Good weather and great speakers await the participants, as Cortona Mayor Luciano Meoni and Cultural Attaché to the US Embassy in Rome Karen Schinnerer are set to offer welcomes
ABOVE: IMCL Executive Director Michael Mehaffy departs the IMCL home office, taking the Amtrak line through the scenic Columbia Gorge - one of the USA's great train trips.
CORTONA, ITALY - Mayors, researchers, practitioners, developers, and NGO leaders are gathering here to exchange peer-to-peer insights, and share the most effective tools and strategies for building and revitalizing a new generation of livable cities, towns and suburbs.
Over 100 attendees will gather for the 61st International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) conference, representing cities and countries from every continent except Antarctica. Their focus is timely: to address the critical environmental, social and economic challenges facing cities and towns, and the opportunities to build more resilient, ecological, prosperous, equitable, beautiful -- in a word, livable -- cities, towns and suburbs.
The conference will focus on effective implementation, with numerous case studies of examples offering clear successes as well as remaining challenges. Among the participants are the leaders of a number of landmark New Urbanism exemplars of livability, including Le Plessis-Robinson, France; Poundbury, UK; Seaside, Florida; I'on, South Carolina; Carmel, Indiana; and Las Catalinas, Guatemala, among others.
Le Plessis-Robinson and Poundbury both feature over 30% affordable housing, and all the projects feature a number of landmark innovations in social, ecological, and/or economic sustainability.
Leaders will include Robert Davis, developer of Seaside; Philippe Pemezec, mayor of Le Plessis-Robinson; Simon Conibear, long-time development manager of Poundbury; Vince Graham, developer of I'on; Sara Bega, Town Architect of Las Catalinas; and Jim Brainard, long-time mayor of Carmel, and now Board member of the Lennard Institute, producers of the IMCL conferences.
Joining them will be the principals of highly accomplished New Urbanist firms, including Liz Moule (co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism), Victor Dover (principal of Dover Kohl & Partners), Ashleigh Walton (Urban Design Associates); Hamid Iravani (Parsons); and Steve Mouzon (founder of the Urban Guild).
Also attending will be senior officials of a number of leading NGOs, including Laura Petrella, Head of Planning, Finance and Economy for UN-Habitat; Ben Bolgar, Senior Director of Projects for The King's Foundation in London; Carmelo Troccoli, Executive Director of the World Farmers' Market Coalition; Ryan Smolar and Madeleine Spencer of PlacemakingUS; and David Weaver and Brittany Croyle of weIMPACT Group.
They will also be joined by other mayors, senior planners and agency leaders, and by local officials including Cortona mayor Luciano Meoni, the Head of Culture and Tourism for Cortona, Francesco Attesti, and the Cultural Attaché from the US Embassy in Rome, Karen Schinnerer.
Other attendees include leading researchers from the University of Cambridge, Politecnico di Milano, EURAC Research Center in Bolzano, Nicolaus Copernicus University at Toruń, Harbin Institute of Technology, and the University of Notre Dame and its Rome Campus. A focus of the conference will be on new research into human impacts of the built environment, and ethical implications for practice, policy and education.
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For more information, or to inquire about last-minute registration opportunities: https://www.imcl.online/2024-cortona