NZPI Conference Keynote Speaker
Euan (B.Arch Maud FRSA) is an urban designer and digital specialist. He is a co-founder of Blocktype, a technology company that helps planners and developers better understand land capacity and advises the Scottish government on digital planning.
Prior to this he helped set up the multi million pound programme of digital transformation of the English planning system. He worked closely with politicians, senior civil servants and policy leads to shape policy and write the Part 3 of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill.
Euan helped set-up the Digital Planning Directorate at Connected Places Catapult where, for 4 years, he worked closely with government, local authority planners, architects and property developers to help them develop and adopt new technologies for planning.
Euan has over 16 years experience working in the built environment industry. Six of these were spent providing design advice to the Mayor of London and his planning team, contributing towards a number of key planning policy and research documents and negotiating major development proposals on behalf of the Mayor.
He is a visiting lecturer at a number of universities, writes articles and speaks at conferences on the impact of technology on cities. He has written a monthly column on digital planning in Planning Resource, is a judge for the RTPI Planning Awards and was advisor to governments Build Better Build Beautiful Commission.
Presenting:
"Human civilization stands at the threshold of a significant convergence of global trends, encompassing profound demographic shifts, the far-reaching impacts of climate change, and technological advancements of an existential nature. How these changes play out over the next few decades will be heavily influenced by how our human settlements are planned and designed.
However, despite witnessing a fundamental transformation in numerous sectors and practices over the past two decades, the tools and methodologies employed for urban planning have remained relatively stagnant. Our reliance on semi-analog technologies and antiquated processes harkens back to a bygone era.
We can no longer rely on 19th century institutions and 20th century processes to plan for 21st century cities. The only way we will effectively plan our human settlements will be making use of the technologies we have available. But how we do this, is as important as what we do."
