City of Walbrzych - mitigating social and economic challenges

Senior Policy Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), London School of Economics and Political Science. Previously thirteen years as Senior Civil Servant and latterly Head of Profession for Social Research in the UK Department of Communities, and responsible amongst other work for policy development and implementation of the Supporting People programme, monitoring of the Neighbourhood Renewal programme, the 2009 Digital Strategy. At LSE has worked primarily on analysing social return on investment, the impact of area renewal programmes for poor neighbourhoods, and homelessness. Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing, and fluent French speaker with wide experience of French housing and regeneration issues.

Aleksandra Jadach-Sepiolo, deputy director at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development. She combines work at the Institute with didactic activity at the Warsaw School of Economics as a lecturer of post-graduate studies. She’s also author and co-author of many publications in the field of urban revitalization, public-private partnership, housing, property value management in revitalized areas, esp. in poor neighborhoods. She was head of the team of consultants contracted by the Ministry of Development for advisory services by the Revitalization Act and then by pilot projects in urban regeneration (Bytom, Walbrzych, Lodz) and also by model projects in 20 cities ("Model Revitalization" competition).

Maciej Borsa is professor at the Katowice School of Technology, and a town planner, first vice-chairman of the Polish Town Planners Association. He specialises in land use planning, regional policy and urban development. He has been coordinator and the co-author of supranational, macroregional, regional and local strategies or analyses concerning town planning, transformations of the spatial planning system, public policies, multilevel governance in the public sphere, the partnerships and public participation the role of information, incuding geo-information in the development policies. He has also spent many years working in the structures of Polish government on managerial or advisory positions, in the regional or municipal structures, also at the economic and technical universities.