URSULA’s new face

Starting this week research group URSULA, part of the second tier of the EPSRC’s SUE programme,  has just got bigger.

A new researcher, Laurence Pattacini, has joined Task 4 – ‘Urban Forms Design’, bringing her expertise in landscape planning to the project. As part of her work, Laurence will be working with other members of Task 4 to draw up new, distinctive and high quality designs for urban river corridors that maximise economic, social and environmental benefits. These designs will be visionary, drawing on the innovative river corridor interventions being studied by the URSULA team at the forefront of the latest cross-disciplinary research.

Of course to get a feeling for the practicalities of these designs they need to be grounded in the real world. And what better place then Sheffield, one of the UK’s largest cities, which has large areas of urban river corridor awaiting redevelopment.  One such site chosen by URSULA to create designs for is Wicker Riverside in central Sheffield, a rundown and underused area of the city adjacent to the River Don. Ample brownfield land and derelict buildings means there is plenty of scope at the site to apply radical urban design, though within the realistic constraints of an urban setting.

For more information click on the link to URSULA’s homepage in the Blogroll

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Civil engineers call for greater speed in UK carbon capture drive

The government must move faster in implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology if the UK is to meet ambitious targets to cut its carbon emissions, according to civil engineers,  THE GUARDIAN has reported today.

In a report published today by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), experts argue that the government must issue a national policy statement for the technology, in the same way that proposals for large-scale future energy projects in nuclear, coal and wind power are planned. This would reduce uncertainty among companies and investors while speeding up the implementation of the technology.

read full article

read SUE research findings related to UK Government carbon reduction plan

 

ISSUES event causes a stir

ISSUES Brave New City event last month brought together representatives from across the urban design, building, architecture, research and environment sectors, using film clips from ITN Source to spark off a debate around the future of Scottish cities.

One of the panellist’s comments about the effects of climate change on Scottish cities caused an EXCLUSIVE in The Herald…

Why Global Warming could make Scotland a Magnet for Mass Migration – read full article here

Fix the system for the future of Scottish cities

The failure of simplistic land use and building systems driven by profit and hyper-efficiency was singled out as the main culprit for shortcomings in urban living by experts at the ISSUES Brave New City event on Wednesday 30 September.

The uniquely structured event brought together representatives from across the urban design, building, architecture, research and environment sectors, using film clips from ITN Source to spark off a debate around the future of Scottish cities, and to answer the following questions:

What will the cities of the future look like? How will we live, work and play? What choices can we make now to secure the urban future we want?

Panellist and City Design Leader for Edinburgh, Cav. Riccardo Marini, predicted a change in the system, saying that the relics of a Fordist approach to public policy, governance and building, driven by low cost and efficiency, had not created places in which people wanted to live.

Marini said: ‘We all instinctively know a good place when we see it but the system is not delivering place making; it is not delivering places in which we want to live, work and play.’ Marini concluded that creating desirable, liveable places, was the key to creating sustainable cities.

In order to exemplify the absence of placemaking in modern building and design, Marini selected a clip displaying a cityscape and asked the audience to identify the city (right). Many suggestions were offered – Hong Kong, Chicago – but no one was able to identify Sydney without the addition of the Harbour Bridge.

Joining Riccardo Marini on the panel, John Thomson of Scottish Natural Heritage, agreed that a rethinking of the drivers behind new building was the key to creating future sustainable cities. Mr Thomson, Strategy and Communications Director of SNH, suggested that a city built around the ‘5 minute pint’ (where city dwellers can reach the local shop or pub in five minutes) was most desirable for future urban living. He said: ‘the cities of the last 50 years have been centred around the car and this has amounted to a loss of detail and the banishment of people from cities and towns. The cities of the future must reverse the trend by considering people first and by looking at planning and building on a smaller scale.’

Mr Thomson kicked off his talk using footage of the French sport of Parkour or Free Running (below): the physical discipline in which participants run along a route, attempting to negotiate obstacles in the most efficient way possible. For Mr Thomson, Parkour (or the art of moving in English) exemplified a city in which the human being on two legs is king, one that is completely at odds with the towns and cities created in the last 50 years but a valuable lesson for the future of modern urban life.

Several audience members also questioned whether building projects were driven by the right quality criteria, one member insisting that ‘the sticks and carrots’ that drive the system need to change. Another suggested looking to Scandinavia and Northern Europe for guidance, where small scale, integrated development and increased powers to public servants contributed to creating more liveable, desirable and sustainable cities.

Panellist Paul Jowitt, Professor of Civil Engineering at Heriot Watt University and Executive Director of sustainability consultancy SISTech, agreed that existing cities had failed to create cohesive networks and was resolute that community building was the key ingredient to ensuring the sustainability of future cities. These communities were those created by the city dwellers themselves but also by those bodies tasked with urban design, building and research. Professor Jowitt said: ‘Cities are very complex networks of people, roads, places of work, education, socialising and communication. Creating an overarching city network that links all these is only possible by building a community among those tasked with its creation: planners, architects, public officials, builders, researchers and the urban community itself’. Professor Jowitt used clips of pre-war slum clearances in the UK (below) to exemplify the absence of modern community building.

Coping with the effects of environmental change was also foremost in the panel’s considerations of the future of Scottish cities. Panellist Mike Groves insisted that city economies must adapt for the changing environment and used the example of Aberdeen and the city’s potential to transform from Europe’s oil capital to a Renewable Energy hub. He said: ‘from the industrial revolution onwards the economy has shaped the environment but in the future the environment will shape the economy. Employment has a huge and immediate impact on cities and Aberdeen will be an interesting place to watch out for’.

Brave New City was organised by the ISSUES project as a means of connecting key thinkers in the area of urban sustainability. ISSUES is the knowledge transfer arm of the Sustainable Urban Environments Programme – an EPSRC funded portfolio of research looking at ways of improving sustainability in the urban environment. This includes research related to a variety of sectors spanning Transport, Building, Urban Planning, Water and Waste, Energy and Pollution. The ISSUES team is based at Heriot-Watt University and Cambridge University. See http://www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org.uk.

New research throws doubt on government climate change commitments

Research just completed by SOLUTIONS, a major research programme into future urban form and transport, throws uncomfortable light on the government’s much trumpeted plans to tackle climate change.

The programme of action unveiled last week by the Minister for Energy and Climate, claims that greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 20% by 2020 as part of the overall plan to cut UK carbon by 80% by 2050. But new research funded by EPSRC, called ‘SOLUTIONS’ (Sustainability Of Land Use and Transport In Outer NeighbourhoodS) shows this to be highly unlikely, if not misleading.

The £1.5 million SOLUTIONS project, which spanned five years and combined the expertise of five universities: Cambridge, Leeds, Newcastle, West of England and UCL, found that far from cutting transport carbon emissions, current government policies will lead almost inevitably to a significant increase.

SOLUTIONS’ strategic-level research involved modelling land use and transport futures up to 2031 in London and the greater South East and in Tyne and Wear. Current RSS, LDF and Transport policies were incorporated. The results from these models showed that total carbon dioxide emissions could increase by 34% in the South East and 10% in Tyne and Wear casting serious doubt on Mr Milliband’s promises.

The most alarming conclusion is that even if strategic land use transport policies are changed significantly – i.e. much more compact or dispersed than at present – and congestion charges are imposed across all the major cities, the result is broadly the same: total carbon dioxide emissions will continue to increase.

Marcial Echenique, SOLUTIONS research leader and Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge said:

‘The reason for the ongoing increase in carbon emissions is simple. The momentum of social and economic change is such that it overwhelms any benefits that might be gained from extra investment in public transport or a better balance between employment and housing. New solutions must be adopted.’

The second major conclusion concerned housing supply and demand. In the London and greater South East region at least (accounting for over a third of the UK population), the research strongly backs the Kate Barker Treasury review (2004) that strict containment of our cities is curtailing housing supply, at a significant economic, social and environmental cost. The over-reliance on brownfield development, often in the form of flats, together with greenbelts that constrict urban growth and squeeze development into inappropriate locations, forces up housing prices, exacerbates social exclusion, increases travel distance and reduces competitativeness. The strong recommendation from SOLUTIONS is to find ways (even in the current recession) to open up new options for housing supply.

Professor Marcial Echenique said:

‘Letting cities expand is essential if middle and low income families are to achieve their dreams of houses with gardens and firms are not to be burdened by unnecessary wage costs. But this is not a plea for sprawl. It is an argument for planned expansion and for new 21^st century suburbs that are well located and well-designed.’

Results drawn from SOLUTIONS local level research, involving empirical analysis of local facilities and household travel in twelve suburban neighbourhoods, were also salutary. The studies showed that most recent developments, far from being an improvement on older localities, showed the most carbon-intensive behaviour. The level of car dependence for ‘local’ trips was 80% in some neighbourhoods, while others, older but socially quite similar, were only 40% car dependent. This has some (modest) implications for emissions, but huge implications for the level of physical activity. This suggests we are creating ‘obesogenic’ environments.

It was also clear that the nature of intensification in suburbs is unpredictable: high density brownfield development is occurring not only close to local centres and good public transport but also in less accessible locations, forcing high car ownership and use.  The signals given by government to local authorities and house builders are often resulting, despite good intentions, in unsustainable development.

Thankfully not all the results from SOLUTIONS research were negative. In growth areas where alternative neighbourhood designs were explored the most successful forms – often based on local high streets and graded densities – gave the opportunity for very high levels of active travel (walking and cycling to get somewhere) and commensurately low innate car dependence. The results suggest walkable and viable places can be created and that people will take the opportunity to walk in these localities.

Professor Hugh Barton, the design lead at the University of the West of England said:

‘While there are clear differences in behaviour between different groups in the population, the dominant factor determining whether people walk or not is distance. If we can build and evolve places that really create attractive, accessible, safe environments, then people will walk and will contribute to reducing carbon emissions from transport.’

Nevertheless, the overall message from SOLUTIONS holds little comfort. Strategic and local trends are moving in the wrong direction, despite government policy and recent promises. No feasible shift of broad land use and transport policy will correct the trend, at least over the next twenty years. But on the positive side, we can adapt neighbourhoods, where there is development pressure, to be progressively more efficient and much less carbon hungry.

Professor Hugh Barton warns:

‘If we are to have any hope of achieving the government’s targets, dynamic action must be taken. Firstly, in relation to land use and transport but also on other fronts as well. There must be a technological revolution in transport, much firmer fiscal signals to businesses and households and crucially a huge shift in public values. Only by choosing to lead lower carbon lifestyles can we hope to reduce carbon emissions.’