Rene Sommer Lindsay

I come from Denmark where I trained as an architect and urban planner. I worked with the City of Copenhagen for nearly 10 years, most of which I spent as the project manager and subsequently director of the Copenhagen Climate Resilient Neighbourhood project – Klimakvarter – a project demonstrating new approaches to climate adaptation which included using green infrastructure to make streets both beautiful and resilient. After Klimakvarter I worked as an advisor, integrating the “added value” approach into the citywide Cloudburst Management Programme, but when an opportunity arose to take a sabbatical year in Scotland, my family and I jumped on it. That year has quickly turned into 4 years and I’ve shifted to working mainly in Active Travel, first as a consultant and most recently as an urban designer and programme lead at Sustrans.

I’ve enjoyed working with active travel, but I was looking to work more broadly with sustainable urban planning, especially climate resilience as I did in Denmark. Atkins has a broad portfolio of projects and I saw an opportunity to utilise the skills and experience that I’ve already got but also be involved in other aspects of urban planning and design and keep acquiring new skills required to create resilient, sustainable and liveable cities which is what I’m passionate about.

One of the first projects I have been involved with is the re-design of George Street in Edinburgh. It combines active travel with urban realm improvements and the aim is to transform George Street from a car-dominated space to a pedestrian friendly place while completing a missing link in the active travel network through the city centre. Due to its location in the centre of the world heritage New Town, the placemaking aspect will be an absolute priority. I am also involved with other active travel, green infrastructure and urban regeneration projects, mostly in urban settings.

I’ve been working at the intersection of placemaking and infrastructure for more than ten years and I believe this is an area that will keep growing. As cities keep growing, we’re trying to squeeze ever more functions into urban streets where pedestrians, cars, bikes, buses, trees, and utilities are already competing for space. There is a tendency to focus only on fulfilling the technical requirements of an infrastructure project but if we don’t put people at the forefront, we will end up creating functional, but soul-less places. I think we, as urban designers and landscape architects, can add value to engineering-heavy projects by promoting Placemaking Infrastructure as a design philosophy. Placemaking Infrastructure is also about ensuring that the places we create are full of variations of experience and include elements that make them both useful and enjoyable for the communities they’re sat in – ensuring that the designs resonate with the future users. Co-design is an important part of Placemaking Infrastructure and I love to work in collaboration with local communities because they are the people who are going to fill the space with life after we’re done designing it.