Next Event
Our Once and Future Water Crisis
Virtual Preview – April 22, 2025
In-Person Summit – June 4-5 2025 (Tentative), Arizona St. University, Tempe, AZ
Climate change, population and economic growth, shifting settlement patterns, equity concerns, and new demands from emerging technologies are all transforming the ability of society to satisfy its needs for clean water and sanitation.
This summit will explore the roles and responsibilities of the engineering community as stewards of water helping communities, states, the nation, and the world adapt to these unfolding conditions and evolving challenges.
The session will also explore such questions as …
- What could the engineering community do to help dispel the “American illusion of water abundance” (Cynthia Barnett, Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis) and catalyze societal change to address this wicked problem?
- How can communities and society balance competing interests and demands for this common, limited resource?
- What is the role of the engineering community helping people navigate this critical balancing act?
- What does the intersection of water, blue infrastructure, and culture look like?
- How might the connection between these elements be made more visible to individual citizens, private entities, and government?
- What high-potential leverage points can the engineering community target to catalyze positive change with respect to clean water and sanitation systems?
- What “best practices” from communities and/or regions that are moving toward sustainable and/or regenerative water futures can we learn from?
- What are the macro-ethical dimensions and dilemmas of the water crisis?
- What might a “water ethic” (or set of guiding beliefs) for the engineering community look like?
2025 Events
Cities and Urbanization: Challenges of the 21st Century
Virtual Preview – October 7, 2025
In-Person Summit – November 2025, Tampa, FL
Cities are at the same time the largest technologies humans make and the most complex living systems humans occupy. This summit will take a deep dive into the promises, perils, and paradoxes of the on-going transformation of cities and urban systems in the United States and explore the necessary role that the engineering community plays as stewards, guiding and shaping that evolution for the benefit of society.
The summit will inquire into transformational forces that will reshape urban environments in the next quarter century, such as:
- Remote work and other legacy conditions of the pandemic.
- New urban mobility and transportation technologies.
- Climate change imperatives.
- Sustainability and resilient infrastructure.
- Housing and homelessness.
- Smart cities and other disruptive technologies (AI).
- Social justice and equity challenges.
- Resource, environmental, and social stresses.
- Regenerative and circular economy approaches to urban transformation.
Learning Objectives for 2025 Summits
Our learning objectives for participants in both 2025 summits include helping members of the engineering community to be able to:
- Perceive and address systemic challenges and dynamics.
- Imagine and explore possible futures.
- Take responsibility for action and catalyzing change.
- Pursue positive change strategies within organizations and communities.
- Adopt and evolve an ethic of stewardship of technology and nature on behalf of society.
About Our Events
Each year, Engineering Change Lab–USA (ECL) hosts virtual summits and in-person summits. We convene to learn from thought leaders, share perspectives, provoke new ways of thinking, deepen understanding of engineering’s emerging future, and launch experiments and focused initiatives.
Contact us to learn more about how you or your organization can engage with and benefit from ECL events.
Anyone who is connected to the engineering community is welcome to join us — no membership is required.
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