Urbanism
Environment
Design

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This is a presentation that has been developing for a number of years. This particular version was given at the Love Your City Conference at Sheffield School of Architecture on Valentines Day in 2012, then as a keynote at an academic conference in Paris entitled ‘Recherches pour une architecture de la ville durable’ organised by CNRS and then again at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales in April.

At URBED we have been focussing since the mid 90s on the point at which sustainability and urbanism meet. However inevitably, as we have delved deeper into these issues I have focussed on my particular interest - urbanism, leaving sustainability to colleagues (falling into the very trap that we have warned against for years - one might argue). Then a number of years ago I was part of a panel discussion at the launch of a book by Jon Rowland to which I had contributed a chapter. I ended up having a disagreement, (argument might be a better word) with one of the other authors who has contributed a chapter on sustainability. He essentially accused me of being willing to sacrifice the future of the planet for the sake of my own prejudices about cities. As often happens in these cases you don’t fully manage to marshal your counter arguments until some hours after the end of the event. Well Bill - here is my response!