October Days for Sustainable Development

21 October 2021

Rethinking Cities: from Smart to Human

Brian Field

Professor, Bartlett School of Planning

University of College London

Urban Planner

Brian Field is an economist, urban planner, and public policy analyst, specialising in planning and sustainable development at all spatial scales, and related project appraisal and finance. He was for many years Special Managerial Advisor on Urban Planning and Development at the European Investment Bank (EIB) and therefore, de facto, the Bank’s leading spatial development specialist. 

His career has covered the full spectrum of contemporary professional practice in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East and, prior to joining the EIB, he held a number of senior appointments in the public and private sectors including, for example, Head of Planning and Economics at WS Atkins International. In his pre-EIB incarnation, he also pursued a successful academic career, with professorial appointments at the National University of Singapore and De Montfort University in the United Kingdom, where he was Head of the School of the Built Environment. He is presently an Associate and Senior Research Fellow at the OMEGA Centre and Visiting Professor in the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London (UCL), and also teaches in the Geography Departments at both the University of Luxembourg and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris.

Professor Field’s current research focuses on the New Urban Agenda facilitating the development of more sustainable cities and communities, and the economic implications of delivery on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) whilst simultaneously seeking to address climate change imperatives. He has published extensively on planning and related matters in books and scholarly papers, and is on the editorial board of several international peer reviewed journals

He has degrees from Brunel University, Cambridge University, the City University of London and the University of Westminster, and was a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics. As a qualified planning and development practitioner, he is a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (MRTPI), an Eminent Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS), and a Chartered Member of the Institute of Logistics and Transport (CMILT).