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.