John is a former US national road cycling champion who has focused on the planning and design of streets for all transport modes, ages, and abilities since 2005, when he started with Palmerston North City Council as a transportation planner. After completing his Master of Engineering (Transport), he worked for three years on major projects in the USA including the US$100M CV Link pathway and ways to provide for non-motorised users at several highway interchanges in and around Silicon Valley. He works with schools and communities to provide healthy and safe ways to get around our communities. John prepares master plans, business cases, and undertakes a variety of transportation research. He has extensive experience in automatic data collection, demand estimation, and level of traffic stress modelling. He is the former chair of the Engineering NZ Transportation Group.

Abby is a subject matter expert who leads and advances nature-based resilience and biodiversity initiatives at Auckland Transport (AT), contributing significantly to the objectives embedded in AT Hīkina te Wero Environmental Action Plan and the AT Sustainability Strategy. She collaborates with both internal and external stakeholders to incorporate ecological considerations and nature-based solutions into asset management, infrastructure design, and operational procedures, thereby enhancing environmental outcomes and organisational resilience. Abby holds certification as an Environmental Practitioner through the CEnvP programme and an Independent Hearing Commissioner since 2023. Before joining AT, Abby held the position of Senior Consents and Compliance Specialist at Auckland Council. In this role, she acquired technical experience in managing and treating stormwater and industrial contaminated runoffs in accordance with the Auckland Unitary Plan.

Dave Charnley is the Senior Urban Designer at PNCC, bringing over 30 years of experience across horticulture, landscape construction, landscape architecture, and urban design. For the past decade, he has led strategic urban design initiatives within the council’s Strategic Planning Unit, advising on city planning, design policy, public and private development. Dave collaborates across council teams and with city developers to promote well-connected, people-focused, and sustainable urban environments. He currently leads the review of the Palmerston North Vegetation Greenprint and champions the ‘green dividend' - the benefit urban vegetation, greenspaces and their biophysical services provide to enhance place identity, community health and wellbeing, economic development and climate resilience.

Liam has been part of the landscape and urban design industry since 1999 after completing Landscape Architecture studies at Lincoln University. After spending 15 years abroad, working across the middle east region designing and delivering projects focused on healthcare, hospitality and urban places, Liam returned to New Zealand to take up a role in the Public Space Design team with the Wellington City Council. Now leading a highly focused team of urban designers, landscape architects and spatial planners who work across Wellington City designing and delivering new people focused urban and suburban public spaces as well as upgrades of existing spaces. Liam and the team are also charged with the delivery of the Green Network Plan, focusing on greening Wellingtons urban streets - with trees, rain gardens and planting, creating new urban parks, and improving existing green spaces.

Glen led the heritage program at Dunedin City Council between 2009 and 2016 and led the development and implementation of the Warehouse Precinct Revitalisation Plan, transforming a derelict area into of the city’s most exciting heritage areas. In 2021 he returned to Dunedin and led the George Street upgrade, which combined substantial 3 Waters infrastructure replacement with turning the city’s main street into a one-way, shared space with significantly larger areas for the public, including a play space and gardens. These “greening” infrastructure changes have already delivered positive benefits during some heavy rain events. Glen can talk about his experience in the planning, construction and post-implementation assessment and management of the street, including both the pitfalls and benefits of the changes.

Mike passionate about landscape architecture and urban design, particularly the long-term success of the landscapes we create – as well as reducing the environmental impacts of his work. He is a practical and ‘hands on’ person, with a keen interest in the successful implementation of design, particularly the success of 'soft' landscape and urban forest. He has been involved in the landscape industry all his working life (35 years!) and has worked as a nurseryman, landscape contractor, university lecturer, and landscape architect. Mike is currently Landscape Architecture Lead at Awa Environmental, where he has spent the last 18 months establishing Landscape Architecture an Urban Design as a key service within Awa's offering. His experience prior to Awa includes 3 years at Christchurch City Council, where he played fulfilled key roles within many civic projects ranging from urban streetscapes, urban forest and river restoration, large scale re-vegetation projects to landscape visual assessment review. He has also had key roles in the landscape planting strategies for several large infrastructure projects including Christchurch Southern Motorway, Tauranga Baylink project and Christchurch Northern Arterial Motorway.

Kirsty Horridge is the Urban Mobility Team Leader, with 15 years of experience in local government and engineering, she is passionate about getting more people walking, biking and taking Public Transportation.

Peter works as the Principal Strategic Transport Planner for Tauranga City Council, within the Strategy & Growth team. He worked in the field of transport planning in the Netherlands, England and Scotland for over ten years before making the move to New Zealand in early 2019. In his current role, Peter’s role involves leading on policy and infrastructure solutions to cater for the growth of Tauranga; to enable further intensification as well as greenfield developments, focussing on road design that enables all modes of transport through Tauranga's Street Design Toolkit.

Sarah is a Team Leader of Strategic Infrastructure at Tauranga City Council, bringing 20 years of experience in traffic and transportation management—across New Zealand since 2010 and previously in the United Kingdom. She has a strong background in technical advisory and project management roles, with expertise spanning transport assessments, strategy and policy development, and business cases. Her role covers a broad range of infrastructure projects from transport and waters to waste, but her professional passion lies in sustainable transport and understanding how transport systems shape, support, and interact with communities. Sarah was in the team who originally produced the Tauranga Street Design Toolkit and since her time at TCC has championed embedding the Guide and associated tools within Tauranga’s transport programme.