Cities are complex agglomerations of places. From places for work and places for living, and places for relaxation and enjoyment, today’s cities have grown exponentially to provide for a whole variety of settings for numerous activities of people. With multi-faceted neighborhoods buttressed upon the networks of public services, they are indeed invaluable cultural incubators. Nevertheless, with the world population reaching over 07 billion in the year 2014, many cities of the world are confronted with an array of problems from overcrowding and uncontrolled expansion to issues of livability. 

Many cities have been neglected for long, and in many cases have also been harmed by rigid and inappropriate policies. Urban sprawl and tactless developments have been intrinsic and built forms and spaces so emerged have led to many unlivable places. Consequently, some of the urban centers have become like artificial theme parks while prompting others to decay into ghost towns. In the ensuing unbearable anonymities intrinsic to the cities, communities have chosen to live in compartmentalized quarters for the sake of safety and identity. Often such gated communities have reinforced the disparities such as the rich and the poor that underlie urban places while building walls between racial, ethnic and class groups. Planners’ and architects’ responses to these have often been even more bewildering. In some cases, massive urban renewal projects despite being thoughtful, yet implemented with the most brutal urban renewal tactics have killed the cohesiveness and adaptability of urban settings. Clearly, there exists a need for ‘re-inventing cities’ by planning and designing more sustainable, livable and socially inclusive places.

In response, numerous initiatives and conceptual approaches have come up. In recent years, the ideas of ‘creative cities’, ‘smart cities’, ‘green cities’ and ‘productive cities’ have revisited the issues of building cohesive and vibrant urban communities and creating cities that are humane. However, these ideas often seem to articulate specific and chosen emphasis and fail to examine cities holistically and address the fundamental issues of livability and life of cities.  Re-invention of the city as the incubator of enjoyable and pleasant, cultured urban life is not a luxury but an undeniable necessity. It is indeed more so for Asian countries that face overwhelming population challenges, while the West and other developed nations face similar issues emanating from the needs of communities struggling with aging infrastructure and sometimes de-population. In this context, establishing new and invigorating visions of urbanism, through urban architectural interventions, enlightened through urban design is an urgent challenge. Cities, people and places are at the heart of this dilemma and it is only through a holistic understanding of their reciprocal relations, that cities may be re-invented appropriate for human habitation of the next century.

The dialectics pofThis International Conference on Cities, People and Places - 2014  (ICCPP2014) invites those interested in cities, people and places to closely examine the ways in which city exists as a ‘people’s place’ and how each city’s uniqueness is constructed upon the ways in which ‘urban life’ prevails and contributes to the making of places. It asks the fundamental question of what are the social, economic, cultural, political and environmental manifestations of seeing the city as a people’s place.

The conference envisages facilitating and constructing deeper understanding of the relations between cities and people so that we can devise ways and means of enabling healthy and fascinating places to live. This will thus serve as a venue for the confluence of international community of visionaries, developers, policy makers, academics and researchers devoted to make cities more sustainable and livable. The Conference will accommodate contributions of participants from different disciplines yet is focused mainly on urban spaces and places.

More information at the <link http: www.iccpp.lk conference.htm external-link-new-window externen link in neuem>conference's website