This year's lecture series and related events will be based on any topic related to the city of Bethlehem -- including explorations of its history, its present realities, possible futures, and the process of transformation it is about to undergo as a result of the imminent development of the Bethlehem Steel site. The broader issues of urban development and transformation: what are cities? why do we love, hate, need and fear them? how do they emerge, grow, wane, die - and experience rebirth? how do past utopian and dystopian visions of the city inform our current imaginings? how can we compare the varying fates of cities in the era of globalization, late capitalism, spectacular third world industrialization and first world de-industrialization?