In 1896 the Swedish scientist and Noble Prize winner Svante Arrhenius showed that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would result on earth in increased surface temperature of 5-6 degrees Celsius. His warning has largely gone unheeded for the last 124 years, and we are already in an era of disaster management now guaranteed to get significantly worse. The response of nature is ubiquitous and terrifying- prolonged drought, bushfires, extreme flooding, unbearable heat waves, freezing storms, rising sea water levels, melting polar icecaps and glaciers, coastal abrasion, and other phenomena. Some believe these conditions are natural - the adopted manner by which the earth chooses to rejuvenate itself and therefore to deny we have any responsibility for its effects. Climate change sceptics promote ‘fake news’ largely to perpetuate business interests for a few more years, in a lemming like rush towards disaster. Or as O’Connor’s second law states, ‘capitalism always destroys the source of its own success.’

Nature’s responses to centuries of abuse do not however address the human cost of global warming – everything from health issues, increasing costs of social services, the loss of livelihood and property, and the potential adaptation of our entire built environment in the interests of survival. The 2nd International Conference on Cultural Communication and Space (ICCCS) promotes the viewpoint that concerted action is needed across a wide range of offensives – providing alternative energy sources; remodeling the built environment; reducing both personal and industrial consumption of nature, radically changing political systems, an immediate triple bottom line approach to all business, and a skeptical view of technology as having any capacity to ameliorate the above problems.

This 2021’s conference is organized following the 1st ICCCS held in 2018. While many academic events have discussed these matters across the whole spectrum of problems, we focus here on the built environment in relation to climate change phenomena and its required responses to culture and space. Given the above considerations, this second ICCCS focuses on the following topics of conversation that address the significant policies and practices of climate change:

1. Implications for built form and environment.

2. Behavioural, political, socio-cultural change and reconstitution.

3. Eco-urbanism, innovative design and construction.

4. Climate friendly development, planning, urban design.

5. Renewable energy, technology and their inclusion in the built forms

6. Response to disasters and management

We hope that in this conference, imagination, risk-taking and creative solutions will be proposed that reflect responses as radical as the problems. We no longer live in an era where ‘political correctness’ in regard to climate change can be supported. Without risk there can be no forward movement. Or as Ray Bradbury said ‘Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.’ We owe the planet as big a jump as we can make.

Purpose :

We hope that in this conference, imagination, risk-taking and creative solutions will be proposed that reflect responses as radical as the problems. We no longer live in an era where ‘political correctness’ in regard to climate change can be supported. Without risk there can be no forward movement. Or as Ray Bradbury said ‘Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.’ We owe the planet as big a jump as we can make.