US-China Forum 2017: Innovation on the Urban-Rural Continuum

A forum to take a look at how "rural" and "urban" settings our shaping our political, cultural and economic dialogues.

This will be the third US-China Forum hosted by the University of Chicago and co-sponsored by the China-US Exchange Foundation. For this year's forum, we invite scholars, policymakers, and private-sector innovators to examine the way in which innovations in “rural” and “urban” settings are shaping our political, cultural, and economic dialogues. While scholars point to global urbanization as a leading force for social, environmental, and economic change in the coming century, less is known about how rural areas are experiencing similar disruption; our understanding of ruralism is ripe for renewal. Through a series of panel conversations among scholars and practitioners, the conference will illuminate how innovations in technology, communication, commerce, and entrepreneurship are dissolving the boundaries between the urban and the rural. We will end by exploring how this dissolution, as well as the disproportionate powers of urban and rural actors, affect industry, civil society, and inevitably, international relations.