Place Alliance: Child-centred urban planning. This will involve children in a design workshop to explore the question: What would child-centred urban planning look like? Students from Gainsborough Primary School, near UCL East, will be involved through an assembly, co-design workshops and the chance to share their work through public exhibitions. The aim of this scheme is to advance the practice and culture of public and community engagement within UCL by enabling UCL staff and postgraduate students to: - Explore mutually beneficial engagement between communities and UCL research and teaching. - Be innovative in their engagement. - Evaluate, learn from and share their engagement activities.

An afternoon workshop chaired by Luke Hillson (Barton Willmore) at the Digbeth studio of Glenn Howells Architects. This will begin with presentations on current leading Design Guidance, Codes and Assessment Systems; followed by workshop discussion on their effectiveness and impact, concluding with the steps that need to be undertaken to improve design quality. Places are limited so do book soon.

This event will marked the 5th anniversary of the Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment. Reflecting on recent achievements, government and industry leaders will ask "what more can be done in the future?". Speakers at the event included: - Sir Terry Farrell – Farrells - Ed Vaizey MP – Former Culture Minister - Roberta Blackman-Woods MP – Shadow Housing & Planning Minister - Fiona Fletcher-Smith – London & Quadrant - Alison Brooks – Farrell Review Panel - Valentina Giordano – Place Alliance - Finn Williams – Public Practice - Jo Negrini – LB Croydon - Will Hunter – London School of Architecture - Sunand Prasad – Farrell Review Panel

 

The Place Alliance, a national movement brought together by UCL to campaign for high quality places has won the Sir Peter Hall Award for Wider Engagement at the RTPI Awards for Research Excellence 2016. The RTPI Awards for Research Excellence recognise and promote high quality, impactful spatial planning research from RTPI accredited planning schools, and planning consultancies around the world, and the winners were announced on 7 September during the 2016 UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference at Cardiff University. The RTPI commended the Place Alliance for demonstrating the important role universities can play in providing a neutral setting engage a range of stakeholders from community-led organisations to national government. This has allowed them to build policy consensus about the importance of high quality planning and urban design.