Making Place What Is This and Why Is It Important?

Stuart Niven BArch MA (Urb Des), Stuart is an urban designer with 40 years of practice behind him. His talk on what placemaking is and his experience across Australasia is for everyone interested in wanting their communities to be great places to live, work and play!

The first urban designer to be appointed to a New Zealand local government, he worked for Wellington City Council throughout the 1990s helping to develop the first of the City’s precinct plans for the Cuba Street area and the City’s first Urban Design Strategy. He also led the team that developed a revised concept plan for the Wellington Public Waterfront – the plan that determined the waterfront as it appears today.

He was lured to Melbourne in the early 2000s to lead the Melbourne City Council’s urban design studio and then moved to the Victorian State Government where he led the State Government’s Urban Design Agency for 7 years.

He has also been closely associated with the development of Auckland’s Public Waterfront and the development of the Waterfront’s Wynyard Quarter. It was during this involvement that he progressed his interest in place-making through his leadership in establishing the Waterfront’s (and, subsequently, Urban Renewal’s) approach to this work.

More recently, he has been responsible for developing an Activation Strategy for the City of Liverpool – a long-established part of Sydney’s metro area and is currently involved in the development of an Activation Strategy and an annual programme of community-generated events for the Hillary Court area of Central Naenae for Hutt City Council.

Limited seats. Limited seating.