The headline event to look back on for urban design and urbanism in 2023 was without doubt the Urbanism NZ 2023 Conference held in Auckland in April.
Since then some detailed summations of Event Outcomes have been added to the event site and a notice was posted to announce a Urbanism Aotearoa Next Steps Workshop will be held in 2024 in advance of developing a programme for the 2025 conference. The planning workshop will use the outcomes from the 2023 Conference to delve deeper into the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of shaping the future of urbanism in Aotearoa.
Over the latter months of 2023 a variety of public events have kept the home fires burning around the motu; from events such as the Auckland Climate Festival, to the captivating City Talks held with NZIA support throughout the year in Pōneke Wellington, to Open Christchurch
An event brought to Aotearoa for the first time in 2023, and of high associated interest to UDF members, was the State of Australasian Cities conference held in early December. There’s a summative write up on this with related links at Architecture Now.
2024 is bound to offer more webinars and speaker events from UDF itself, our active companions at Urban Design Forum Australia, collegial organisations such as UDINZ and other important groupings such as Women in Urbanism and the public-facing Urbanerds.
To pick out just one other special event of 2023, it’s well worth taking some down-time to watch the video (starts 12 minutes in) of Jacob Scott and Karl Wixon speaking on Designing Better Futures for Aotearoa | He tirohanga Māori – a Māori perspective.
This was a speaking tour that took place in November and that touched down in Ōtautahi, then on to Tāmaki Makaurau and finally returned to home base at Futuna Chapel in Kaharore, Te Whānganui-a-Tara.
Karl and Jacob undertook the whirlwind Futuna Lecture series with Nick Bevin, Chair of the Futuna Trust. Karl expressed gratitude for the tour on LinkedIn. “It was awesome spending time with Jacob reflecting on our personal journeys and our shared journey as Free Range Māori Creatives, creators and occasional trouble-makers”.
Karl: “I have an immense amount of respect for the Futuna Trustees, a passionate and esteemed group of wise creators and doers who collectively and actively act as kaitiaki of what is arguably Aotearoa NZ’s most iconic piece of architecture designed by Jacob’s late father John Scott.
“I love the values the Friends of Futuna have crafted, adopted and exhibit: Non-conformist; The richness of difference; Intelligently curious; Respectful. These are values we all need to embrace to re-design design if we are going to design a better future”.
Other members of the Trust are: David Kernohan, Simon McLellan, Hana Scott, Peter Parkes, Graeme Rule, Gregory O’Brien, Natalie Jones, Paddy Twigg, Elizabeth Cox, Liz Aston. Chris Cochran is the Patron.
