Oscar Edmundo Diaz and Robert Upton Are Expected to Share Urban Planning Pearls With Israel [image via Technion-Israel Institute of Technology]
Before globalization, ideas and technology ambled across the oceans and progress piddled along. Now cooperation happens in seconds. Microseconds even. And though not all ideas are equally useful, there’s no question that when great minds meet there ensues the following net result: opportunity. Whether sharing technology with other nations or floating to draw awareness to environmental issues, sharing ideas allows us to circumvent mistakes made before us. Tomorrow, when Oscar Edmundo Diaz and Robert Upton join some of Israel’s best Urban Planners at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies’ 40th anniversary conference, Israel will have the opportunity to incorporate lessons learned in Colombia and the United Kingdom.
The conference at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa begins at 9.30am and finishes after the evening’s last cocktail. Oscar Diaz, the Senior Advisor to former City Mayor of Bogota and Senior Program Director at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, will give his keynote presentation in the morning.
Titled “Planning the Sustainable City – lessons from Bogota,” Diaz’s presentation will give locals insight into the process behind that city’s effort to become sustainable. After a tour of the Technion’s renowned visitor center and a kosher Druze lunch, Mr. Diaz and I will meet to discuss which of those lessons are especially pertinent to Israel.
In the afternoon, after several, parallel presentations from our own intelligentsia, Mr. Robert Upton will take the stage. The former Secretary General of the Royal Town Planning Institute and current Deputy Chair and Commissioner of the UK Infrastructure Planning Commission, his presentation will address challenges that are specific to the planning profession. We too will meet.
If the combined heat from so much brain power doesn’t cause an explosion, we will bring you more detailed news from some of the most effective urban planners in the world. Stay tuned.
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Author: Tafline Laylin
As a tour leader who led “eco-friendly” camping trips throughout North America, Tafline soon realized that she was instead leaving behind a trail of gas fumes, plastic bottles and Pringles. In fact, wherever she traveled – whether it was Viet Nam or South Africa or England – it became clear how inefficiently the mandate to re-think our consumer culture is reaching the general public. Born in Iran, raised in South Africa and the United States, she currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East. Tafline can be reached at tafline (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
i hope that latest event will no influence on such areas as Urban Planning Pearls and the project will be realised