Parks, Heritage and the Future of Cities: my talks next week

A busy week ahead. I have a number of online events coming up, which may be of interest to followers of this website.

On Friday morning, 19 June, I am speaking in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation Virtual School.  The theme of this event is Old Towns: New Futures – Heritage Reflections and Speculations from a Global Pandemic. I have done a pre-recorded Powerpoint presentation; my title is “Together we will explore ”. The talk was prepared early in June, before the issue of statues of controversial figures became headline news, but it anticipates many of the issues and sets them in an international context. The recording will be shown and then later in the morning I will be doing a live Q&A, along with the other morning speakers, Carole Souter (former Chief Executive of the Heritage Lottery Fund) and Adala Leeson who leads the socio-economic analysis and evaluation team at Historic England.

Next up, on Tuesday 23 June at 7.15pm British Summer Time I will be having an online conversation with the distinguished American planner, Mitchell Silver  in his role as Parks Commissioner for New York City. “Parks and The City”  will focus on New York and Edinburgh. Together we will explore the role of our public parks and open spaces, including their health benefits, issues of commodification and equity, and the impact and implications of the current pandemic. This is a free event, but donations are welcome to the Cockburn Association and Commissioner Silver’s chosen charity the City Park Alliance.

On Wednesday 24 June at noon UK time I will be watching the online launch of Sustainable Urbanisation: A call to action across the Commonwealth. This will be live streamed on You Tube. As part of preparations for the 2020 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that was due to be held in Kigali, Rwanda this month, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Commonwealth Association of Architects, the Commonwealth Association of Planners, and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, with support from The Prince’s Foundation, the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure, the Rwandan Ministry of Local Government, the Commonwealth Engineers Council and others, have been working together to promote sustainable urbanisation in the Commonwealth. HRH The Prince of Wales will officially launch the outcomes during this webinar.

Next day, Thursday 25 June at 16.25pm UK time I will be speaking on Future Cities, Transport and Infrastructure at the https://www.nationalplanningsummit.com/agenda-3/ . This will be a live online presentation.