Geoff was invited by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) to be one of the judges of the 2021 Student Research Awards.

A large range of impressive papers was reviewed, indicating that the future of the planning profession internationally is in good hands. The winners of the awards will be announced by the RTPI in the near future!

Cemre Şahinkaya, a GPA Associate, has presented her paper that she prepared with Geoffrey in the FIG e-Working Week 2021 last week. The paper was on the transformation of Turkey’s capital city of Ankara in relation to the SDGs [i.e., No Poverty (SDG 1), Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8) and Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11)]. The presentation reports on aims to create a foundation for achieving these SDGs as part of Ankara’s improvement during the last 40 years. The study also explores current issues of interest for the development of future policies to address the needs of an expanding city and the needs on urban economy, land, housing and services for its population in the light of the SDG targets.

Geoffrey and Cemre answered the questions on their paper in the FIG e-Working Week 2021

After the presentation, Geoffrey also contributed as a panellist to the session and answered the questions on the project with Cemre.

We thank the FIG Organization Team for the successful event. If you would like to see the paper, please click here.

Geoff is delighted to share the land tenure and property right matrices from the students of the Mundus Urbanos master degree course at the Technical University of Darmstadt 2021. Please see the matrices are from:

• Sydney / Australia
• Guangzhou / China
• Kansas (Missouri) / USA
• Indonesia
• Pune / India
• Marseille / France
• Aleppo / Syria
• Hyderabad / India

Geoff is happy to welcome Shantanu Raut as an intern to GPA and looks forward to collaborating with him over the coming months. Due to covid travel restrictions, the internship will sadly have to be conducted online, but we hope it will prove constructive and beneficial.

Shantanu Raut, GPA’s new intern!

Shantanu is an Urban Development student and a trained Architect from India whose interest lies in sustainable urban development and capacity building for a sustainable future. He is currently finishing his MSc. in International Cooperation in Urban Development at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. He believes in the multistakeholder, people-centric, gender-sensitive approach to achieve sustainable development. He has two years of experience in urban design, planning, and research projects in India. He wants to enhance his knowledge concerning Urban Land management, land tenure, and property rights. He is keen to understand the linkage between land tenure and property rights to improve access to secure and affordable housing for low-income groups and understand the formation of economic and financial policies framework for secure land and housing rights.

Geoff has been appointed as an Honorary Advisor for the University Research Center Urban and Environmental Studies (UES) at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)!

Geoff was recently invited to discuss his relationship with the elements (earth, water, fire and air) as part of a series of podcasts by The Living Project (https://www.thelivingproject.life/home). As a committed glider pilot and instructor, Geoff selected air as the focus for his podcast which can be accessed at : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-living-project/id1514996530?uo=4 and https://open.spotify.com/show/1erI8JpbrG8mYtQjXbAgjZ

Enjoy listening!

Geoff was happy to celebrate the 25th anniversary of establishing GPA on 01 October by inviting many friends and colleagues to a zoom ‘party with a purpose’ that was organised and brilliantly moderated by GPA Associate Cemre Sahinkaya. 

The participants celebrated 25th Year of GPA in the Zoom meeting!

Over thirty people joined covering fifteen times zones thanks to Zoom and we exchanged ideas on the nature of development at a critical time for humanity, with the climate crisis and high levels of inequality both thrown into focus by the covid pandemic. 

Colleagues and friends shared their ideas and experiences during the meeting.

Geoff circulated a reading list of publications on development that he finds particularly useful and this can be accessed by clicking here. During the meeting GPA Associate Hamish Stewart proposed a covid development book club and has kindly offered to host this. To register an interest, click here. We look forward to your participation!

The RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) recently published Geoff’s blog on sharing the benefits of land development, as part of its campaign to Plan the World We Need. Please click here to read it! 

The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has launched a new campaign ‘Plan The World We Need’ https://www.rtpi.org.uk/ for which they invited Geoff to write a blog about UK policy on addressing the climate crisis.                                                                                           

The blog has just been included as part of the launch and can be found at: