First Speakers Announced for IMCL 2026 as Call for Abstracts Enters Last Week

Speakers are international leaders in housing affordability, financial tools, pattern languages, public space improvements, walkability and health, symmetry and biophilia, sustainable building, and other effective tools and strategies for making cities livable

ABOVE: A partial listing of the first roster of speakers announced for the 63rd IMCL

RIGA, LATVIA - One week remains for the Call for Abstracts as the first group of speakers is announced for the 63rd International Making Cities Livable, to be held here and in the nearby town of Jelgava, July 6-10, 2026. The Call for Abstracts closes on March 1 (Sunday).

Speakers are leaders in city research, practice and governance from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia. Topics include effective tools and strategies to meet frontier challenges for cities, towns and suburbs today, with particular emphasis on walkability, public space, mobility, economic vitality, personal and social health, and urban quality of life.

In addition to the already announced speaker roster, the abstracts submitted to date for the conference include a broad representation of advanced scholars and city leaders from Europe, North America, China, India, Bangladesh, Zambia, and Australia. Topics addressed by abstracts submitted to date include:

• Climate adaptation

• Local identity and architecture

• New urban technology

• Pattern language (“Nested Resilient Patterns”)

• Walkability and street retrofits

• Neuroscience and urban mental health

• Neuroscience for school and healthcare building design

• Ecology, green building and quality of life

• Implementation pathways

• Regenerative zoning

• Regenerative mobility

• Regeneration in the Post-Soviet East Bloc

• Beauty and neuroscience

• Urban design methodologies

• Resilient housing and climate stress

• Transportation choice

• The value of public markets, and how to create them

Submissions are welcome from scholars, practitioners, city and NGO leaders, and may include new research, case studies, or new methodologies and their evaluations. The conference will focus on effective implementation strategies for making a new generation of more livable cities, towns and suburbs.

This year’s focus on “Recovery and Resilience After an Age of Disruption” invites participants to look both backward and forward: to historic precedents of recovery in Europe and elsewhere, and to emerging models for regenerative development. How do cities recover from war, economic collapse, environmental damage, or technological upheaval—and how do they avoid rebuilding the same vulnerabilities? What does that mean today, for climate adaptation, resilience, and quality of life, as we face new disruptions? What does it mean to move beyond mitigation toward true regeneration, where urban systems can restore ecological health, social capital, and economic opportunity?

The geographic setting adds a further layer of relevance. Riga and Jelgava sit at the crossroads of Northern and Eastern Europe, shaped by centuries of cultural exchange, occupation, independence, and renewal. The Baltic region offers powerful lessons in post-disruption recovery, from post-war reconstruction to post-Soviet transition, and now to contemporary European integration amid new geopolitical pressures.

July is an ideal time to travel to Latvia, which is easily accessible by air or rail from European gateways. Riga’s celebrated Art Nouveau district, its UNESCO-listed Old Town, and its contemporary waterfront developments provide case studies in heritage preservation, adaptive reuse, and public realm design. Jelgava, with its historic palace complex and evolving civic center, offers a complementary setting for exploring smaller-city regeneration strategies, particularly relevant to cities navigating economic transition and demographic change. Site visits, workshops, walking discussions, and informal exchanges will allow participants to engage directly with the physical and institutional contexts that shape Baltic urban development. Study trips are easily arranged in other parts of the Baltics, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe.

Interested parties are invited to submit abstracts at https://www.imcl.online/cfa26, or to email questions to info@livablecities.org.

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The IMCL was founded in 1985 by Henry Lennard, a Viennese medical sociologist, and Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, a British architectural scholar. The Lennards met at the University of California, Berkeley, and the series they created there over forty years ago has become a premier international gathering of scholars, practitioners and city leaders, coming together across borders, sectors and disciplines to share the latest knowledge on effective solutions to today's urban challenges. The host organization, the non-profit Lennard Institute for Livable Cities, is currently based in the USA but has seen regular conference participants and prominent speakers from every continent except Antarctica. For more information about the 63rd IMCL conference, or to submit an abstract, please visit https://www.imcl.online/latvia.