Summit to tackle how cities around the world are planned, designed and built

Designing City Resilience is an international summit that aims to change how cities around the world are planned, design and built, helping them become more resilient.

The event, being held on 16 and 17 June in central London, will provide a platform for the exchange of ideas between professionals from the built environment; city leadership; the humanitarian sector; finance; information technology and communications.

At its heart will be the City Resilience Challenge, a workshop being held over both days. Participants will work on real cities to create a vision for resilience, alongside strategies to achieve it.

These principles will be published after the summit as a ‘Blueprint for change’. The hope is that the principles will be implemented around the world, helping cities become more resilient to the challenges from urbanisation, climate change and natural disaster.

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, who is chairing the summit, said: “The aim is to have outcomes that are accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

“City resilience lends itself to an approach of developing a virtual methodology,” he added. “Allowing delegates to play out scenarios and challenges over the two days is an excellent way of dealing with such a complex issue.”

Graham Saunders, Head, Shelter and Settlements, of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, who is a member of the editorial panel, commented: “The summit presents a rare opportunity to bring together built environment professionals, city leaders and humanitarian practitioners from around the world to discuss the emerging processes, roles and responsibilities, and begin to identify possible solutions, to creating resilient cities.”

Speakers at Designing City Resilience include: Dr Nancy Kete, Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation; Jo da Silva OBE, Director, International Development, Arup; H.E. Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary-General, Commonwealth; and the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Mark Walport.

Designing City Resilience, organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Commonwealth Association of Architects, will be held on 16 and 17 June 2015, 66 Portland Place, London. For more information and to book a place at the event, visit www.designingcityresilience.com.

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