The social value of land

The land has a profound impact on who we are, on our health and our wellbeing, but it is valued as though it was a soulless commodity. In this talk Professor Flora Samuel will offer a method for taking the social value of land and its impact on people into account in decisions about land use. She will argue for a digital map based system that allows people to input on a constant basis into decisions about their places. This proposal is based on a series of recent funded research projects based at the University of Reading, Mapping Eco Social Assets, Community Consultation for Quality of Life and the Better Places Toolkit.

Flora Samuel is an architect, author and academic and is Professor of Architecture in the Built Environment at the University of Reading. Concerned by the seeming inability of the Architecture profession in Britain to convey to the public its value, her work focuses on architects, their skills and how they communicate them to the outside world. Her particular focus is on homes, housing and neighbourhoods in the UK and beyond. She feels strongly that a new model of architectural education is needed in order that the profession becomes more relevant. Her new model encompasses research, collaboration and business skills allied to creativity, design and social responsibility. She was appointed as the first RIBA Vice President for Research in 2018 and leads the Community Consultation for Quality of Life, an AHRC funded project aiming to produce a Code of Conduct for Consultation across the four nations.