Planning for people means a new approach to urban regeneration, setting aside the traditional focus of the ‘place’ in favour of the ‘people’. By harnessing the skills, creativity, energy and ideas of the citizens, city authorities can redevelop areas with a view to promoting social cohesion. Increasingly, every city faces challenges of inequality, immigration and security, so public spaces that can be enjoyed by the whole community offer an ideal opportunity to address these issues. By taking this a step further and involving the community in the entire redevelopment process, projects can better meet the needs of the people and more effectively tackle these challenges. This year’s keynote address will come from renowned Genoese architect and planner, Renzo Piano, who will set the tone for the conference. Fully familiar with the challenges of redeveloping urban areas, Piano launched Genoa’s Urban Lab in 2008 with a view to regenerating the historic city.
This event will take place in Genoa from 2nd to 5th november 2011. For more informations, please consult the Eurocities2011 website.
An other event intends to explore the main urban challenges to overcome and to widen the scope of successful alternatives which puts the human scale at the centre of the process. The 12th Naerus Conference 2011 aims to exchange information about research on, and interventions in, deprived human settlements, which understand the city at a human scale as a potential system of synergic satisfiers to fulfill fundamental human needs. This is not a new utopian or abstract urban theory; we are talking about real transformation of concrete urban life. At least one third of the world’s urban population lives in deprived settlements or slums. How should we apply scientific information and local knowledge to the understanding and overcoming of poverty, achieving basic services and avoiding environmental degradation? And how to cope with all those challenges, in order to contribute to the development of deprived settlements in processes driven by the population? How to reshape instruments, techniques and processes to achieve those goals? How can our research encourage the efforts of grass-root movements under pressure in adverse national and international contexts’
This event will take place in Madrid from 20 to 22 october 2011. For more informations, please consult the N-Aerus website.
Illustration : Valerio Pirrera, « People of Madrid-Vendedor», 16.05.2010, Flickr, (licence Creative Commons).
