The Royal Town Planning Institute, which represents planning professionals in the UK and Ireland, has elected its first non-white president in 107 years. Yang Wei began her first week in office facing a changed urban reality. 

With the past year of lockdowns, social distancing and limits on outdoor exercise exposing inequalities in access to public spaces, Yang is calling for post-pandemic planning to be more well-designed, creating easier access to social infrastructure. 

"It's really about how to create a liveable place. That is a fundamental principle of the planning profession," Yang said. 

Beijing-born Yang got her PhD in town planning at the University of Sheffield, where she started to form a Garden City approach to planning, following in the footsteps of pioneers such as Ebenezer Howard. "I think I learned a lot from them about the compassion and the selflessness in our planning profession," she said. 

China-UK cooperation

Yang started her own practice in London in 2011, working on large-scale bilateral projects in China and the UK, including East London Tech City, Jinjiang Dream Town in Fujiang, Hogwood garden Village in Wokingham and Golou Smart City in Xuzhou. 

In China, food security has been high on the agenda. Yang says there is also an important ecological value to farmland. "I've been giving some direct advice to the Ministry of Natural Resource," she said.

"We have to really consider the whole integrated function, we need a long-term strategic, urban-rural integrated approach." The UK government has stressed the importance of "natural capital" quite a lot and Yang believes there is a lot of room for cooperation between the two countries. 

During her years time in the UK, Yang says she has benefited from having a multicultural background. She believes that for any newcomers to the profession, "to think beyond professional boundaries and beyond the present day" will help significantly. 

Yang also advises young people to "have the global vision, but act locally," and "if we believe in ourselves, our vision and effort, we can all make a lasting difference for good." 

In a year when people increasingly appreciate the importance of a healthy and sustainable way of life, Yang is campaigning to have the planning profession more involved in a wider dialogue on biodiversity and climate action. 

At the moment, climate solutions are approached on a sector-by-sector basis, but planning could play a holistic role in tackling carbon emissions at source and encourage a low-carbon lifestyle from the start, Yang said.