Access to an affordable home and the ability to live in it without financial anxiety is one of the most basic needs for any individual or family. However, in Scotland we face a dual crisis - insufficient supply and lack of affordability in housing coupled with a spiralling energy cost emergency. The housing crisis is driven by structural failures in supply. The energy cost crisis results from massive price rises, energy company failures and instability in energy markets. The combination of both of these is toxic to the finances and life chances of families and individuals throughout Scotland. How do governments, local authorities and housing and energy suppliers act to fix this?

This conference will take place online.

The Scottish Government wants to partner with Scottish councils and others to deliver 20 minute neighbourhoods in Scotland. Its intent to do so is included in the 2020-21 Programme for Government and many places in Scotland do seem to have the building blocks needed to become 20 minute neighbourhoods. However the same is also true of many other communities globally – and yet few have so far succeeded. So what does it take to move from just proposing 20 minute neighbourhoods to really delivering them on the ground in Scotland?

This conference will take place online.

By 2050 70% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Scotland’s urban places have mountains of data but also infinite demand for services, living spaces and economic activity. Placemaking is one obvious answer to making more sustainable, rational decisions on where and how we live. COP 26 showed that without change, many communities globally will die and others everywhere face a dismal future. However public bodies, private companies and our people all act separately. Individual plans, decisions and actions often work against each other. Left untouched we will make poorer decisions, storing up problems for the future rather than placemaking better ways of living now. Therefore, we need to collect and harness valuable data to see the true picture of how our urban spaces are working and being used. That in turn needs to inform joined-up decision making to make better, viable, sustainable places. The question is, how do we achieve that?

Online

Planners, developers and communities are anxious to secure a well-balanced national planning framework for Scotland through NPF4.  However, no final decisions have yet been made and Scottish Government continues developing policy proposals with stakeholders.  This webinar explores the key themes emerging from the NPF4 development process and explores what all stakeholders need to know about what is coming next.

Online

This webinar explores and explains the purpose, value and practice of placemaking. It will discuss the objectives of placemaking in the shaping of services and projects, the opportunities for placemaking in Scotland afforded by a place-based funding programme and how to deliver effective placemaking in practice.

Online

This webinar will explore the effects and consequences of the COVID pandemic for how we live and work in our city and town centres and our high streets. It will examine the opportunities for transformational change in the centre of our urban spaces and will consider current thinking and initiatives to turn threat into opportunity as dramatic structural changes are already unfolding.

Online

This webinar will discuss the immediate and long term effects of coronavirus upon our cities and city-regions with a focus on the potential of data, the meaning of smart cities post-Covid and approaches to smart city region economic recovery in the key engines of our economy.

Online

This conference discusses the Scottish Government’s policies and vision to deliver ‘Housing to 2040’, examines related themes impacting upon housing policy and delivery – including the drive for Net Zero, the opportunity of Green Investment, the new Planning Act and development of NPF4 – and considers the role of local housing strategies, place-based policy, affordability and market interventions in influencing delivery in Scotland’s private and public housing markets.

Online

Pandemic has helped to reveal a fundamental truth about our communities. Community resilience depends upon two elements: whether planning outcomes look to reflect the long-term interests of communities and whether communities actively involve themselves in shaping where and how they live and work. This is as true for climate, economic, transport and public health resilience as it is for the resilience of the houses, offices and other buildings we plan and construct. The planning system is only as good as its ability to listen and the community wishing to shape the sustainable nature of the place they live is only as good as its ability and willingness to engage in informed consultation.  

Online

This online conference examines the Scottish Government’s implementation of the new Planning Act, what needs to happen for the Act to meet its original objectives for planning in Scotland and which issues remain to be defined in order to give full effect to the content of the Act.

Online