2015
Sunday
May
10

Changing Places in the Urban Age: Re-imagining Your Place

The informal network of the sense-of-place community consisting of geographers, urbanists, architects, planners, sociologists, and ecologists based in Southeast Asia, North America and Western Europe officially announced the second edition World Sense-of-Place Summit - SoPlace2.0 Summit with the theme "Mainstreaming Sense-of-Place in the Urban Century". The event will be held on October 25th-30th at the Precinct 5 & Precinct 6, Putrajaya, Malaysia.

World's population today must find ways to deal with placelessness, unbridled development, chronic inner-city poverty and homelessness, massive over-consumption of energy, suburban sprawl, shrinking supplies of natural resources, declining of values, and happiness. In the wake of mass global population migration and the worldwide mobility traditional models of society are rapidly giving way to more adaptable and flexible frameworks. One of the core aims of the SoPlace2.0 Summit is to consider the enormous implications and opportunities of these phenomenon and develop ways for nations, regions, cities, towns, and communities to manage their all-important sense-of-place. From attracting talent, encouraging investment and driving tourism to combating social injustice, creating communities and retaining localities, the SoPlace2.0 Summit takes into account all aspects of place-based economy and network societies. Delegates from over forty fraternities will converge to discuss and explore how to promote the 'humanisation of places' across the globe; new initiatives emerging from neighbourhoods and dynamic networks linking communities to governments and broader sense-of-place.

H.K. Eng, the Founding Director said, "We have a tendency to factionalize, to create differentiation in agenda and legacy, between people and ideas. We need to converge and a shift in focus to promote collaboration, regeneration and sustainability to define our sense-of-place in the urban age."

With the various co-located and associated events, SoPlace2.0 offers the ideal environment for leaders, stakeholders, policy-makers, change-makers, practitioners, thinkers, doers and academicians to come together in forming the enigma of the future sense-of-place, to exchange strategies and discover real-time solutions and best practices - nurturing a glocal collaborative platform. SoPlace2.0 will be the new generation collaborative platform that explores breakthrough innovations, trend-setting ideas, revolutionary concepts, cutting edge solutions and real-time initiatives that will have a critical impact on the world's future sense of place. The demands and expectations that global communities hold in regards to how sense-of-place will affect the communities of tomorrow are unprecedented.

SoPlace2.0 is poised to be a great convergence with participation of visionaries and preeminent leaders from around the world including Robert E. Simon Jr. (Founder, Reston New Town) ; Gustavo Esteva Figueroa (Advisor to Zapatista) ; Satish Kumar (Spiritual Leader of Deep Ecology) ; Emeritus Professor Dr. Yi-Fu Tuan (Father of Humanist Geography) ; Tun Mohammed Hanif bin Omar (World's Longest Serving Inspector General Police); Professor Jan Gehl (World's Leading Authority on Human Scale Cities) ; Professor Jaime Lerner (former Mayor of Curitiba, Governor of Parana and President of International Union of Architects) ; Dr. Jockin Arputham (Founder President of the Slum Dwellers International) ; Paolo Saturnini (Founder of Cittaslow International) ; Emeritus Professor Dr. Ray Oldenburg (Founder of Third Places) ; Professor Dr. Milica Bajic-Brkovic (President of the International Society of City and Regional Planners) ; Professor Dr. Kathryn Moore (President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects) ; Dr. Alfonso Vegara Gomez (President of the Fundacion Metropoli) ; Luigi Cabrini (Chairman of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council) ; Professor Nikos A. Salingaros (Honorary President of the Interntional Society of Biourbanism) ; Brian T. Mullis (Co-Founder and CEO of Sustainable Travel International) ; Dr. Howard Duncan (Executive Head of the Metropolis) ; Professor Saskia Sassen (World's Leading Authority on Globalization) ; Yasmeen Lari (First Woman Architect of Pakistan) ; Dr. Geeta Mehta (President of Asia Initiatives) ; Professor Robert Adam (Founder of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism) ; Professor Dr. Glenn Albrecht (Environmental Philosopher) ; Joe Addo (Chairman, ArchiAfrika Foundation) ; Jonathan Tourtellot (Founder of Geotourism) ; Sarah Staniforth (President, International Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works) ; Kingsley Aikins CBE (World's Leading Authority on Diaspora Networking) ; Michael E. Arth (Founder of New Pedestrianism) ; and many others.

Cittaslow will be represented by honorary president Paolo Saturnini

INFO: soplaceregistration.com