): Professor Michael Kremer, Professor George Imbanga Godia, Professor Geeta Kingdon, Dr Lansana Nyalley, Professor James Tooley | Michael Kremer discusses issues surrounding reform of education systems in developing countries based on evidence from studies on incentive mechanisms, peer effects and other interventions.

Contributor(s): Professor Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker, Professor Stephen Frosh, Professor Ian Parker | This debate will discuss this use of psychoanalytic thought, and its limitations, with reference to the world of politics, social psychology, philosophy and psychosocial studies. Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker is a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology of the University of São Paulo, and a practising psychoanalyst. Stephen Frosh is the pro-vice master and head of the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College. Ian Parker is professor of psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Contributor(s): Kenneth Clarke | As part of the Legal Biographies Project lecture programme Mr Justice Cranston will be interviewing Ken Clarke, QC, MP, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor about his legal and political career. Kenneth Clarke QC MP was appointed as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice on 12 May 2010. He was born in 1940 and educated at Nottingham High School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is a barrister-at-law, having been called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1963 and becoming QC in 1980. He has previously served as Chancellor, Home Secretary, Secretary of State for Health, and Secretary of State for Education and Science. In Opposition he served as shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Contributor(s): Ernest Aryeetey, Ijaz Nabi, Professor Mark Rosenzweig, Paul Romer, Professor John Sutton | A distinguished panel tackles controversial and highly significant questions regarding the relative importance of industrial and agricultural revolution in the developing countries today, for both economic growth and wider development.

Contributor(s): Professor Chang-Tai Hsieh, Rasheed Adegbenro, Ludovico Alcorta, Professor Haroon Bhorat | What do we know about the importance of industrial productivity to a country's standards of living, both in absolute terms and relative to agricultural productivity, to improvements in capital intensity and to improvements in schooling? What do we know about the sources of industrial productivity growth, especially in the developing world? Drawing on evidence from India, China, and Mexico, Chang-Tai Hsieh delivers the second policy lecture of Growth Week 2010. He is joined in discussion by a distinguished panel.

Contributor(s): Dr Jenny Aker, Ken Banks, Dawn Haig-Thomas | Mobile phones have the potential to contribute significantly to economic growth in the developing world, in both the private and public sector. From improving market information for fish traders in Lake Victoria, to enabling medical outreach services in rural South Asia, the mobile is a versatile and adaptable tool. What impact can mobiles have on those previously excluded from financial services and communications networks? Which policies will help turn the promise of mobiles into real benefits for the poorest people? This session, moderated by Diane Coyle, OBE, of Enlightenment Economics, features a panel of researchers and practitioners sharing ideas and experience from the field, discussing a range of case studies from literacy and conditional cash transfer programs in Niger to SMS-based communications for rural hospitals in Malawi.

Contributor(s): Professor Paul Collier, Dr Christopher Alden, Dr Gobind Nankani, Alan Winters | Is China's strategy - of negotiating deals in which resources are exchanged for infrastructure - mutually beneficial, or a new variant of the plunder of Africa? China 'asks no questions' of African governments: is that respectful of African sovereignty or an abrogation of responsibility?

Contributor(s): S.D. Shibulal | S.D. Shibulal is one of the co-founders and member of the Board of Directors of Infosys Technologies Limited. Shibu, as he is fondly called, has over three decades of IT leadership experience. He has played a pivotal role in the Infosys journey and a signal role in the evolution of the Global Delivery Model which is now the de-facto industry standard for delivery for outsourced IT services.

Contributor(s): Dr Heiner Flassbeck | Launch Lecture of the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2010. As nations struggle with what they fear will be a "jobless recovery" from the global recession, the report studies how employment can be raised in developing countries and how the participation of the majority of the population in economic growth can be warranted. The report recommends a fundamental change in the assignment of economic policies to allow for growth, inclusion, high employment and monetary stability at the same time. Dr Heiner Flassbeck is Honorary Professor of Hamburg University and Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD secretariat. He is the leader of the team preparing the Trade and Development Report. Previously, he was the Vice-Minister of Finance in Germany and Chief Economist of the German Institute of Economic Research in Berlin. Robert Wade is Professor of Political Economy and Development in the Department of International Development at LSE.

Contributor(s): Geoffrey Robertson | The Case of the Pope delivers a devastating indictment of the way the Vatican has run a secret legal system that has shielded paedophile priests from criminal trial around the world. Is the Pope morally responsible or legally liable under domestic or international law for the negligence that has allowed so many terrible crimes to go unpunished? Should he and his seat of power, the Holy See, continue to enjoy an immunity that places them above the law? To what extent do Vatican dogmas conflict with human rights treatise, and why has the United Nations allowed this church – alone of religions and NGOs – a privileged platform to promote them? Geoffrey Robertson QC demonstrates a deep respect for the good works of Catholics and their church. But, he argues, unless Pope Benedict XVI can divest himself of the beguilements of statehood and devotion to obsolete canon law, the Vatican will remain in grave breach of the convention on the Right of the Child and in some other respects, an enemy of human rights. This event marks the publication of Geoffrey Robertson's new book 'The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse.'

Contributor(s): Professor Derek Gregory | Professor Gregory discusses the evolving character of conflicts in the borderlands of former empires and the blurring of the conceptual borders of war itself. Derek Gregory is professor of geography, University of British Columbia, and author of The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq.

Contributor(s): Howard Wolpe | Ambassador Wolpe will comment on the Obama Administration's Africa policy and its perceptions of the continent's place in the international community today. Howard Wolpe is former special envoy to the Great Lakes Region for President Barack Obama. Dr Chris Alden is Co-Head of the Africa International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS. Michael Cox is Professor of International Relations at the Department of International Relations at LSE.

Contributor(s): Dame Janet Gaymer | Law aspires to independence, and the value of the rule of law is closely associated with that independence. This is the final event in the Independence of Law? lecture series. Janet Gaymer is commissioner for public appointments in England and Wales and former senior partner of Simmons & Simmons.

Contributor(s): Dr Dana H. Allin | Dr. Allin will speak on the tangle of Middle East crises: Iran's growing nuclear challenge, the impasse on Israel-Palestine, and the consequences of both for President Obama's efforts to recast America's relations with the world's Muslims. This event marks the publication of Dr Allin's latest book The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America, and the Rumors of War. Dana H. Allin is Editor, Survival, and Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. He is also Adjunct Professor of European Studies at the Bologna Center of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University.

Contributor(s): Daniel Finkelstein, Professor Roger Scruton | The newly reinvigorated Tories describe themselves as liberal, progressive, and even radical. But these ideas have long been an anathema to conservative thinkers. Are the new Conservatives really conservative? Daniel Finkelstein is executive editor and chief leader writer at The Times and is an LSE alumnus. Roger Scruton is resident researcher at the American Enterprise Institute and visiting professor in philosophy, Oxford University.

Contributor(s): Professor John Quiggin | The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism--the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many-- even some of those charged with cleaning up the mess. John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us--and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future. John Quiggin is professor of economics at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Contributor(s): Professor Jan Paulsson, Alexis Mourre | Jan Paulsson's recent paper on "Moral Hazard in International Arbitration" questioning the usefulness of having parties themselves appoint "their" arbitrators has stirred much controversy and will be challenged at this event by Alexis Mourre. Prof. Paulsson is Centennial Professor of Law at LSE, co-head of the international arbitration practice of Freshfields LLP and one of the world's leading arbitrators. Alexis Mourre is partner at Castaldi Mourre & Partners in Paris and a leading French specialist in international arbitration.

Contributor(s): Professor Daniel Hausman | Preferences are the central notion in mainstream economic theory, yet economists say little about what preferences are. This talk argues that preferences in mainstream positive economics are comparative evaluations with respect to everything relevant to value or choice, and it argues against three mistaken views of preferences: (1) that they are matters of taste, concerning which rational assessment is inappropriate, (2) that preferences coincide with judgments of expected self-interested benefit, and (3) that preferences can be defined in terms of choices. Daniel Hausman is Herbert A. Simon Professor in the department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Contributor(s): Professor Niall Ferguson | Although never a "hot" war between the superpowers, the Cold War was waged partly through a series of proxy wars in Third World countries from Guatemala to Korea to Vietnam. Although a great deal of attention has been devoted to a select number of U.S. Interventions in the Third World, there is an urgent need to see the "Third World's War" in perspective, showing how successful the Soviet Union was in pursuing a strategy of fomenting revolution and how consistently successive U.S. administrations behaved in response. Professor Niall Ferguson is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Contributor(s): Dr Danilo Türk | Dr Danilo Türk is President of the Republic of Slovenia. Dr Türk assumed the position of Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the United Nations in 1992. Following the successful conclusion of Slovenia's term (from 1998 to 1999) as non-permanent member of the Security Council, Mr Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation, appointed Dr Türk as Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs. For more than five years his tasks included analytical and consulting activity relating to the crisis situations of the time. After thirteen years in New York Dr Türk returned to Slovenia in the summer of 2005. He resumed teaching International Law and related subjects at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, from May 2006 he served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law. On 11 November 2007 he was elected President of the Republic of Slovenia by 68,03% votes and was inaugurated in the National Assembly on 22 December 2007.

Contributor(s): Alan AtKisson | Coinciding with the reprint of Alan’s classic book, this event will look at how to build a bridge over the sea of despair, and show how to catch the wave to an enticing, sustainable future. Alan will discuss the pioneers who created the ideas, techniques and practices of sustainable living - the people who prove Cassandra's warnings wrong, by believing in them, and taking strategic action. Alan AtKisson is president and CEO of The AtKisson Group, an international sustainability consultancy to business and government.

Contributor(s): Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh | A decade after the groundbreaking Runnymede Trust 'Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain' report, its chair, Lord Parekh, revisits the issues of race equality and multiculturalism in Britain. Bhikhu Parekh is emeritus fellow of political theory at the University of Hull and a fellow of the British Academy.

Contributor(s): Dr Simon Glendinning | Simon Glendinning is reader in European philosophy at the European Institute, LSE, and director of the Forum for European Philosophy.

Contributor(s): Professor Costas Markides | Lots of people did many stupid things for us to get into the current financial mess. Now, the government is stepping up efforts to impose stricter financial regulations to ensure that such things do not happen in future. Will more regulation work? If history is any guide, the answer is no. Over the last 100 years, we've had a financial crisis every 15-20 years. Every time one took place, the government would step in and impose more regulation - only for another crisis to occur 15-20 years later. Why is that? Costas Markides is the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership at the London Business School.

Contributor(s): Professor Caroline Pauwels, Dr Damian Tambini | The cornerstone of European media policy, public service broadcasting has long been characterised by transitions, questioning and criticism. Now convergence, media cross-over, EU interference and new public service management theories affect its very chances of survival. Caroline Pauwels is the head of the Institute for Broadband Technologies/Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunications at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and was appointed media commissioner by the Flemish Government for the public service broadcaster VRT. Damian Tambini is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications, LSE.

Contributor(s): Dr Simeon Djankov | The recent financial crisis has uncovered several weaknesses in Europe's regulatory system. Belatedly, the European Commission has tried to fix these weaknesses with extensive new regulation, including the creation of several new institutions. Simeon Djankov Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Bulgaria will in this lecture offer an analysis of the most recent developments as well as a perspective on how the financial sector in Europe, and its regulation, will look like in the coming years.

Contributor(s): Babatunde Fashola | Lagos is one the fastest growing cities in Africa, and the seventh fastest growing city in the world. Governor Babatunde Fashola discusses how his administration is managing rapid urbanization and growth of this 17.5 million city, the engine of Nigeria's economy. Central to his strategy is the view that cities must pursue a bottom-up approach to solve the environmental and social challenges of the contemporary city. Babatunde Fashola is the youngest Governor of Lagos State in the History of Nigeria and a lawyer by profession.