Adelaide City Council CEO to make keynote presentation at Future of Places Leadership Council

Having pioneered the application of 'placemaking' to all dimensions of municipal government in Adelaide, through his leadership of Place Leaders Asia Pacific, Adelaide City Council Chief Executive Peter Smith is to make a keynote presentation at the United Nations Habitat, PPS and Ax:son Johnson Future of Places conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina next week.

Smith joins an impressive lineup of speakers at the conference, which is being held from 1st to 3rd September. He will then address the Placemaking Leadership Council Meeting in Pittsburgh, USA on 8th and 9th September.

In Adelaide, Smith is seeding a bold city-wide culture and organisational shift with a 'lighter, quicker, cheaper' program called Splash Adelaide, which is having a very visible impact on the public realm and peoples’ perception of how it can be shaped. 

Adelaide City Council is now further integrating placemaking into governance by piloting 'Place Capital' metrics and 'place audits' to track the success of holistic outcomes and integrate responsibility for Placemaking with communities. The long-term goal is to shift more place governance capacity, and responsibility, to the district level, and make citywide government leaner in the process.

Smith sees this shift to a focus on Place Capital as a means to greater place attachment and a more resilient city. Smith travelled to New York, USA several years ago and was inspired by the work of the NYC Street Renaissnace Campaign and the Public Plaza Program it spawned, adapting it to his Splash Adelaide program. 

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) has since been working with Adelaide City Council, delivering placemaking training and strategic planning, and is now working with Smith to bring the lessons learned together around the world.

As part of this global effort, Smith has joined the PPS steering committee for the Future of Places partnership with UN Habitat and the Swedish Ax:son Johnson Foundation, where he is helping us to apply place governance models internationally, with a focus on developing countries.

Smith has also helped the Australasian network of Place Leaders, chairing Adelaide's Future Of Places conference in March and also spearheaded Adelaide’s hosting of the Velo-City conference in April 2014, that included Project for Public Spaces and a Master Class on Placemaking.

PPS Vice-President Ethan Kent was a keynote speaker at this week's Parks and Leisure Australia National Conference in Cairns.

Click here to visit the PPS website.

Click here for more information on the United Nations Habitat, PPS and Ax:son Johnson Future of Places conference.

2nd August 2011 - COX RICHARDSON DIRECTOR AWARDED 2011 CHURCHILL FELLOWSHIP