A new start: Happy 2021!

OK so the internet is a bit dramatic………let’s look onwards and upwards!

Urbaqua is back in the office and welcomes one and all to 2021! It would be easy to be cynical after one of the most painful years in recent memory, and obviously all our problems are by no means going to magically disappear just because of the change of a digit. However, let us make this new year an opportunity to rethink how we do things, and develop ideas as to how to make more liveable, environmentally-sustainable communities, wherever we are.

In Perth this can mean moving towards becoming a more Water Sensitive City, while also focusing on urban greening and community-based, climate change-adaptive development (these things often going hand in hand). Different communities and cities will certainly have different goals as a result of individual characteristics and conditions – however, sharing knowledge and experience is without a doubt one of the best ways to help each other achieve them.

Attending the upcoming 5th Water Sensitive Cities Conference is one way of doing this. The conference will be held on 15-18 March 2021 in both an online interactive format and in-person sessions at hubs across multiple cities. The theme of the conference is Water Sensitive Practice. Every city. Every day, with some of the key topics to include:

  • Integrating urban land use planning with water system planning to create opportunities for water sensitive solutions through urban development processes;
  • Debating centralised and decentralised approaches and how they are best integrated;
  • Lessons from the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities program; and
  • Building the authorising environment for water sensitive cities.
https://watersensitivecities.org.au/content/wscc-program-2021/

The 5th Water Sensitive Cities Conference will allow participants to:

  • Learn from case studies, particularly transferable insights about what worked well and what we’d do differently
  • Build networks within and between states, so that these lessons can flow
  • Showcase the most recent tools emerging from the CRCWSC, and explore how industry has begun to use and evolve them
  • Explore how others have scaled up sustainability practice, and what this means for water sensitive cities.

The conference will also celebrate how far our cities have come and explores the next steps to achieve goals.

Tickets can be purchased for individual states here (and you still have one more day to get your cheaper 15% discount early bird tickets!): https://watersensitivecities.org.au/content/5th-water-sensitive-cities-conference/

So all the best to everyone as we begin the new year, especially those who are in some form of lockdown or another – we over here in Perth realise how lucky we are, being able to be able to go out and enjoy the sunshine in groups at bars/restaurants (not trying to rub it in anyones faces of course) – please feel free to live vicariously through us and enjoy these silly snaps from the Urbaqua 2020 office Christmas party: