Opening and Session 1: Health Check on Economic Development, Planning and Infrastructure
2010 Conference >> Session 1|Session 2|Session 3|Session 4
Thursday 21 January 2010
2:15 Opening Address
Planning for Recovery the EU Dimension (PDF) 
Pat Colgan, Chief Executive, Special EU Programmes Body
Session 1: Health Check on Economic Development, Planning and Infrastructure
The presentations set the current context for the work of the conference in identifying the planning responses critical to positioning for economic recovery and long-term
sustainable growth.
2.30 Welcome by Chair
Aidan Gough, Strategy and Policy Director, InterTradeIreland
2.40 Strategies to Create the Right Jobs in the Right Places (Abstract) (PDF)
Professor John Fitz Gerald, Research Professor,
Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)
3.00 Property Supply and Demand in Balance: Challenges for Local Government, the Development Sector and NAMA (Abstract) (PDF)
Pat McArdle, Economist
3.20 Green Infrastructure: Myth and Reality – Demand, Delivery and Delay (PDF)
Conor Skehan, Head of the Environment and Planning Department,
School of Spatial Planning, Dublin Institute of Technology
3.40 Panel Discussion / Q&A
4.00 Refreshments
Online Follow-up Discussion
Questions:
- Should spatial planning focus on city regions in an all-island context?
- What are the major risks to recovery?
It is inevitable that economic recovery will be centred firstly around cities and the larger urban centres; and as such places will be the determinants of both where, and the type of, employment that is created. For smaller settlements, the onus will be on them to establish themselves as niches of activity. This would imply then that settlement patterns over the coming years will change – and planning policy and practice will have to adjust to this.