Details of Grant

EPSRC Reference:

EP/F007426/1

Title:

SUSTAINABLE REGENERATION: FROM EVIDENCE-BASED URBAN FUTURES TO IMPLEMENTATION

Principal Investigator:

Other Investigators:

Gaterell, Professor MR	Jefferson, Professor I	Hewitt, Professor CN
Sadler, Professor J	Jankovic, Professor L	MacKenzie, Professor AR
Barber, Dr A	Cooper OBE, Professor R	Whyatt, Professor JD
Coles, Professor R	Memon, Professor FA	Bryson, Professor J
Butler, Professor D

Researcher Co-Investigators:

Project Partners:

Advantage West Midlands	Arup Group Ltd	Birmingham City Council
British Geological Survey	British Waterways	CIRIA
Environment Agency (Grouped)	Forestry Commission Scotland	Hyder Consulting Ltd
Igloo Regeneration Ltd	ISIS	Joe Holyoak Architect and Urban Designer
KTN for Resource Efficiency	Lancaster & Morecambe Vision	Land Care Associates
Midlands Architecture & the Designed Env	NISP	Oxford Brookes University
R James Chapman Architect	RegenWM	Resource Optimization Initiative
Sheffield Wildlife Trust	South East England Regional Assembly	Sweett,Cyril,& Partners Ltd
UK Water Industry Research Ltd	University of Cambridge	University of East London
University of Greenwich	University of Nottingham	University of Worcester
Urban Splash	Worcester City Council	Worcester Civic Society

Department:

Civil Engineering

Organisation:

University of Birmingham

Scheme:

Standard Research

Starts:

01 May 2008

Ends:

30 April 2012

Value (£):

3,148,359

EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:

Building Ops & Management	Ground Engineering
Urban & Land Management	Water Engineering

EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:

Environment

Related Grants:

Panel History:

Panel Date	Panel Name	Outcome
07 Jun 2007	SUE 2 Interview Panel	Announced

Summary on Grant Application Form

The first phase of the SUE Programme has focused necessarily on the present, assessing current solutions and their application in the near future, thus providing a strong empirical base on which to build. There now exist both the need and a sufficient body of work to extrapolate the findings to establish and test alternative urban futures: to create a variety of scenarios, building on prior and new work, and predicated on different fundamental assumptions and priorities; to assess those scenarios in terms of design, engineering implementation and measurement of performance; to refine them, in terms of mitigation and adaptation measures, incorporating novel solutions; and ultimately to provide alternative solutions with an associated evidence base and strategies for their implementation. This bid seeks to integrate the outputs of three current SUE consortia (Birmingham Eastside, VivaCity 2020 and WaND) and complementary research on the use of trees to mitigate the effects of atmospheric pollution. The team will work across disciplines to envision and establish alternative futures (using extensive literature on this subject and prior WaND consortium work) and construct scenarios that might flow from each alternative future. The various work packages will then focus on testing specific dimensions of each alternative future vis a vis their design, implementation and performance in the context of case history sites. Each project will engage an expert panel of influential stakeholders who will meet six-monthly to test and help shape new ideas, the chairs of each of the expert panels forming the higher level project steering committee. Panel consultation will be followed by interviews of stakeholders on motivations and the decision-making process, and specific empirical research and modelling. The following high level questions will be addressed via this process: - How does the ab initio conceptualization of sustainability influence design outcomes (e.g. form, density)? How would outcomes change if urban renewal were predicated on either environmental or social or economic overriding drivers? - How does development impact on its environs, and vice versa (e.g. is a 'sustainable' site good for the city / region / country and, if so, in what ways?) and is there an optimum development size to yield optimally sustainable outcomes? - Push versus pull to achieve sustainable outcomes. Much of what is done is thought good (for individuals, society, the environment), what might be wanted (push). Thus decisions are made and people must decide whether or not to take ownership. Might more sustainable outcomes follow if those who must take ownership dictate what is created (pull)? Birmingham Eastside will be used both to develop sustainability ideas and to test them on sites at various stages of planning and development (the research team has unparalleled access via its partnerships with key stakeholders involved in Eastside). Lancaster (with Morecambe, population 96k) and Worcester (94k) will be used to test the outcomes at the scale of smaller urban areas (e.g. market towns) but no attempt will be made to build comprehensive databases as at Eastside. Several other UK and international urban areas (including Sao Paulo, Singapore and an urban area in India) will be used to test a sub-set of the project's findings to assess the transferability of the scenarios to a variety of contexts and thus their general applicability.

Key Findings

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Potential use in non-academic contexts

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Impacts

Description	This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Summary
Date Materialised

Sectors submitted by the Researcher

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Project URL:

http://www.urban-futures.org

Further Information:

Organisation Website:

http://www.bham.ac.uk