Universal design for retrofitting suburbia?
We are delighted to welcome Dr Susan Parham from the University of Hertfordshire who will be speaking at our forum next week in the City of London on planning housing for the third age.
Dr Parham works as the University's Head of Urbanism and Planning at the School of Life and Medical Sciences (LMS) in the Geography, Environment and Agriculture (GEA) group. In December 2018 Susan was appointed as the Director of the new University of Hertfordshire Urbanism Unit (UHUU).
Susan will be answering questions on what urbanists should be focusing on now to shape cities for older people's needs and how easy or sensible might it be to concentrate on a 'universal design' concept that would suit people of all ages as moves take place to retrofit suburbia.
She will also be talking about her previous work at the OECD and discussing whether there are insights from the OECD's work on cities and ageing, that are still valid twenty years on.
Dr Parham is also the Academic Director of the International Garden Cities Institute (IGCI) established in 2015 in Letchworth as part of the University's research partnership with the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation. Her particular research interests include the urbanism of Garden Cities and New Towns, as well as food and spatial design, sprawl retrofitting and transport oriented, compact cities. Dr Parham also has 'process' expertise in engagement on planning, urban design and urbanism issues.
At the IGCI Dr Parham is working on a range of research processes with 'workstream' leads as well as with colleagues at UH and in other academic institutions internationally on developing the Institute's research capacity and planned settlement/garden city related learning.