"Creating a gold medal community" 9th International Cities, Town centres & Communities Society Conference.  

preliminary conference program on line now  Link

Inclusive design meets the needs of people of
all abilities. It extends and preserves independence
but it need not be expensive. For products
to be inclusively designed, all stakeholders
need to be informed and active: demanding
consumers, influential consumer organisations,
creative designers and design colleges,
even reluctant manufacturers, legislators and
standards-makers. It is time to meet the challenge
of our changing demography and the
resulting diversity of consumer characteristics.

We are please to announce that Include 2009, our fifth international conference on inclusive design will take place at the Royal College of Art, London UK from 5 to 8 April 2009, beginning with a welcome reception on Sunday 5 April.

Include 2009 builds on the previous four Include conferences by exploring how inclusive design practice in design, research and business can lead towards innovation in people centred design.

http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/1345/all/1/Include_2009_.aspx  

"After last years success with participants from around the globe Designboost will now be back for the second annual edition on October 15-17, the vision of the event being "sharing design knowledge".
This years main theme will be The Sustainable City and among the speakers are lifestyle guru Ilse Crawford, architect Bjarke Ingels and designer Ilkka Suppanen.
"The sustainable city is all about how we build houses, roads and parks. How we consume and translocate. How we live and educate ourselves. "

The Design Ability exhibition, which will be held in the Pinin Room at the Pininfarina plant in Cambiano (Turin) will be inaugurated on November 14, 2008. To mark Torino 2008 World Design Capital, Pininfarina Extra, in collaboration with Polytechnic of Torino, the IED,
the AbleToEnjoy company and CEAN, will exhibit innovative solutions

The organisers have confirmed almost all key note speakers to IFA's 9th Global Conference on Ageing next September.

For instance the first plenary panel of the conference, on the morning of September 5, titled The New Paradigm - Ageing and Design, will bring together Dr. Chris Luebkeman and Ms Valerie Fletcher, in addition to Mr. Gordon Lishman, Director General of Age Concern in England.

http://www.dexigner.com/design_news/speakers-confirmed-for-ifas-9th-glob...

During the 2000s spatial and urban policy in the UK has become increasingly concerned with the creation of sustainable communities. The urban renaissance’s focus on security through design has been replaced by new, more holistic discourses which emphasize ‘community safety’ and the ways in which the planning process can be reformed in order to achieve this. The new emphasis is on the responsibilization of neighbourhood communities with the police becoming more ‘citizen-focused’ in the design and implementation of their