‘SUE: A Project in Posters’ on the move again

The Local Government Association Head Quarters at Local Government House has become the latest high profile venue to host the Sustainable Urban Environment digital poster exhibition.

Based in Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall, the LGA lobbies and campaigns for changes in policy, legislation and funding on behalf of member councils and the people and communities they serve.

The LGA consists of 422 member authorities, including county councils, metropolitan district councils, English unitary authorities, London boroughs and shire district councils, along with fire authorities, police authorities, national park authorities and passenger transport authorities.

‘SUE: A Project in Posters’ is on display in the Open Council, a forum where members can meet colleagues from local and national government, industry and academia.

This latest move follows a successful stay at the BRE Innovation Park, the world leading demonstration development designed to give a glimpse of how the future delivery of sustainable buildings and communities can be achieved.

Read all about it in Building for Change magazine: http://www.building4change.com/page.jsp?id=512

Where should the exhibition go next?

Do you know of any high profile venues where you would like to see your research represented?

Send your ideas to Annabel a.cooper@hw.ac.uk

Urban Futures and EPSRC’s Impact!

Still only half way through, the EPSRC-funded Urban Futures project can already boast some success in producing impact on the world around us. In accordance with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Impact! Campaign, the Urban Futures team has been monitoring how their research could impact beyond academia and has found that the team’s close involvement with external steering group partners has led to the uptake and adaptation of the project’s outputs in the real world.

Urban Futures, part of the EPSRC’s Sustainable Urban Environment (SUE) programme of research, selected four future scenarios (Policy Reform, Market Forces, Fortress World and New Sustainability Paradigm) from the wide variety of scenarios that are currently available that will enable them to future proof today’s sustainability solutions (things done today in the name of sustainability, for example greywater recycling or passive solar design). The futures are not built upon probabilities or predictions, but instead bring together a number of factors to create varyingly disparate pictures of the world in 2050. Selecting futures in this way is necessary if the robustness of sustainability solutions is to be fully tested. The project team’s decision to work closely with the Environment Agency and environmental consultants CH2M HILL has ensured that both organisations are already introducing aspects of Urban Futures’ devised methodology into their work.

The team has just finished the challenging task of refining the scenarios to the UK Urban context. This has required defining numerous characteristics of the very different urban properties of each of the scenarios, with input from the complete range of discipline backgrounds represented within the project.   Work now focuses upon identifying, testing and optimising sustainability solutions to ensure they deliver their intended purpose no matter what the future holds.

The ISSUES project, the team tasked with improving the transfer of knowledge and uptake of SUE research, has produced a report that examines Urban Futures’ pathway to successful impact to date.  The report investigates the dissemination and engagement efforts that have yielded significant benefits, both for the researchers and for sustainability practitioners, as well as promoting environmental sustainability throughout the UK and beyond. You can read the report now by visiting the ISSUES website: http://www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org.uk/ISSUESPublications.htm.

Urban Futures and ISSUES (Implementation Strategies for Sustainable Urban Environment Systems) are both part of the SUE Programme, an EPSRC funded portfolio of research looking at ways of improving sustainability in the urban environment. Spanning 30 different UK Universities, this programme has funded 18 consortia in different areas including waste, water management, transport planning and strategy, spatial planning, regeneration and stakeholder engagement.

For more information and for the latest research outputs from Urban Futures visit www.urban-futures.org. To find out more about SUE and the knowledge transfer work undertaken by the ISSUES project, visit the ISSUES website: www.urbansustainabilityexchange.org