Digital Task Force for Planning Webinar – 3 March 2023, midday

This lunchtime webinar will introduce researchers to the Digital Task Force for Planning (www.digital4planning.com) – an innovation-led Social Enterprise (Not-for-Profit Organisation) devoted to digital planning with the ambition to promote digital integration and advancement in Spatial Planning to tackle the grand challenges in the 21st Century.

The talk will introduce the Task Force’s first stage report, A Digital Future for Planning – Spatial Planning Reimaged (Batty & Yang, 2022), and will share its future plans and opportunities to be engaged.

About Digital Task Force for Planning

Digital Task Force for Planning was set up in February 2021 as an independent expert panel by Professor Michael Batty, Chair of Centre for Advanced Spatial Planning Analysis UCL, and Dr Wei Yang, President for 2021 of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
After a one-year comprehensive cross sector consultation programme, the Task Force published A Digital Future for Planning – Spatial Planning Reimaged (Batty & Yang, 2022) in February 2022. The report sets out an ambitious blueprint for digitally enabled spatial planning that could provide integrated solutions to achieve net zero, biodiversity, and other pressing social and economic issues.
The report puts spatial planning at the forefront of addressing these challenges equipped with new digital tools and expertise, and improved data.  Emphasis is placed on planners collaborating with like-minded professionals across the built and natural environment sectors to achieve common goals. At this crucial moment in human history there is a need to work beyond professional and political boundaries to tackle multifaceted grand challenges. Since its publication, the report has received excellent feedback. It has been viewed from 96 countries over 40,000 times.
Now, the Task Force is incorporated as an innovation-led social enterprise. The Not-for-Profit organisation seeks to apply and develop cutting edge digital research and technology into mainstream Spatial Planning practice and education thus leading to transformative changes needed in the sector for public benefit. All its findings will be made open source.
Come along to the webinar to meet the Co-founders of the Task Force to find out more about the organisation and how to get involved.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

• Identify the grand challenges and the interconnections between them;
• Understand full potentials of spatial planning as powerful leverage to deliver zero-carbon, environmental net gain, social equality, better public health, sustainable and resilient communities, as well as other ambitious economic and social goals;
• Understand a place-based whole systems approach;
• Critically discuss how different sectors and professionals can work together to tackle the grand challenges;
• Plan future engagement and collaborations.

Timing:

3 March 2023, 12:00-14:00, online

Presenters:

Dr Wei Yang, Co-Founder & CEO, Digital Task Force for Planning
Professor Michael Batty, Co-Founder & Chair, Digital Task Force for Planning

Link to the DTF Report Digital Task Force Report