ReGlasgow

‘PLACE Commission’ Launched To Help Put People First In City Design

13 September, 2019 | News

AN independent look at how Glasgow can design its places to put people first, make the city a better place for all to live in, and prepare for future changes as best it can has been launched.

A Place Commission for Glasgow will be led by the city’s urbanist Professor Brian Evans and was launched during the final day of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) conference on City Living, which was held in Glasgow this week.

Alongside Professor Evans on the Place Commission will be experts from a variety of related fields, each with an interest in the topics to be considered.

The independent commissioners are — Ann Allen, chair of Architecture and Design Scotland; Jude Barbour, director/architect at Collective Architecture; Dr Linda de Caestecker, director of public health, NH Greater Glasgow and Clyde; Charles Campion, partner at JTP (architects and urbanists); Kevin Kane, executive director, Glasgow Economic Leadership; Professor Carol Tannahill, director, Glasgow Centre for Population Health; Rachel Tennant, chair of Landscape Institute Scotland, and Dr Brian Veitch, consulting engineer and former director, at engineering and design company ARUP.

The Place Commission for Glasgow will be an ongoing conversation with the city’s communities, developers, designers and other partners to consider how the built environment can best respond to and serve the new ways in which people live, work and travel in order to create a better quality of place for the people of Glasgow.

Over the course of the next year, the commission will meet to discuss how this can happen, with three main themes framing the discussions:

The Everyday City (how the city is experienced by residents, workers, business people and visitors)

The Metropolitan City (recognising the interdependence between Glasgow and the rest of the Clyde Valley)

The International City (considering Glasgow’s place on the international stage).

The recommendations of the Place Commission will be made in Autumn 2020.

Professor Evans said: “This is a great opportunity to hold a big conversation about Glasgow, its region, communities and places. Working within the context of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Scottish Government’s ‘Place Principle’, we will be looking to evidence how integrated action in respect of demographic, climate and technological change can, when designed around people, improve the quality of peoples’ lives and their places.”

Councillor Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council, said: “Glasgow is a city still very much in transition, one which is barely recognisable from the post-industrial Glasgow of just a couple of decades ago.

“The physical transformation of so many of our neighbourhoods, our riverside, parts of the East End and the ongoing work at Sighthill and the City Centre through the Avenues project is testament to that change.

“But, with still much to do, I’m delighted that a panel of such esteemed independent experts can help support our city’s development as a people-focused city which is s a great place to live, work and visit.”

The commission welcomes new ideas from creative thinkers that can help a design-based approach to the built environment and create better places for people in Glasgow —  contact Joseph Harvey (joseph.harvey@glasgow.gov.uk / 0141 287 6272) or Jordan Howard (jordan.howard@glasgow.gov.uk / 0141 287 1160).

 

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