This year’s keynote Landscape Institute conference will focus on landscape as infrastructure in the built environment and address how natural capital accounting will impact on the built environment professions.

Landscape as infrastructure is a vital theme for all built environment practitioners – the wide-ranging conference for industry professionals will explore the interface between ecology and infrastructure, together with examining the importance of the emerging natural capital initiative.

Topics covered in the conference include large-scale regeneration;Green into grey: multifunctional innovations in integrated infrastructure and traditional engineering; Natural Capital Accounting: unlocking the value of green infrastructure; landscape design for ecosystem services; densification and urban parks; the building of flood defences and the destruction of landscape by urbanisation.

Among the keynote speakers:

• Laura Rhodes, Flood Risk Advisor at the Environment Agency on integrating green infrastructure design and flood risk management on a massive scale
• Kate Collins, Director at Sheils Flynn who works with government agencies, local authorities and environmental partnerships to develop guidance and strategy at local, regional and national level.
• Professor Xiangrong Wang, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture (CHSLA), Leading Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Landscape Architecture at Beijing Forestry University will examine Landscape as Infrastructure: natural systems inside and outside the city
• Kate Ahern, Director of Landscape Planning at Land Use Consultants on landscape-led infrastructure: character, complexity and citizen participation. With 25 years’ experience planning and managing large-scale infrastructure projects, she provides case work advice to Natural England on the landscape effects of infrastructure projects, and oversaw the report ‘A landscape-led approach to HS2 in Buckinghamshire and the Colne Valley’.
• Sue Illman, a former president of the Landscape Institute and Managing Director of Illman Young Landscape Design Ltd on turning the tide: water management and urban design in the delivery of resilient landscapes. Illman Young is a landscape practice specialising in water management, with a focus on sustainable drainage (SuDS).
• Chris Bolton, Head of Landscape at Natural England, on developing and connecting England’s natural infrastructure He has worked on England’s waterway infrastructure and on many aspects of rural landscape management including agri-environment schemes, designated landscapes, historic parklands and sustainable development.
• Colette Patterson, Landscape and Urban Design Practice Lead at Mott MacDonaldon landscape design for ecosystem services. Colette Patterson has delivered landscape design schemes for water companies, Highways England, the Environment Agency and HS2. She is currently working on strategic plans to integrate Green Infrastructure into Crossrail.

Landscape as Infrastructure takes place in Manchester on 22^nd and 23^rd June 2017. The second day is optional and will take the form of a series of morning site visits.

Click here for more information.