Urban designer Daniel Chapman will be the fourth presenter in Palmy’s popular Creative City Conversation series. Chapman will discuss the crucial role walking plays in creating vibrant and creative urban places, share with us the ingredients of ‘walkable urbanism’, and provide inspiration from elsewhere of successful transformations from suburban stasis to urban dynamism.

Council’s Senior Urban Designer Dave Charnley has been coordinating the Creative Cities Conversation programme. “We’ve had a great turn-out at our previous three events. They’ve all been thought-provoking and have helped our community and city leaders to broaden our understanding of the challenges we face in designing, building and maintaining cities and the creativity and innovation required to successfully make a great city. We’re delighted to have Daniel in Palmy to speak on his area of expertise.”

“One of the values of this series of conversations is developing a higher level of civic awareness, critical thinking and debate, particularly around the value and practice of good urban design.

“Good urban design is a holistic approach to city making and creating human habitat. It is applied at varying spatial scales across many areas that impact how people live, work and play – including planning, transport, housing, economics, health, architecture, streetscapes, environment, culture, heritage, placemaking and ultimately our people.

“We warmly welcome anyone with an interest in how we can do things differently with a creative mindset, and those who want to have input into how Palmy can be a leader in creative city-making.”

This is the fourth of six Creative City Conversations being held over 12 months. The series follows the publication of the Creative Cities Index report authored by Charles Landry and titled – ‘Comfortable or Captivating?’ which had a stocktake on the city’s creative pulse.

All of the conversations are recorded and available on Council’s website. Past conversations have covered carbon, housing for well-being and human-centric transportation.

Details of the fourth Conversation follow.

CONVERSATION #4: Walking urbanism: the heart of a creative city

What is a city without people?

Cities at their best are natural gathering places; places where people meet, interact, exchange ideas, laugh, love and live engaging lives.

In the headlong rush to motorisation in the second half of the twentieth century, we risked losing sight of this fundamental truth. In the 21st Century, the tide is turning. Cities and towns around the world have been returning to people-centric design. And walkability is at the heart of it.

Daniel Chapman will discuss the role of walking in vibrant and creative urban places, ingredients of walkable urbanism, and inspiration from elsewhere of successful transformations from suburban stasis to urban dynamism.

About Daniel Chapman

Daniel is a principal urban designer at Stantec and the practice lead for Urban Design and Advisory in New Zealand. He has worked in the overlapping fields of urban design and landscape architecture for over 17 years, at design-led, multi-disciplinary and public sector design practices in New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

His project experience is wide-ranging, from strategic urban design, regional green infrastructure, and master planning, to streets and award-winning parks and urban spaces. This range of skills at different scales enables him to connect strategy and deliverability.

His recent work includes contributions to the Auckland City Centre Masterplan; development of a design-led city strategy for a major growth city in Australia; providing urban design guidance for transport programme business cases; and an outcomes-focused corridor study for the City Centre to Māngere light rail in Auckland, seeking to maximise benefits for people and place through significant public transport investment.

Daniel counts himself lucky to live in a walkable, amenity-rich, 15-minute neighbourhood, especially now that he is the proud dad to his one-year-old daughter, Skylah. He is passionate about supporting other places to embrace walkability and to put people first in urban planning and design.

Creative City Conversation #4 - Walking urbanism: the heart of a creative city

17 May 2021 5.45 pm (Doors open 5.30)

Globe Theatre, Main Street, Palmerston North

Register to attend on Council’s website. Free attendance

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