Among the open­ing exhi­bi­tions at the brand spank­ing new City Gallery is Regan Gen­try’s instal­la­tion Make Way. Along with much of Gen­try’s work, it pro­vokes ques­tions about the con­tem­po­rary city, and in this spir­it the Gallery is host­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on “Human­is­ing the City”. It’s on Wednes­day 4 Novem­ber at 12.30pm (which is one of the Gallery’s pop­u­lar free Wednes­days) in the Adam Audi­to­ri­um.

I will chair the dis­cus­sion, which will be around ques­tions such as “How do plan­ning and urban design in Welling­ton respond to human needs? What is the role of urban design in mak­ing our cities live­able, live­ly, and com­mu­ni­ty-focused places? How do we cre­ate pub­lic space which bal­ances envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty with infra­struc­ture sen­si­tive to the needs of its inhab­i­tants?” The oth­er par­tic­i­pants are Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Pen­ny Allan (Pro­gramme Direc­tor, Land­scape Archi­tec­ture, Fac­ul­ty of Archi­tec­ture & Design, Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Welling­ton), Pro­fes­sor Philip­pa How­den-Chap­man (Direc­tor, NZ Cen­tre for Sus­tain­able Cities), Philip Belesky (Welling­ton free­lance design­er, Eye of the Fish blog­ger), and Mike Mel­lor (Vice Pres­i­dent, Liv­ing Streets Aotearoa).

Come along and join the con­ver­sa­tion about shar­ing urban space fruit­ful­ly, and mak­ing our city a place for peo­ple. The event is NZIA accred­it­ed, so 5 CPD Points will be allo­cat­ed for Reg­is­tered Archi­tects who attend.