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Towns, cities and regions around the world are confronting profound environmental, social and spatial transformation. Population growth, housing pressures and infrastructural demands are reshaping how our built environments are envisaged, developed and governed. Climate change, sustainability and resilience are reframing how we think about the future of design and planning. In their turn, our existing urban fabrics, inherited buildings and historic neighbourhoods, shape the possibilities of change.

In this context, when we design, preserve and plan the places in which we live, we are dealing with an increasingly complex and interconnected problem. Whether it be conservation, planning or architecture, or questions of communities, health and climate change, the terrain on which we tread inevitably overlaps.

he challenge in this scenario then, is not simply to preserve the past, design the present and plan a sustainable future, but to do it unison. For example, the reuse of existing buildings is central to carbon reduction; the participation of communities in design is key to urban planning; the adaptation of cities to digital infrastructures supports resilience and sustainability. It is a scenario that requires the skills of architects, planners, environmental scientists and technologists; the perspective of historians, sociologists and health professionals; and the knowledge and insights of local people and communities.

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Reflecting on this from the city of Dublin, the location of the conference itself is a prime example of the issues at play. In Dublin questions of climate adaptation, conservation, housing, and participatory planning unfold within a compact, walkable coastal capital shaped by layered development — from Georgian terraces and civic squares to docklands regeneration and expanding transport infrastructure. Its scale enables close engagement with several of the material realities of an existing built environment in a process of transition.

At the conference, there will be multiple themes for debate. In University College Dublin for example, areas of interest include: community engagement, urban conservation and adaptive reuse, historic urban landscapes, preparing for an uncertain future, and an interest in ‘pasts, presents and the possible’. More>>

From the perspective of AMPS, there is interest in overlapping questions like resilience, regional planning, gentrification, affordability, community cultures, smart technologies, sustainable transport, architectural design, accessibility, health and wellbeing. More>>

Central to all this, is the premise that if we are to better understand the livability of our towns, cities and regions, we are obliged to think across currently disparate areas of thought: from social policy to regional planning, architectural design to public health, and from urban conservation to climate action.

Image by Pawel Gaul