Speakers 2010

An exciting line up of speakers and activities formed the basis of the 2010 CABE urban design summer school in Birmingham.  The summer school took place just two months after the likely general election date and focused on the continuing need for design quality in a changing planning and institutional landscape. 

Gyda Grendstad from the Norwegian Public Roads Administration will be talking about inovative approaches to street design in Norway.

Kathryn Moore is professor of landscape architecture at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and a past president of the Landscape Institute. Kathryn will draw on the themes of her recently published book Overlooking the Visual, tackling the issue of objectivity and subjectivity in design and showing how design is a skill we can all learn and not the preserve of an artistically-inclined minority.  Kathryn will argue for the landscape to be the starting point for all urban design activity and for a strong conceptual framework for placemaking.

Steve Quartermain, chief planner at the Department of Communities and Local Government, will outline potential legislative and institutional changes in the post-election period while Richard Simmons, chief executive of CABE, will give a CABE perspective on how we can continue to work for quality place-making at a time of economic and political uncertainty.

Alan Simpson has worked across the UK, in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States, with national and local government agencies, universities, community and business interest groups, and interdisciplinary professional teams, brought together to respond to critical social, economic and environmental urban planning and urban design problems and opportunities. Alan Simpson led the creation, growth and application of the Yorkshire (UK) Urban Renaissance and Town Team Programs.

He taught at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Liverpool, University College London, and was Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Alan Simpson is Professor of Urbanism at the Mackintosh School of Architecture.