James Woudhuysen

Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester, Board member of the Housing Forum, Director of audacity, and co-author of Why is construction so backward? (2004)

Website: www.audacity.org and www.woudhuysen.com

e-mail: james@woudhuysen.com

14.00 to 15.30 on Saturday 19 May 2007

The global agenda in housing innovation

Summary

The chaos of planning has made house builders uniquely myopic. Yet they have much to learn from other sectors. In cars, ships, planes and trains, manufacturing technique has moved on way beyond the dreams of Le Corbusier. With RFID tags, automated ports and videoconferencing, the logistics and communications tasks surrounding global supply chains have grown simpler. In IT, energy, services and the accommodation of older people, the quality of finished homes could be much better - not by meeting bureaucratic regulations, but just with today's technologies.

What homebuilders need now is less planning, and more "over the horizon" innovation.

The global agenda in housing innovation

More to follow shortly...

What priorities do we want reflected in land use planning?

Has the notion of a distinct town and country become unsustainable?

Can planners reconcile government policies with where and how people actually want to live?

Is it justified to describe policies based on constraining building activity as "planning"?

Introduction

This website is maintained by abley@audacity.org. All material is Copyright © 2000 - 2007 Audacity Limited where not copyright of the originator.