In the era of globalization, the advancement of societies depends not only on their capability of generating knowledge, but also by their capacity to attract and digest global flows of knowledge. The revolution in communication technology has facilitated the movement of information and the exchange of ideas or what is referred to as knowledge flows. In this lecture, Dr. Hussam Salama discusses the importance of places of knowledge flows to the development and advancement of countries in the region. These are places that have the capacity of hosting agglomerations of global flows and transmitting them to the local context. Dr. Salama analyzes the nature of these places with reference to case studies from the Middle East. He also discusses the challenges they might pose for societies in the region.

Dr. Hussam Salama is a Dubai Initiative Research Fellow at Harvard University. He is also an architect and urban planner. He earned his Bachelor and Master degrees in architectural engineering from Cairo University, a Master of architecture and a PhD in Planning from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is an assistant professor at the National Research Centre, Egypt, where his research focuses on urban development in the Middle East during the era of Globalization. His current research project at Harvard University, “Dubai: A Narrative of Places Shaped for Global Flows,” looks at how Dubai has been aggressively developed in order to attract global flows, rather than being transformed in response to the gradual and natural growth of those flows.