Creating inclusive creative cities and places: what role can sustainable development and collaboration play?
A Changing Planet seminar given by Maria Adebowale-Schwarte, founder of the Living Space Project, a commissioner for the London Sustainable Development Commission and author of The Place Making Factor.
Please register for your ticket in advance.
Abstract
How do we make sustainable development relevant to tackling urban and city inequality? And just how can the notion of good growth be used to disprove the idea that inequality in our cities is an inevitability.
Can a look back to the examination of ownership, the value of land and creative urban placemaking in the 1940s give us a clearer picture about how society can create collective benefit rather than individual gain?
From collaboration to co-investment and the environment what are core principles at the heart of place and city making that demonstrates how neighbourhoods, academia and cultural institutions can work together to shape a better, more inclusive future for our cities?
Biography
Maria is a city and an urban place strategist. Focusing on collaborative design, policy, and funding models that are inclusive, equitable, and underpinned by good growth.
Her career started in environment and planning law, and she’s developed a portfolio of work that aims to underpin ethically driven, co-created and economically viable places, spaces and cities using a mix of frameworks, sustainable development to heritage and culture, and placemaking.
This all gets put into her practice and strategy, in her new role as Executive Director, of the Foundation for Future London (FFL), connecting community vibrancy, knowledge and creativity with scale and resources supported by partner organisations to ensure London’s new East Bank is a creative and inclusive place. Built around innovation, arts, culture and education, in a way that builds skills, shares knowledge creates jobs and relationships.
Maria is also the author of the “must read” book The Place Making Factor, that blends narrative and fact, on place and grant making, based on her Clore Social Fellowship research.
She writes articles and blogs and has written for The Guardian, New Start, Prospect Magazine, the World Bank, British Academy, and Policy Press. She sits on several boards, and advisory groups with strong place led agendas.