New New Town: What The Past Can Teach The Future February 19, 2008

"The New New Town symposium, produced in collaboration with Urban Drift, brings together an unprecedented array of expert speakers, each a stakeholder in one of the most pressing issues in UK politics: housing.

With Gordon Brown promising the build of three million new homes by 2020, the UK is set on a historic growth of new settlements. The government is seeking to create new and sustainable communities through building new infrastructure, linking to existing urban centres, providing new jobs and strengthening local economies. But these new settlements raise as yet unanswered questions:

How can you plan for the unplanned? How can communities be created from scratch? Is the future suburban? How can the experience of past and current projects contribute to building exciting, successful and sustainable new settlements, and what role can architecture and planning play?

Richard Rees will look at eco-towns and their future; Derek Walker, Chief Architect of Milton Keynes, will look back on the historic consequences of the hugely ambitious British New Towns programme; and exemplars from continental Europe and beyond will be examined - from the low-rise, high-density housing of Borneo Sporenburg, Amsterdam, to the 500,000 inhabitant Administrative City in Korea. Other contributors to the symposium include Sir Peter Hall of The Bartlett; Nick Johnson of Urban Splash; and Joe Kerr, of the Royal College of Art, as Chair.

A vital event for architects, developers, planners, politicians, community groups, the media and educators. For further information, please visit the website."

Complete list of Participants: Pier Vittorio Aureli, DOGMA Architects / Berlage Institute / Columbia University; Silvia Grace Borda, Visual Artist; Nick Falk; URBED; Francesca Ferguson, Urban Drift / Swiss Architecture Museum; Sir Peter Hall, The Bartlett, UCL; Joe Kerr, Royal College of Art; Nick Johnson, Urban Splash; Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Normal Architecture Office; Lars Lerup, Rice University, Houston; David Lock; TCPA; Rowan Moore, The Architecture Foundation; Michelle Provoost, Crimson Architectural Historians; Arnold Reijndorp, Amsterdam University; Richard Rees, BDP; Vicky Richardson, Blueprint; Derek Walker, Derek Walker Associates.

Official Website: http://www.newnewtown.com/