Participants at 63rd IMCL Will Explore City Resilience, Regeneration, Livability, Health - and Tools and Strategies for Action

Speakers will include international leaders from governments, universities, NGOs, and practitioner firms; Early-bird registration ends March 31st

ABOVE: A graphic of the locales of invited and accepted speakers at the 63rd International Making Cities Livable in Riga and Jelgava, Latvia.

JELGAVA, LATVIA - The accepted abstracts and invited speakers for the 63rd International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) Conference here, July 6-10, 2026, reflect a striking convergence of disciplines, geographies, and methodological approaches, all oriented toward a shared concern: how to restore and enhance city livability in an era of disruption. The hopeful lesson they will bring is that it is possible to achieve these goals — indeed, it is happening in cities and towns across the globe. But there is an urgent need to accelerate these efforts — and to share the best lessons about how to do so.

Accepted and invited speakers from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia represent a diverse cross-section of academics (professors, PhD researchers), public officials, private practitioners, and NGO leaders. Universities are strongly represented (e.g., University College London, Technical University of Delft, Manchester School of Architecture, University of Washington, et al.), alongside city governments, consultancies, and independent researchers, offering a remarkable (and all too rare) combination of research, policy and practice.

Several key thematic clusters have emerged from the contributors:

1. Regenerative and Resilient Urbanism

Many contributions advance the shift from sustainability to regeneration, emphasizing the restoration of ecological systems, cultural identity, and social cohesion. Concepts such as the “DNA of place,” lifecycle urbanism, and regenerative zoning signal a maturation of resilience thinking into more integrated, multi-scalar frameworks.

2. Measuring, Modeling - and Achieving - Livability

A significant number of papers focus on metrics, indices, and analytical frameworks, from neurourbanism indices and pedestrian network analysis to quality-of-life modeling in smart cities. These reflect a growing effort to operationalize livability through quantifiable, policy-relevant tools, while still grappling with the limits of purely technical approaches.

3. Walkability, Mobility, and Public Realm Repair

A strong cohort of papers addresses walkability, active mobility, and transit-oriented development, often with a fine-grained focus on missing links, pedestrian interfaces, and behavioral barriers. These works highlight the persistent gap between infrastructure provision and lived accessibility.

4. Culture, Identity, and Social Infrastructure

Another prominent theme is the role of cultural continuity, collective memory, and civic participation in shaping livable environments. From digital storytelling in Miami to civic living labs in Colombia, these papers emphasize urbanism as a socio-cultural process, not merely a technical one.

5. Neuroscience, Perception, and Human Experience

A growing body of work applies neuroscience, environmental psychology, and perceptual theory to urban design, investigating how environments affect cognition, stress, belonging, and well-being. This signals a deepening interest in evidence-based human-centered design.

6. Retrofitting and Repairing Modernist Legacies

Several papers critically engage the failures of modernist planning—particularly superblocks, zoning regimes, and car-centric systems—and propose strategies for urban fabric repair, re-streeting, and rehumanization.

7. Participatory and Bottom-Up Urbanism

Across contexts, there is a clear emphasis on participatory methods, from mobility labs and citizen science platforms to gamified systems mapping and children’s engagement. These approaches reposition residents as co-producers of urban knowledge and change.

Taken together, the abstracts suggest a field in transition: moving from fragmented, technocratic models toward integrated, pattern-based, and human-centered frameworks.

Above, some of the speakers already confirmed for the 63rd IMCL conference.

Selected Highlights from Invited and Accepted Contributors

The following selection of abstracts (grouped thematically) illustrates the depth and breadth of current innovation.

A. Regenerative Urbanism and the “DNA of Place”

• Shikha Patel (City University Qatar) introduces regenerative zoning codes, a policy innovation embedding biodiversity, energy positivity, and hydrological performance into land-use regulation.

• Asma Mehan (Texas Tech University) proposes a rigorous framework for regenerative urbanism after disruption, integrating adaptive reuse, ecological repair, and community governance into a unified model of place-based resilience.

• Mookambika & Sridurga (Dr. MGR Educational and Research Institute) articulate a multi-scalar framework for resilience rooted in the “DNA of place,” linking building, neighborhood, and regional systems.

• Anjan Mitra (The Appropriate Alternative, Kolkata) presents a practice-based philosophy of responsible spatial intervention, grounded in repair, revalidation, and cultural continuity.

  
  

B. Walkability, Mobility, and Urban Accessibility

• Devon McAslan (Chalmers University) critically evaluates the 15-minute city, grounding it in empirical evidence of actual walking behavior and destination priorities.

• Anat Caspi & Ricky Zhang (University of Washington) develop a powerful pedestrian network analysis tool identifying “bottleneck” locations where minimal intervention yields maximum connectivity gains.

• Dania Alarfaj (University College London) examines pedestrian discontinuities in Riyadh, proposing a participatory digital platform to repair the critical 400-meter transit walkshed.

• Sam van der Weerden (Maynard / Auckland Transport) reframes wayfinding as behavior-change infrastructure, demonstrating how integrated signage and identity systems can shift mobility patterns.

  
  

C. Neuroscience, Perception, and Human Experience

• Guy Courtois (Pour une Renaissance Urbaine) synthesizes nine key elements of beauty grounded in neuroscience, advancing the case for beauty as a measurable urban variable.

• Ghieth Alkhateeb et al. (NeuroLandscape) present a sophisticated VR-EEG methodology to measure physiological and emotional responses to spatial environments.

• Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo et al. introduce the Neurourbanism Index (NUIX), combining physiological, environmental, and social data into a holistic assessment tool.

• Yanxi Zhou (Goldsmiths, University of London) explores fractal urbanism as a neuroaesthetic strategy to reduce stress and restore perceptual richness.

  
  

D. Social Infrastructure, Equity, and Community Agency

• Kristie Daniel (HealthBridge) positions public markets as integrated systems delivering health, climate, and economic benefits.

• Jenny Donovan (Tasmania) reframes urban change through micro-actions, demonstrating how small interventions can cumulatively transform social norms.

• Miriam Chion (San Francisco) documents the Tenderloin Community Action Plan as a model of community-led recovery under conditions of overlapping crises.

• Kathleen Ferrer (Colombia) conceptualizes civic living labs as informal infrastructures of resilience and collective learning.

  
  

E. Retrofitting Modernism and Repairing Urban Fabric

• Frederick Biehle (Pratt Institute) offers a compelling critique of NYCHA superblocks, proposing re-streeting strategies to restore connectivity and community.

• Alain Miguelez (National Capital Commission, Ottawa) outlines a three-tier strategy for urban fabric repair, from temporary activation to full reconstruction.

• Susan Henderson (Placemakers LLC) applies these lessons to post-war reconstruction in Ukraine, linking coding practices to resilience and identity.

• Valdis Zušmanis (Riga Energy Agency / ALPS) presents a large-scale retrofit of Soviet housing districts, integrating community input and energy upgrades.

  
  

F. Culture, Identity, and Memory in Urban Form

• Daniela Hidalgo Molina (Ecuador) argues for cultural continuity as the foundation of urban identity, integrating tangible and intangible heritage systems.

• Robert Henry (Miami Dade College) uses digital storytelling to examine climate gentrification and its socio-spatial narratives.

• Zenovia Toloudi (Dartmouth College) employs collage-based fieldwork to capture lived urban experience and publicness.

• Christine Storry (Utopia Architects) explores Latvian identity through architecture, linking history, memory, and contemporary design questions.

  
  

G. Climate, Housing, and Global South Perspectives

• Musiyani Chewe (Zambia) advances a compelling argument for climate-adaptive African architecture rooted in vernacular traditions.

• Kasphia Nahrin (Bangladesh) highlights vulnerabilities in climate-stressed housing, linking indoor heat to health inequities.

• Erika Hinrichs (Pratt Institute) proposes regenerative housing models for farm workers, addressing rural decline and housing precarity simultaneously.

  
  

Conclusion: Toward a New Synthesis

Taken together, these contributions point toward an emerging synthesis in urbanism:

• From sustainability to regeneration

• From infrastructure to experience

• From top-down planning to participatory systems

• From fragmented metrics to integrated frameworks

• From abstract form to lived human reality

Perhaps most importantly, they suggest that the future of livable cities lies not in isolated innovations, but in the integration of patterns across scales—ecological, social, spatial, and perceptual—and moreover, the integration of effective knowledge, through gatherings like this one.

The work of the conference participants affirms that city livability is not a single outcome, but a complex, evolving system of relationships—one that must be continually cultivated, repaired, and renewed.

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For more information on the conference, please visit https://www.imcl.online/latvia.

Begun in 1985, the International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) conference series, hosted by the Lennard Institute for Livable Cities, has become a venerable international gathering and resource platform for more livable, humane and ecological cities and towns. Our flagship conferences are held in beautiful and instructive cities hosted by visionary leaders able to share key lessons. We are a 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation based in the USA, with alternating events and activities in Europe and other parts of the world. For more information on the conference, or to register, please visit https://www.imcl.online/latvia.

ABOVE: Sights from beautiful Riga and Jelgava, Latvia, including our main venue, Jelgava Palace (top row, second from left) and Riga's historic architecture (bottom row), including its Central Market, the largest in Europe (bottom row, second from left).