The Urbanism Hour / Awards Special: Urban Re-inventor

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The Urbanism Awards in 2021 focused on people who have made a defining contribution to great placemaking. In this special episode of The Urbanism Hour, we meet the three candidates for the Urban Re-inventor category – one of five that celebrated some remarkable individuals.

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Dr Nicholas Falk BA MBA
Founder of URBED & Executive Director of The URBED Trust

Dr Nicholas Falk BA MBA founded URBED in London in 1976 as a not for profit group to apply lessons from what works in urban and economic development. He now runs The URBED Trust www.urbed.com. He was a pioneer in supporting small enterprises through training and workspace, ‘action planning’ to develop city visions, and  ‘looking and learning’ networks for planners. He won the 2014 Wolfson Economic Prize with David Rudlin for showing how historic towns such as Oxford and York could grow sustainably as garden cities. 

As well as innumerable articles, reviews for the AoU and reports for clients, plus a number of books, he has produced over 40 PostcardsfromtheFuture. These draw on conferences has attended and study tours with learning networks such as the TEN Group of senior planners in London, and the Academy of Urbanism, most recently Rapid Transit and Urban Recovery are freely available on www.urbed.coop. He is completing a book on how cities can change direction to tackle the challenges of climate change and inequality, and transferring the lessons to India www.smarterurbanisation.org.  

Roger Madelin CBE 
Joint Head, Canada Water

Roger jointly leads the development of Canada Water, a 53 acre development project in Central London. He joined British Land and was appointed to the Executive Committee in 2016. 

Roger joined British Land in February 2016 after 29 years at Argent, where as Development Director/CEO he secured and led major urban regeneration projects in Manchester, Birmingham, the Thames Valley, the City of London and the 58 acre King’s Cross Development. Kings Cross has become a defining example of bold well-managed urban regeneration.

Roger is an Honorary Fellow of RIBA, an Honorary Fellow of the College of Estate Management and was awarded a CBE for ‘services to sustainable development’ in the 2007 Honours List.

In the early 1980s, Roger studied Building Management and Engineering at university.

Sue Riddlestone OBE
Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Bioregional

Sue has been re-inventing how we can live in zero-carbon, affordable homes and communities for 25 years. Sue co-founded Bioregional’s One Planet Living initiative in 2003. Sue and Bioregional initiated the iconic BedZED eco-village in South London in 1997, where Sue lives and where Bioregional has its headquarters. She led Bioregional’s work to create projects and partnerships for sustainable living – then spread the word that it can be done!

Bioregional evolved the BedZED strategies to create One Planet Living, a sustainable living framework, now used in over sixty countries in $30 billion of real-estate development.  Sue leverages the work of Bioregional and partners to change policy and industry best practice in the UK where she has informed Govt zero-carbon, eco-towns and London 2021 Olympics policies; and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.   

Since has worked with others to use One Planet Living in many other developments, including a 6,000 home eco-community in China and most recently on truly affordable homes with communities in south east England. One Planet Living has now grown to cover 5 continents, from the award-winning Villages Nature Paris resort in France to Zibi in Ottawa, Canada.

One of my proudest achievements is my work as part of the London 2012 Olympic bid team to write the sustainability strategy for our Olympic and Paralympic Games, and subsequently helping to deliver the greenest Games staged to date.

I am a Skoll and Schwab World Economic Forum award-winning social entrepreneur. I was awarded my OBE in 2013 for services to sustainable business and to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.