UBC SALA-SCARP Symposium

The UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) and the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC are jointly organizing an international symposium titled Re-Imagining Urban Form and Policy in a Global Economy – The (Im)possibility of Design to be held in Vancouver Canada between March 9th-11th, 2016. We invite you to contribute and participate.

Registration fees:
Students: $100 (limited scholarships to students)
General: $200
Registration link soon to follow.

This symposium examines the linkages between global capital flows, urban policy initiatives, the waxing and waning of local democratic control, and the urban form that these three interacting factors make manifest. While Vancouver, London, Dubai, and New York become festooned with new “cash boxes in the sky” – impressive, high-end residential developments places like Dhaka Bangladesh and Surrey, BC double in population in just a few decades, growth fueled by the intra and extra national migration of people of far more modest means. Thus, relevant questions that this symposium will explore include: Is it possible to combine top-down, highly organized and performance-oriented strategies, with bottom-up more individualized grassroots entrepreneurial approaches? Which of these, or which combination of these, is measurably more sustainable, more politically practical, and more economically astute? How can new forms of governance, urban policy and planning enable the emergence of alternative urban design outcomes? What is the role of design in the imagination and construction of resilient and democratic urban districts?