IPM Conference 2008 Report
Thursday, 13 March 2008
An international group of academics and practitioners gathered in London last month at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel for the Institute of Place Management’s inaugural conference.
The conference, “Making Places Better, Local Solutions with Global Implications: A Critical Perspective”, brought together a number of key figures from the fields of place management, marketing and regeneration to share ideas and provide insights into the management of place and space, and its relationship with global change. Place Management is an emergent issue that examines the processes behind “making places the best they can be” – a key aim of the newly formed Institute of Place Management.
The Conference’s Editor, Gareth Roberts highlighted the importance of combining practitioner and academic perspectives of the debate surrounding how best to manage places, on an international scale;
“Place management needs to engage the private, public and voluntary sectors. An appreciation of a wide variety of disciplines – political and social sciences, management, geography - is needed to achieve the most pragmatic and successful approach to managing multi-stakeholder environments. At the same time the issues affecting local places are becoming increasing global, and that’s why it was so important to bring together people from across the globe to discuss them”.
Some of the issues debated included contestations over the use of public space in South Africa, the appropriateness of applying marketing theory and practice to cities and the rise of network governance as an alternative to traditional governance models.
The Conference Chair and Institute’s director, Professor Cathy Parker, believes the event, which this year showcased 21 papers, provides a unique and valuable contribution to debates about place;
“We believe that this conference will become an important fixture on the place management events calendar. With presenters from Europe, the United States of America, South Africa and Australia, the conference offered a truly global perspective on place management techniques and best practice from around the world”.
The Institute awarded the prize of best conference paper to Dr. Magdalena Florek (Poznan University of Economics, Poland) and Dr. Andrea Insch (University of Otago, New Zealand) for their paper “A great place to live, work and play: Conceptualising place satisfaction in the case of a city’s residents”. Their paper will be included in the Institute’s new Journal of Place Management and Development along with a selection of other conference papers.
For further information concerning the conference, to order a copy of the proceedings or the Journal or to enquire about joining the Institute of Place Management as an organisational partner or at an individual level, contact the IPM on 0161 247 6048 or email dan@placemanagement.org
Notes to editors
About the Institute of Place Management
The Institute of Place Management was formed under AGORA, a £2.7m project part-funded by the European Social Fund and led by Manchester Metropolitan University Business School and the Association of Town Centre Management (ATCM). AGORA identified the need for a professional institute capable of developing and supporting the creation of sustainable formal structures of place management, ensuring professional, internationally-recognised standards amongst all those involved in the management, development and marketing of places. For more information visit: www.placemanagement.org
