Australian Institute of Urban Studies City Briefing 23

Urban Consolidation: A Challenge Beyond Planning?

Prof Bill Randolph will tell us that the current debate over which form our cities should take is often misinformed, politically compromised and subject to an obsession with design-led solutions and environmental prescriptions that ignore the essential social and economic realities of the cities.

Both these approaches demand that form is a solution in itself: build it higher and denser, put in a couple of railways, and the problems will be resolved. Under the title “Urban Consolidation: A Challenge Beyond Planning?” Prof Randolph questions the adoption of density as the 21st century balm for 20th century suburbanisation.

Bill Randolph is one of Australia’s leading urban researchers. After heading the Urban Frontiers Project at the University of Western Sydney, he moved in 2004 to the School of Built Environment at the University of NSW as Director of the City Futures Research Centre. He is a frequent contributor to various forums on urban issues.immediately follow the Annual General Meeting of AIUS NSW, to which you are cordially invited.