Marc Baily on the UDF Wellington "The Region's City Centres are Actively Planning and Designing for their Future..." event and more planned for September

David Mead on the recent UDF Auckland meeting  Auckland Council "Developing an urban design action plan"

Marc Baily on The Australian Congress for New Urbanism held its conference in Adelaide in late April this year and Marc Baily (Boffa Miskell) attended.  With some preconceptions as a non-new urbanist about what this conference would be like I was interested in the critical thinking that occurred (in places) of what New Urbanism had achieved and the call to refocus.  There was some good discussion when time allowed and the usual parade of projects to look at.  The urban planning work being undertaken for some cities was of particular interest to me with the applicability for a more spatial and code based approach having some potential portability to NZ context (albeit with some change in thinking in a District Plan sense).  Some of the presentations I found more useful than others (as is the case with any conference) and one of the best things is that these are pretty much all available on the ACNU website so look for yourself.