【Tamkang Times】Assistant professor of the Graduate Institute of Future Studies, Mei-mei Song, attended a workshop in Malaysia from May 31st to June 2nd titled, “Transforming Cities 2030.” The event had three different speakers that emphasized the new trends that would be taking place for city life in the future. 30 representatives from all over the world spoke on how they believed their cities would change by 2030. Mei-mei song explained, “This conference was part of a plan that was set up last March at the UNESCO think tank meeting. By pooling together international academic resources we are able to make more accurate predictions of what the future holds.”

The workshop took place in seven different rooms and focused on various areas: The Meaning of Future, Future Outline, Future Expectations, Future Reform and Taking Advantage of the Future. Mei-mei song expressed, “In addition to stimulating our ideas of future cities, we also had the chance to discuss operations within our future studies courses. They were very enthusiastic about the ideas we’ve developed at TKU.” On June 11th and 12th Director of the Graduate Institute of Future Studies, Kuo-hua Chen, will travel to Finland with two research students to share information about TKU in order to draw more international students into the future studies program.