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This non-profit capacity building webinar covered two topics: 1. Searching for Grant Funding and Identifying the Best Fit for Your Organization. This session provided an overview of how to identify funding streams that match the vision and mission of your organization. This session also discussed tips on where to find various sources of funding and understanding requirements. 2. Using best practices and evaluation in your work. This session provided an overview of how to identify best practices and develop evaluation plans for your grant applications. This session focused on incorporating evidence into program design; it did not focus on compliance and reporting.

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.This thesis was a recipient of the Planning Institute of Australia Outstanding Student Project Award for Planning Excellence 2020.

Nonprofit organizations play a fundamental role in creating more equitable and thriving communities. The COVID-19 pandemic left many nonprofits experiencing financial hardship. During the pandemic, nonprofits across Chicago saw an increase in the demand for their services without an increase in their financial and operational capacity to meet that higher demand. Nonprofits operating in low-to-moderate income areas and those with budgets less than $1M were disproportionately impacted, with many seeing decreased revenue and increased costs and have not yet fully recovered. To ensure a strong recovery for Chicago nonprofits, the City of Chicago created the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program. This program will provide technical assistance and capacity building services for disproportionately impacted nonprofits, helping to stabilize and scale their operations. This is the presentation from the March 9, 2023 Readiness Summit.

Skateboarding is diversifying and gaining popularity amongst women and girls, neurodivergent, gender diverse and disabled folks. It is a self-paced, unstructured sport, tied to the urban environment, and is relatively affordable and accessible. There is increasing recognition of the social and cultural value of skateboarding in cities (Borden, 2019), as an activity that activates disused public spaces, and could contribute to making spaces safer for other users (Eden, 2016). It could be argued that a liveable city is a skateable city. Despite this, the planning and design of urban spaces typically either overlooks the potential program of skating (missing opportunities to make spaces skateable), or actively defends against skating, in the use of hostile metal ‘skate stoppers’ on ledges and furniture. These approaches work to relegate skateboarding to the confines of skateparks, but in Aotearoa New Zealand there is a shortage of dedicated urban skateparks, and most of the existing ones are outdated, weathered and not fit for purpose. This paper presents a collaborative project from Wellington, in Aotearoa New Zealand, which involves local government, designer-researchers and the skateboarding community working together to involve skaters in the redesign of an important but problematic central city skatepark. The project centers the voices of skaters, acknowledging their skills, expertise and experience, in order to create a future city that supports and fosters skate culture, as an exemplar of an inclusive, and collective approach to design and planning, that recognizes the valuable cultural and social contribution that skateboarding makes to a city. Borden, I, Skateboarding and the City: A complete History. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. Eden, Gustav, quoted in Free Skate Magazine, 2016. https://www.freeskatemag.com/2016/11/09/inside-man-gustav-eden/

The latest developments in design theory especially in the areas of Participatory Design, Transition Design, Design for Social Innovation, and Pluriversal Designs call for designing that is localized, relational, and takes the sustainment and healing of the web of life as a matter of care. Yet, current expressions of design theory in practice expose missing threads between concepts and lived experience, particularly in nuanced understandings of ways-of-being as designers entangled in socioecological work. Situated in the desert city of Hermosillo, Mexico, this practice-based inquiry aims at weaving new threads between design practice and theory to cultivate attunement for specificities in our designing. This Global South context—located in the borderlands between Mexico and the USA—is undergoing a 150 year-long pursuit of modernity aimed at endless economic growth, competitiveness, and accumulation of capital. Powered by logics of extraction, design has reproduced the goals of modernity, resulting in the exclusion of women and plants from public spaces and detonating socioecological degradation. Attuning to the context of women and plants in Hermosillo, I refocus my design praxis to center women-plant relations and the setting of conditions for creative autonomy i.e., people’s capacities to change their own ways of living. To do so, I developed a methodological approach I call convivial making. Convivial making imbues logics of conviviality, embodied and affective reasoning, and time-space situatedness and rhythms. Using convivial making in Hermosillo, I incorporated embroidery practices, in which as women, we formed embroidery circles and occupied the public space with plants; we reflected narratively on our past and present relations with plants and the desert and contemplated our future relations with plants in the city. As a result, women-plant relations expose tensions in Hermosillo-Sonoran desert dynamics. Much of these tensions are consequences of the city’s pursuit of modernity. In contrast, amidst exclusion, women-plant relations bear seeds of resilient hope. Those seeds of resilient hope are experiences that may include hope, but also fear, rage, grief, solace, and healing. As such they manifest, and make as we go, non-exclusionary ways-of-being in the city and the territory. Therefore, I call for a new way-of-being as a designer, one that cultivates design sensibilities that attune and correspond with forms of worldmaking like the ones found in women-plant relations in Hermosillo. For this new way-of-being as a designer, I propose a design philosophy I characterize as resonant, as it involves a back-and-forth between intentionality and attentionality from the designer. In this resonant design philosophy I bring to the fore three design sensibilities: sensing conditions for healing and living; sensing relations for mutual dependability; and sensing situated materials for conviviality. Thus, the resonant design philosophy’s positions the design endeavor in a paradigm of caring for relations through designing for conditions of creative autonomy. As part of it, this resonant design philosophy invites designers to engage in caring for our designing.

In the face of the climate crisis, many countries are intensifying cities in a bid to reduce urban sprawl and minimise carbon production. In Aotearoa New Zealand we are observing similar trends, with many new-built homes having smaller living spaces and private outdoor areas. Aotearoa is a small, colonised country, where the legacy of 20th century suburban backyard sections impacts cultural expectations of how people socialise and spend time outdoors. As our major cities intensify, it is critical that the public amenities grow alongside to off-set reduction in private space whilst also reclaiming cultural narratives and honoring Te Tiriti o Waitangi. These new public spaces need to recognise the social and cultural shift that they facilitate. This paper presents an interdisciplinary design research project that explores how industrial design and urban design combine to create solutions that better meet the needs of communities in Pōneke Wellington (NZ). The project analyzes the shifting built and social environments of Wellington, and proposes new possibilities for industrial design interventions that support and foster a cultural shift toward social inhabitation of urban spaces. The project is a provocation for rethinking the social potential of public space, exemplifying an approach centring the cultural and social needs of users and communities in order to enrich and transform urban environments. Underpinned by indigenous knowledge and values (Tikanga Māori), the research promotes ‘manaakitanga’ or generous hospitality, and aims to develop inclusive, accessible, culturally responsive, and generous social spaces supporting a transition to a more livable, lower carbon city.

The relationship between sport and the environment has been primarily examined to understand how sport impacts the natural environment. However, as the influence of climate change has become more apparent, there is a need to establish a systematic understanding of the impacts of climate change on the operations of sport. The aim of this review is to take stock of existing literature on climate change's impacts on organized competitive sport entities, with further attention paid to their adaptation efforts. A scoping review was conducted to identify relevant studies published between 1995 and 2021. After evaluating more than 2100 publications, we retained 57 articles and analyzed them to answer the research questions: (1) What evidence is available regarding the impacts of climate change on the operation of organized competitive sport entities? (2) What is known from the literature about the measures taken by organized competitive sport entities to adapt to the impacts of climate change? Our analysis yielded five major themes: (1) Heat impacts on athlete and spectator health; (2) heat impacts on athlete performance; (3) adaptive measures taken in sport; (4) suitability of various cities for event hosting; and (5) benchmarking and boundary conditions. This review reveals that there is evidence of some climate change impacts on sport, but the literature reflects only a small share of the global sport sector. Equally, much remains to be understood about the nature of adaptation.

Elkadi H (2021) Social Networks and mitigation against climate change, Keynote speech, Urgent Interventions to Build Socio-Ecological Systems Resilience to Natural Hazards in MENA region, UNESCO, 11 Nov 2021

To date, we have not resolved the climate issues that impact sport and society. This chapter promotes the groundwork (as illustrated in a plethora of examples presented) and builds on successes to further climate action within all aspects of sport. The discussion opens with an overview of our climate issue and its impacts on sport. It then turns to the development of partnerships in the process of mitigating and managing the problem. Many effective diverse partnerships that have aided in promoting awareness of – and action for – safeguarding our climate are outlined. Finally, the chapter pushes for those in sport to continuously seek additional partnerships to aid in the ongoing pursuit of successful climate action. Overall, sport is positioned well to illustrate how to advance climate action and successfully safeguard the natural environment for sport and society. Readers are encouraged to contemplate sport in their local area and the types of partnerships generated to aid climate action.

The UIC School of Public Health (UIC-SPH) Emergency Management and Resiliency Planning (EMRP) program, in collaboration with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and content experts, is presenting a series of Midwest Comprehensive Visualization Dashboard(s) (MCVD) focusing on environmental justice (EJ) issues in this region. In this current MCVD, after a six-month interaction with community groups and policymakers, we developed representations of data that community members can understand and findings to substantiate their EJ claims. Policymakers benefit from these interfaces since they make visible the EJ issues (e.g., rail yards in the SW section of Chicago) requiring an equitable resolution. This proximity to the hazards dashboard (PHD) places individual community members at the center of a cognitive frame. The PHD interface allows end-users to enter an address and identify the surrounding places of interest. It provides an answer to a common question raised during our meetings: "which polluters are near my home?" (or the school of my children).

Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Social Inquiry, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Victoria.

Stewardship Stories for Watershed Justice by Jane WardaniB. A. (University of California, Berkeley) 2003A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the concurrent degrees of Master of City Planning and Master of Landscape Architecture in the Graduate Division of the University of California, BerkeleyCommittee in charge:Professor Judith Innes, ChairProfessor Timothy DuaneProfessor Jason CorburnSpring 2008

This article interrogates the techno-politics of crowdsourced data in the study of environmental hazards such as floods, storms, wildfires, and cyclones. We highlight some of the main debates around the use of citizen-generated data for assessing, monitoring, and responding to disasters. We then argue that, compared to the number of articles discussing the quality of citizen-generated data, little attention has been dedicated to discussing the social and political implications of this kind of practice. While this article does not intend to present definitive answers, it outlines inevitable challenges and indicates potential directions for future studies on the techno-politics of disaster data collection. Within a techno-politics approach, we argue for a model of political participation that recognizes citizens providing data to shape cities as equal experts in the production of knowledge and decision-making, rather than external contributors collecting data for formal authorities. This political participation approach, we believe, would increase the dependence of formal scientific knowledge on citizens' daily-lived experiences, create horizontal collaborations among diverse stakeholders, in terms of respect and recognition, and increase the humanization of marginalized communities, particularly from the Global South.

Contemporary societies risk inequality, disintegration and segregation due to a complex array of social, economic and political changes that have been occurring over the last few decades. These changes include the loss of shared values, changes in how individuals interact and get together, and new practices relating to participation and decision-making. In parallel to the evolution of contemporary societies, a complex array of changes are transforming the physical environment where these societies live and work. These changes are affecting especially the disciplines that plan, design and transform the physical environment. New processes of transformation, new ways of interaction, new types of projects and new professional roles are deeply transforming the working environment of architectural disciplines. While these changes offer new opportunities for innovation, they also threaten to generate division in diverse and complex societies. Within this context, universities have the opportunity to expand their social responsibility by affirming that teaching and research can contribute to redressing social inequality, disintegration and segregation. This can be achieved through action, exploring new ways of relating universities to their social context by working with real projects and real people, establishing links between academia and practice.

A policy analysis was conducted to identify policies that could support informal workers in the Greater Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago. With the guidance of our community partners, Equity and Transformation and Street Vendors Association of Chicago, we decided to concentrate on policies that could make it easier to establish and operate home-based businesses in Greater Lawndale. We aimed to understand the home-based business (HBB) ordinance, its likely impact and continued restrictions. A template to conduct a policy analysis is provided for replicability in academic-community spaces.

This research brief presents baseline qualitative and quantitative data from interviews with park advocates and their perception of safety and crime in their park, involvement in park programming, and their use of communication and marketing tools to inform others of park events.

This briefing note is from a systematic review completed about the effects of initiatives to increase people's influence in local decision-making to address inequalities and determinants of health and wellbeing in Europe. The review particularly focused on how initiatives can be affected by resource constraints. See also an illustration highlighting the main findings: https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.13626386.v1 The review found that initiatives aiming to involve people in decision-making to address inequalities and determinants of health and wellbeing are more effective if they focus on a mix of these elements: strengthening formal and informal spaces for participation, developing opportunities for collective learning, building collective capacities for influencing, developing relationships and trust, and changing institutional practices in ways that value public knowledge.

Temporary interventions in public space are becoming important tools for rethinking and changing urban environments. They prompt a more democratic approach to change because they facilitate knowledge around participation, appropriation and use of public space. From a case study approach, this paper will describe how temporary interventions can respond to new democratic needs while progressively generating new social life and a sense of place. This research will consider the Tory Street temporary project as a case study from which to extract applicable knowledge. The Tory Street project was the product of a partnership between Landscape Architecture/School of Architecture/Victoria University of Wellington (SoA/VUW) and Wellington City Council (WCC), New Zealand. Using participatory processes, the parties collectively designed and implemented a temporary intervention with local stakeholders. Research around new ways of decision-making and use of public space was developed from the case study. The analysis methodology of the use of a temporary public space innovates by using parametric data to highlight how time, environmental conditions and spatial components shape the type of users and activities. Through practice-based research, this paper showcases how the space was colonized and how a progressive sense of place was experienced. It presents how tensions arose between different types of users and how conflicts were minimized by introducing changes to the space. Finally, this research demonstrates the value of temporary interventions for developing more democratic approaches to urban change.

SPARC 2021 Poster No. 7Regenerating cities and adapting them to contemporary life circumstances is essential for improving cities' economic, social, and cultural situations. In order to regenerate cities, we, therefore, need to pay more attention to the cultural aspects of how they were developed and maintained. The research aims to examine the concept of creative hubs, based on their cultural context, to regenerate cities based on social, economic, environmental, and cultural innovations. The creative hub concept aims to build strategies for achieving a new sustainable development model that is consistent with the spirit of the time in response to the following question: How can cities achieve sustainable development through the concept of a creative hub? Moreover, how can we use the interaction between Art & Culture, Knowledge-based organizations, and Community projects to regenerate cities? This research builds on the relevant literature to demonstrate the importance of the links between local culture and the urban sustainable development process. Culture-led sustainable urban development encompasses multiple steps that may include complementary quantitative and qualitative criteria and multiple decision-makers. Therefore, in this research, a hybrid Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach is used for identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision-makers. The MCDM model integrates the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM)", fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method for identifying the priorities of factors that affecting and challenging sustainable development and meanwhile finding the best strategies to overcome these challenges.

“Guiding Principles for Beneficial Electrification of Transportation: A Framework for Transportation Electrification in Illinois” is the result of a collaborative effort spearheaded by Dr. Elizabeth A. Kocs building on collaborative workshops spanning six months of meetings and discussion sessions with numerous local, regional and national stakeholders and respective representatives. This Report represents the discussions as a whole and is an amalgamation of everything that UIC and Dr. Kocs have seen from the workshops it hosted as well as recent events since the conclusion of the workshops that may provide additional insight and guidance on the topic of beneficial electrification of transportation. The goal of the report is to provide proactive, innovative and sustainable solutions to address climate change, fossil fuel usage, community and economic development, and efficiency issues. The content of the report also demonstrates the potential of transportation electrification to create manufacturing and supply chain jobs, increase involvement in trades, open opportunities for BIPOC communities, reduce sick days taken from school and work, and so much more.

Temporary interventions in public space are becoming important tools for rethinking and changing urban environments. They prompt a more democratic approach to change because they facilitate knowledge around participation, appropriation and use of public space. From a case study approach, this paper will describe how temporary interventions can respond to new democratic needs while progressively generating new social life and a sense of place. This research will consider the Tory Street temporary project as a case study from which to extract applicable knowledge. The Tory Street project was the product of a partnership between Landscape Architecture/School of Architecture/Victoria University of Wellington (SoA/VUW) and Wellington City Council (WCC), New Zealand. Using participatory processes, the parties collectively designed and implemented a temporary intervention with local stakeholders. Research around new ways of decision-making and use of public space was developed from the case study. The analysis methodology of the use of a temporary public space innovates by using parametric data to highlight how time, environmental conditions and spatial components shape the type of users and activities. Through practice-based research, this paper showcases how the space was colonized and how a progressive sense of place was experienced. It presents how tensions arose between different types of users and how conflicts were minimized by introducing changes to the space. Finally, this research demonstrates the value of temporary interventions for developing more democratic approaches to urban change.

This presentation elaborates a collaborative support model that has been developed to provide clean water in a rural area in Sri Lanka. Through a participatory action research, this work finds that clean water (SDG6) has a synergistic impact on improving health (SDG3) and reducing poverty in the village.

Contemporary societies risk inequality, disintegration and segregation due to a complex array of social, economic and political changes that have been occurring over the last few decades. These changes include the loss of shared values, changes in how individuals interact and get together, and new practices relating to participation and decision-making. In parallel to the evolution of contemporary societies, a complex array of changes are transforming the physical environment where these societies live and work. These changes are affecting especially the disciplines that plan, design and transform the physical environment. New processes of transformation, new ways of interaction, new types of projects and new professional roles are deeply transforming the working environment of architectural disciplines. While these changes offer new opportunities for innovation, they also threaten to generate division in diverse and complex societies. Within this context, universities have the opportunity to expand their social responsibility by affirming that teaching and research can contribute to redressing social inequality, disintegration and segregation. This can be achieved through action, exploring new ways of relating universities to their social context by working with real projects and real people, establishing links between academia and practice.

This item is part of: Boarin, P., Haarhoff, E., Manfredini, M., Mohammadzadeh, M., Premier, A., (2021). Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium, Future Cities Research Hub, School of Architecture and Planning of the University of Auckland. ISBN: 978-0-473-53616-9ABSTRACTJapan is one of the first countries to enter a post-growth era characterized by demographic and economic decline. The pressing issues of a decreasing and aging population call for an evaluation of current planning and governance. This paper examines existing urban-rural linkages in Japan under the framework of a post-growth society to learn how both top-down government-initiated strategies in conjunction with creative approaches at the grassroots level can work together to address the urban-rural divide. The research draws on ethnographic data collected over a two-year period that includes interviews with rural migrants, local community residents and staff of non-profit organizations to shed light on current experiences of people living and working in these remote but active communities. The results reveal the increasingly important role of rural migrants and repeat visitors who are playing a key role in the shaping of a new rural in the physical remaking of rural landscapes. The study may be useful to policy makers and those engaged in revitalization activities in rural communities to understand local perspectives on the challenges and opportunities associated with rural living in the 21st century.

This report presents findings from a school community-led evaluation of the recent School Streets pilot in Sheffield involving Holt House and Carterknowle Schools, which took place during 18-22 November 2019. The pilot involved closing part of Bannerdale Road (a busy road that goes past both schools) to vehicles at school drop-off and pick-up times. The pilot also involved associated events organised by the schools on active travel and road safety, and air quality monitoring.

As the hype around the open data movement fades the need emerges for the conceptualisation and realisation of more sustainable, equitable and accessible open data practices. In this chapter, we share insights from a Code for Australia fellowship conducted in South-East Queensland, Australia. Our contributions are threefold: first, we show how an exploratory and participatory approach to internal local council technology projects can serve to identify open data use-cases through early involvement of local community stakeholders; second, we propose a novel role of custodianship and facilitation of open data exchange and alternate composition for local governments; third, we articulate the need and a concept for co-creative practices across smart city business units, local government IT departments and civil society in particular to successfully deliver open data. We conclude with a discussion of how the realisation of co-creative practices must be accompanied by a critical evaluation of the current smart city agenda, as its current narrow perspective puts the high promises of open data at risk.

Four interactive workshops to explore the realities of neighbourhood planning from the perspectives of citizens and city planners.

Community resilience October and November 2019The Vintage Café – offered to provide venue and place leaflets in the Café with first project based best practice pilot, 5 sessions of Peace Education as supplied by US Charity TPRF being held there.Friends of Evington offered COS the opening session at the Peace and Remembrance event 11th Nov 2019 at War Memorial, attended by around 100, including local schools.

Most research in Australia has measured housing affordability in terms of housing cost as a proportion of household income. We adopted a new measure that combined housing cost with transportation cost. This new measure showed that many suburbs which seemed affordable on housing costs alone became unaffordable when transport costs were taken into account. In this report we provide insights gained from employing a qualitative approach to explore the lived meanings and consequences of housing and transportation costs. We investigate the combined impacts of housing and transportation costs, as well as the residential and lifestyle choices, trade-offs and adaptations that people make. For this purpose, we selected three outer fringe suburbs for this study Pakenham, Dandenong and Craigieburn. Housing in these suburbs was cheaper, but living in these suburbs entailed significant transport costs, both financial and non-financial. We carried out in-depth face-to-face interviews with over 70 respondents across the three suburbs.

Fault Lines Exposed intends to understand inequality across Australian cities and towns. Social and economic change in Australia has resulted in the emergence of disparities in advantage and disadvantage between metropolitan communities and regional localities, towns and cities. In 1999 the book Community Opportunity and Vulnerability (Baum et al.) considered the disparities that existed between communities using 1996 census data. This new book, available both online and in print, uses up-to-date data to reanalyse the patterns and consider the important policy issues that arise from the patterns identified. Fault Lines Exposed provides insight into advantage and disadvantage at an aggregate community or locality level. Such insight is necessary if we are to better understand what is happening in society. It helps us plan effective solutions to problems that impact not only on individuals and families but also on communities. Each of the chapters outlines the main findings from the typology of advantage and disadvantage. The book concludes with a strong policy orientation, addressing possible options and raising more policy questions. Fault Lines Exposed will be essential reading for academics, researchers, students, policy makers and other professionals working in the areas of geography, sociology, economics and social work. “We had escaped our societies. Nobody was watching us. We could be free, we could behave as we liked. We had found the meaning of our existence. The real meaning of existence was there all the time of course, in the simple pattern of the island which we had annexed as our own primitive milieu, but after a time we could not see it for the mired footprints of our own excesses.” George Johnston, Clean Straw for Nothing “They had a larger-than-life, a mythical quality. They drank more than other people, they wrote more, they got sick more, they got well more, they cursed more and they blessed more, and they helped a great deal more. They were an inspiration. They had guts. They were real, tough, honest. They were the kind of people you meet less and less.” Leonard Cohen, on George Johnston and Charmian Clift

This case study demonstrates a successful merging of previously separate community, school, cultural, health, wellbeing, and tertiary facilities within a new hub in the regional centre of Young, New south Wales (NSW). It describes the collaboration between state and local government, architects, educators and community representatives. It details the conception of the facility from within the community, the multiple stakeholders and policies involved and the architectural response to a complex brief, a fortuitous multilayered historical site, and a diverse cultural context. Australia wide, Governments are searching for more effective and efficient use of public infrastructure. Shared use of schools, whereby they are encouraged to make their facilities available for community use, is relatively common in the State of NSW. It is only recently that ‘joint use’ projects which involve significant investments by multiple parties have been promoted in that State. Joint use projects have the potential to open myriad learning opportunities for a community. For example, there are few places of public infrastructure that represent the learning culture and pulse of a school, or community, like a library. For communities, the information they contain, the events hosted, and the spaces for hire are intrinsically tied to the culture of the local community. In secondary schools, libraries remain at the heart of learning. They are places that students inevitably gravitate to as a space for collaborative project work, social interaction, meetings, and events. In regional towns the roles of both are magnified. These library aspirations both complement and compete, while opening up opportunities for use of a wide variety of school learning facilities by the community and re-integrating school with the broader community.

These are presentation slides illustrating the findings from a systematic evidence review on increasing participation and influence in local decision-making in Europe. Key points include that we need to be clearer abouthow participatory initiatives work - recognising theyare about relationships, politics, power. 'More effective' elements identified as to prioritise for action include: developing spaces for participation and learning, strengthening collective capacities for influencing, developing relationships, changing institutional practices in was that legitimise public knowledge, and long-term commitments to involvement.

Presentation by Nick Slater, Director of LU Arts at Loughborough Universty, at the Urban Perspectives on Design Literacy Summer School at Loughborough University, 20–21 June 2019. Nick reflected on Market Town, an 18 month project that invited architects, artists and designers to respond to recommendations outlined within the Portas Review around the future of our town centres. Six projects were developed in Loughborough, a Portas Pilot town, each of which sought playful and imaginative ways to improve the town centre economy. Alongside these commissions there was a pop up shop that engaged the community in the future design and use of the town, and a series of workshops and discussions that sought to further activate the community in engaging with the issues faced.

Conference papers from the 11th International on Urban Drainage Modelling, 23-26 Sep. - Palermo, ItalyAbstract: The combination of rapid urbanisation and anthropogenically induced climate change contributes towards urban cities facing increasing levels of flood risk. It is hypothesized that the visual presentation of various adaptation pathways given uncertain future scenarios will aid in identifying potential barriers towards the implementation of the proposed adaptation pathways...

This research was to develop a real-time, modifiable, tangible interactive tabletop system for participatory urban design. The targeting user group was those stakeholders in urban design charrettes. Previous system solutions overlooked the importance of the modifiable tangible medium in the situation of reaching spatial-temporal consensus. These design issues impeded communication between the stakeholders and the professionals. Users of these systems had difficulties expressing ideas to professionals during the collaborative design process. Literature in evolving technology in the smart city context, collaborative urban design, embodied interaction, and depth-sensing was referred to guide the system design. Based on the review, this research identified the pivotal role of a shapeable and tangible medium in the system. The prototype system unified the modifiable, realistic model with its digital equivalent in urban analytics in real-time. By integrating tangible interaction, depth-sensing, and large touch screen tabletop, an intuitive, immersive decision-making interface for non-professional stakeholders could be created. During the system implementation, system elements centering ‘tangible interoperability’ were documented along the system pipeline. A heuristic evaluation, a method of usability inspection, was conducted to assess and to guide the future system design. The result was promising and inspiring. In the end, challenges and directions of system design were discussed. The contribution of this research included: discovering direction, centering tangibility, implementing a prototype, and documenting elements in each stage along the system pipeline of designing a modifiable tangible interactive tabletop system for the urban design charrette.

These presentation notes outline the background, methodology and preliminary results of an innovative pilot study utilizing citizen science with older people in order to audit and analyze the built environment of public open and green spaces that enable ageing well.

This study brought together people with disability, City of Melbourne staff, disability advocates, and academics, with the aim of generating ideas on how to make the City of Melbourne more inclusive for people with disability. It further aimed to ascertain which of these ideas were the most important and feasible to implement.

The proliferation of digital connectivity and mobility is having a profound impact on nomadic and collaborative work practices in our cities. In the past few years, we have witnessed a shift in the way that organisational entities in both the private and public sector put emphasis on the allocation and use of office space. In this paper, we report on our evaluation of a trial of coworking spaces also referred to as Flexible Work Centres (FWC) led by the Queensland State Government. The trial provides insights into such changes towards new work practices. The trial tested how FWCs can be used by Queensland Government employees, and its impact on productivity, staff retention and work-life balance of employees. The 47 trial participants from 10 different government departments completed a series of four surveys and were invited to keep diaries of their impressions and experiences. Supervisors were involved in a series of focus groups to reflect on the trial at the end of the twelve-month period. The benefits of the flexible work arrangement and specifically the provision of an alternative work venue were highly praised and appreciated by participants and supervisors. There were noted key qualities of staff and work types that this arrangement works best for, and trust in employees was paramount. The positive results of the trial saw a continuation of the provision of the flexible workspace arrangement and investigations into further extensions of the program.