The Future of Cultural Masterplanning
24.06.2026
News, Ideas
Dr Lesley Gray at the ARCHICA 2026 Congress in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on the evolving role of cultural masterplanning in shaping future places.
In April 2026, Dr Lesley Gray, Principal and Head Curator of Arts at Barker Langham, presented ‘Cultural Masterplanning: Creating a Positive Impact for the Future’ as part of the Future Places session at the ARCHICA 2026 Congress in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Drawing on Brian Eno's provocation in ‘The Big Here and the Long Now, that ‘reality is a matter of imagination’, she used this framework to challenge the way we think about masterplans — not as technical documents, but as acts of collective imagining. Culture and heritage, she argued, give communities the foundations from which to envision how they truly want to live, both in space and across time.
Using Tashkent as a point of departure, Lesley made a case for masterplans that remain open rather than fixed, designed to allow space for growth. This means engaging communities early and continuously; bridging existing cultural assets with new ones to create narrative links across the cityscape; balancing the value chain so that different districts complement rather than compete; and involving heritage experts, artists and craftspeople in shaping public space so that culture becomes an embedded part of daily life, not an afterthought.
When this thinking takes hold, culture and heritage stop being layers added onto a masterplan and become its most sustainable foundation. Instead of competition between old and new, there is collaboration and synergy – a manifestation of Eno’s Big Here and the Long Now, with culture and heritage as the continuum.