The vast majority of talk during the day seemed to be about creating sustained economic growth for Greater Manchester rather than a sustainable future on a wider geographic scale. The Government's "City Deal" was also quite a central topic. There was some recognition of the tensions between growth and the environment in cities, but clearly a weight of argument in the room that cities are both an efficient means to house large populations and a means to generate innovations in business and technology such as Graphene, which Manchester University has been involved in.
It was therefore a disappointing conference, in many ways. However, it's almost impossible to conceive of a world without cities (and over 50% of the world's population live in cities already) so I think it's important to keep in touch with how people involved in strategic planning for cities are thinking, in order to decide how best to influence their thinking going forward.