Could Cornwall Have it All?

The Cornwall Lecture’s central theme for 2008 is the enduring relationship between Cornish landscape and its distinctive identity, culture and economy.

The lecture will range over climate change, economic regeneration, renewable energy, housing development and the protected status of the finest areas of the Cornish landscape.

Looking back into history and forward to some of the challenges of the future, the speaker Robert Tregay will promote a uniquely Cornish approach to economic development around a central landscape theme. He will challenge established assumptions that wealth creation need be traded against the county’s primary asset – its natural and historic environment. Finally he will demonstrate that Cornwall really could have it all – economic development and a beautiful environment – and could pioneer a new, genuinely sustainable future

The Speaker:
Professor Robert Tregay

Robert Tregay is a Cornishman, an Honorary Professor at the University of Wales and Senior Partner of LDA Design. Robert has built the company into one of the country’s best known design and environmental consultancies which competes successfully against the best in the world.

Robert has lectured and published internationally on a range of topics from the master planning of low-energy housing developments to the design of new habitats for wildlife. He is leading and contributing to some of the country’s largest and most complex development projects, including new towns and urban regeneration schemes. He is advising HM Government on Europe’s largest regeneration area, the Thames Gateway and is closely involved with the development of Eco-towns, the Government’s flagship idea for green living in the future. He was an influential figure behind the development of the proposed South Downs National park and his practice is leading the re-birth of many parks and green spaces throughout Britain.

Born and brought up in Falmouth, Robert Tregay was a Cornish schoolboy mile record holder and was awarded the William Bolitho Silver Medal by the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall for his research into landform and sea level change in Cornwall.

LDA Design is responsible for several major regeneration and master planning projects in Cornwall including Hayle, Camborne-Pool-Redruth,  Newquay and a leisure development at Millendreath, near Looe. The company is also advising on the growth of Truro and Falmouth and has prepared district wide design guides for Carrick, Caradon and North Cornwall District Councils. Robert Tregay’s earlier work in the county included an historic landscape study of Cornwall and a landscape character assessment of the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) which resulted in a Countryside Commission publication, Cornish Landscape in 1994.

Robert Tregay is well placed in the best traditions of the Cornwall Lecture to make a powerful and independent analysis of the issues facing Cornwall as it seeks to develop a programme of sustainable social and economic regeneration which will transform the county in the context of one of the most beautiful and varied landscapes in Britain.