Thursday, November 20, 2025
University Hall, Ahmanson Auditorium
The LMU Center for Urban Resilience (CURes) is delighted to invite you to join us at our inaugural Cities and the Environment symposium!
For 18 years, the CATE Journal has provided an international forum for urban researchers and practitioners to explore social-ecological theories, share relevant data, and exchange best practices. Peer-reviewed articles are open access for readers and include no page charges for contributing author. This has allowed for broad participation from academics and community-based practitioners from across the Global North and Global South—Volume 17 (2024) included 14 papers featuring cities from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. At the same time, the journal has promoted communities of practice with special issues focusing on topics such as urban rewilding, urban ecosystem management, urban forestry, and many more.
Founded in 2011, LMU CURes partners with communities to promote resilience by providing social-ecological research, nature-based solutions, and education services. We pursue this mission in collaboration with inspirational, innovative, and impactful organizations across sectors and scales that work to build a better world in the face of many challenges. We often find this work is not shared widely; perhaps because those doing it are focused on tackling the next challenge, rather than highlighting past successes. Yet we know we are stronger when we “stand on the shoulders of giants,” learning from and uplifting the experiences of others.
As we approach two decades of the publication and 15 years of operation for CURes, we are convening researchers, practitioners, and community members in Los Angeles on November 20, 2025 to celebrate past successes and future growth and collaboration. This will be a public, conference-style format that will include presentations, discussion sessions, and poster sessions. It will also include networking coffee breaks and a closing “happy hour” reception.
Potential symposium topics will be broad to stimulate conversation and new ideas. Given CATE’s body of scholarship and the applied research and programs of CURes, these may include:
- Tree canopy research, policies, and programs
- Urban parks, gardens and green spaces
- Stewardship and management of urban natural resources
- Environmental education and outreach programs
- Environmental justice and equity
- Art-based environmental initiatives
- Community science
- Urban watersheds and blue spaces
- Biodiversity
- Human-wildlife coexistence in cities
We welcome your submission of an abstract to present a poster or talk to share with the CATE research and practitioner community. Following the symposium, presenters will be invited to submit to a special issue of the Cities and the Environment Journal showcasing the conference proceedings.
Please use the form below to indicate your interest in this convening, whether you would like to present or attend as a participant. We will update this page with an agenda and list of speakers as the day gets closer!
Attendance is free, thanks to the support of sponsors including Edison International, and we are actively fundraising to provide a limited number of travel scholarships for out-of-state attendees without institutional funding. We will share more information about this as we learn about potential funding sources.
Register to Attend
