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After Dinner Speeches

The Saturday after-dinner speech at the Oxford conference is often an opportunity for some well-honed humour around planning and legal themes.

In 2014 former President of the American Planning Association and Chief Planning and Development Officer for the city of Raleigh in North Carolina and now Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Mitchell Silver delivered a passionate address emphasising the challenges that societies across the world face and the difference that planners and those involved with planning make.

His focus was on the importance of understanding changing trends and the demands they make, of having an ethically driven planning system that emphasises equity as well as the economy and environment and for society to ‘fall in love with planning again!’

After heartfelt and prolonged applause following his address Cath Ranson, President of the RTPI presented Mitchell with honorary lifetime membership of the Institute.

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