As more people become city-dwellers, can we design cities to be more sustainable?
As more people become city-dwellers, can we design cities to be more sustainable?
As the world moves towards greater urbanisation, the team’s goal is to deliver innovative and practical guidelines on how best to plan cities for sustainable and economic growth, as well as for improved quality of life for the billions of people who live in them.
Today, half of the world’s population live in cities, and estimates by the United Nations suggest that by 2030 this will have risen to two-thirds. As the world population increases from 6 to 8 billion at current predictions, rural towns will become cities and cities will grow larger. In developed countries, as many as 83% of the population will become city-dwellers.
Cities have expanded over time to meet the economic growth and lifestyle aspirations of those who live in them. But they have grown at the expense of increasing rates of resource consumption and increasing waste production and carbon emissions. Can urban planners design cities of the future that will be sustainable: cities with good air and water quality, where transportation systems are optimised, and energy consumption and carbon emissions are reduced? Understanding how to accomplish this is the aim of a new four-year project, ‘ReVISIONS’, led by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Architecture.
A multidisciplinary consortium
With funding of £3.85 million awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of their Sustainable Urban Environment programme, the project brings together the Universities of Cambridge, Aberystwyth, Exeter, Leeds, Newcastle and Surrey. Each institution contributes expertise in different areas to the multidisciplinary project, from energy generation and supply, through water and waste management, to assessments of demography, economics, health and sustainability.
Cambridge’s role will be to coordinate the project and design the options and modelling framework for land use, buildings and transport. Because the research is constructed from the outset with the purpose of having direct value for public and private decision-makers, key partnerships have been formed with regional planning authorities and private companies, with the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) being one of the leading partners.
From SOLUTIONS to ReVISIONS
The ReVISIONS project builds on expertise developed through ‘SOLUTIONS’, a four-year EPSRC-funded project in the Department of Architecture that reaches completion in September 2008. Here, the focus has been on designing suburbs of the future – improving the quality of life for people who live in the outer fringes of cities.
SOLUTIONS has focused on four UK cities, including Cambridge, which are experiencing high growth pressures in their suburbs. Like ReVISIONS, the planning horizon for testing designs is 25 years. Computer models have been used to assess combinations of land use and modes of transport, asking how changes in the planning of suburbs might affect how people travel, their cost of living and the damage to the environment. The results are being used to draw up policy advice for central and local government, as well as design guidelines for planners, house builders and environmentalists alike.
Towards sustainable living
Important considerations in planning a sustainable city include how best to plan its infrastructure for coordinating transport, water, waste and energy, and these will form core research questions in the ReVISIONS project. Although the research focuses on London, the Greater South East and the North East of England, the project also looks beyond the UK, to Beijing, São Paulo and Los Angeles city regions, providing a valuable international perspective. As the world moves towards greater urbanisation, the team’s goal is to deliver innovative and practical guidelines on how best to plan cities for sustainable and economic growth, as well as for improved quality of life for the billions of people who live in them.
ReVISIONS: Regional Visions of Integrated Sustainable Infrastructure Optimised for Neighbourhoods
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