Jon Hazelwood, HASSELL

Nature in the City: Adventures in London, Sydney and Shanghai

Globalisation, rapid urbanisation and fast changing technology are fundamentally changing the way we live, learn, work and play. Our clients and our cities are grappling with these dynamics daily – and it’s increasingly vital to understand and design for the ‘human factors’ associated with these changes. This has led to changes in the way we practice, whether it is the design of a street in London, a workplace in Sydney or a waterfront in Shanghai.

These changes have included merging with London based Experience Master Planners – FreeState last year, along with carrying out research across Shanghai to better understand the experiences that residents value from their public spaces.

So, as a practice we can now work with clients well before the traditional design process would start to define individual user journeys and map ideal experiences of places ‘moment by moment’ to create engaging, meaningful and memorable experiences, events, buildings and places. This process is really powerful in connecting brands and places with target audiences – whether they be customers, commuters, employees, students or members of the public – in completely new ways and ultimately transforming everyday places into extraordinary experiences.

Tim O'Loan, AECOM

Can the future of the Australian City be incubated in Adelaide?

This paper will examine Adelaide’s place in the global economy and the benefits it is uniquely positioned to deliver in the world of Resilience technology. Building on the experience of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program this paper will bring the bigger ideas and lessons learnt and apply them to Adelaide. A centre piece of a Resilient city is economic stability, from which key aspects such as social equality, access to employment and living standards stem from. How then does Adelaide secure relevancy in the global economy and ensure its future without disenfranchising large sections of its citizens?

We argue that the answer lies in our ability to serve as a key innovation incubator focused on developing knowledge aimed at assisting other cities to become more resilient. This paper has been developed through consultation with leading thinkers in the areas of digital infrastructure, civic leadership and sustainable development. Our contributors set the groundwork for a debate as to how best to balance the need for innovation and technical progress against the need for social cohesion and equality.

This event is directly focused on articulating the critical aspects of creating a successful ‘future Adelaide’. However it will do this through drawing experiences of the 100 Resilient Cities program, and therefore draws from several dozens of other cities experiences in attempting to define their own future. Through this we are best able to articulate both the abstract concept of a ‘future city’ and bring it to specifically deal with the real issues currently faced by Adelaide.

Find out more.

Amalie Wright, Landscapology

Amalie Wright, author of Future Park will share some of her recent work including her Small Creek project that returns a concrete channel back to natural waterway.

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