LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
THE GRAND CHALLENGE OF
SUSTAINABLE CITIES
palette
Summer 2009
£5.00
paradigm
The UCL
Grand Challenges
UCL began as a radical, struggling upstart on
the fringes of London. Its founding principles
of innovation, accessibility and relevance were
intended to disrupt the status quo of England’s
establishment – simply because that was the
most effective way to enhance social justice
and opportunity.
Almost two centuries later – following the exploration, discovery
and application of knowledge undertaken by generations of
researchers – we have grown into one of the world’s leading
universities, now in the heart of one of the world’s most
cosmopolitan cities. The breadth, depth and quality of our current
research exceeds the imagination even of our visionary founders.
Despite this advancement, we remain intent on disrupting
the status quo – simply because that is the most effective way
to eliminate the world’s unnecessary suffering, destruction,
conflict and inequity.
Transcendent partnerships
Profound outcomes result from great minds acting in combination.
Bringing together differing perspectives, understandings and
procedures generates novel solutions. The world’s most pressing
problems are complex and systemic. Their resolution requires
more than interdisciplinary collaboration; it demands partnership
transcending the boundaries between disciplines. Implementation
of the UCL Research Strategy is the mechanism through which
such transcendency will be achieved.
UCL Grand Challenges
As part of the UCL Research Strategy, we have identified areas
in which new interdisciplinary partnerships can thrive, and
where UCL’s critical mass will deliver novel achievements.
We call these the Grand Challenges.
They are global in significance and will draw on our expertise right
across the arts and humanities, the built environment, biomedical
sciences, laws, life sciences, mathematical and physical sciences,
and social and historical sciences.
Our initial Grand Challenges are:
A world to transform
The world is in crisis. Billions of us suffer from illness and disease,
despite the existence of proven preventions and cures. Life in our
cities is under threat from social tension, pollution and climate
change. The prospect of global peace and cooperation remains
under assault from tensions between our nations, faiths and
cultures. Our quality of life – actual and perceived – appears
to be diminishing despite technological advances.
These are global problems, and we must resolve them if future
generations are to be provided with the chance to flourish.
UCL – London’s global university – has the opportunity and
the obligation to contribute to tackling the major problems
facing the world.
Dynamic expertise
Across the breadth of academic disciplines – from neuroscience
to urban planning, from security to health informatics and
environmental law – our world-leading researchers apply their insight,
creativity and daring to the planet’s major intellectual, cultural,
scientific, economic, environmental and medical challenges.
ıı sustainable cities
ıı global health
ıı intercultural interaction
ıı human wellbeing.
Our Research Strategy
We are positioning ourselves to build exponentially on our
contribution to these objectives. We are forming alliances and
collaborations, across multiple disciplines, focused on issues
of global significance. We are removing internal barriers to
interdisciplinary collaboration. We are establishing mechanisms
whereby our expertise and analysis of these challenges can be
brought into forums to engage funding agencies, opinion formers,
legislators and the public.
This document outlines our recent activity in the Grand Challenge
of Sustainable Cities.
External engagement is central to our vision. We invite you to
deploy your own expertise and objectives in partnership with ours
– simply because together we can transform the world.
Our academics deliver solutions.
We embrace and celebrate the outstanding problem- and
curiosity-driven research conducted by individuals and small groups.
However, we can only address major challenges by harnessing our
collective expertise, by working across and
beyond traditional disciplines.
Professor David Price
UCL Vice-Provost (Research)
Find out more: www.ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges
palette
THE GRAND CHALLENGE OF
SUSTAINABLE CITIES
Summer 2009
premise
Why ‘palette’?
UCL declines to adopt a narrow view of
sustainability. Sustainabilities of ecology, aesthetics,
health, economics, culture, equity and intellect:
these are among our concerns, but not their totality.
Our great strengths are the variety of prisms through which we can
examine the sustainability of cities and the range of methodologies
with which we can bring about change. Within and beyond disciplines
from history to architecture, philosophy to computer science,
archaeology to energy studies, planning to transport, our academics
all have significant contributions to make. That range of expertise,
analysis, perspectives and concerns is our palette.
This, the inaugural issue of ‘palette’, is the embodiment of a vision for
the representation of our work on the Grand Challenge of Sustainable
Cities. That vision was formulated and articulated by Craig Patterson,
Director of UCL Grand Challenges, who regrettably did not live to see
the journal launched. Craig’s enthusiasm, commitment, humour,
intelligence and dynamism continue to inspire all who were fortunate
enough to spend time with him.
In his relatively short time at our university, Craig arrived at the
conclusion that UCL, through the Grand Challenges, could make major
contributions to humanity’s circumstances. The underlying philosophy
of the programme is that solutions to complex and systemic problems
emerge only when different kinds of expertise and methodologies are
brought together: that our collective wisdom is greater than the sum
of our expertise.
Although the Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities is still in its
formative period, the collected works on the pages of this issue include
a wealth of cross-disciplinary collaborations already generating results.
The basis of our work is partnership; if there is a role you can play,
please let me know.
Nicholas Tyndale
Communications Director, UCL Grand Challenges
+44 (0)20 7679 8799
n.tyndale@ucl.ac.uk
Find out more: www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities
progress
WORKING ON
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
SECTION 1
portfolio
LOOKING AT
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
SECTIONS 2 & 4
perspective
THINKING ABOUT
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
SECTION 3
pages
WRITING ON
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
SECTION 5
participation
ENGAGING IN
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
SECTION 6
Design studiospecial.com
ISSN 1759-8494
100%
This publication was printed on recycled paper using
only vegetable-based inks.
All paper waste from the manufacturing of this publication
was recycled and reused.
Preservation Offset 100 (100% recycled fibre consisting
50% pre consumer 50% post consumer waste).
30%
Preservation Gloss 55 (30% recycled post consumer waste,
25% pre-consumer waste, 45% FSC accredited virgin fibre).
Captions and credits for the main photos are on the inside
back cover. Many of them are entries in the UCL Graduate
School’s ‘Research Images as Art/Art as Research Images’
annual competition. Find out more: www.ucl.ac.uk/gradschool
progress
SECTION 1
WORKING ON
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
DOCTORAL TRAINING
SEMINAR SERIES
80 PhDs in energy reduction funded
The sustainability of megalopolises examined
A new Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Energy Demand
Reduction & the Built Environment – a collaboration between
the UCL Energy Institute and Loughborough University – was
funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research
Council in Spring 2009.
A series of six seminars in 2009 brought together expertise
from across UCL to address the problem of sustainability and
the megalopolis. A report on ‘Sustainability & the Megalopolis:
Facing the urban reality of the 21st century’ will be published
in late 2009.
The centre will receive £5.8 million over the next eight years to
support 40 students through a four-year doctorate programme in
energy-demand reduction in buildings. A further 40 students will
be supported from the partner universities’ own funds. The first
intake of students will join in Autumn 2009.
The strategic aim is to educate the next generation of highly
skilled and broadly based energy researchers to lead and
support the complex, multidisciplinary task of driving down
energy demand and CO2 emissions from the UK building stock.
This award brings UCL’s number of CDTs to nine, with a total of
390 PhD places. Existing UCL CDTs include Security Science
(UCL Centre for Security & Crime Science), Virtual Environments,
Imaging & Visualisation (UCL Computer Science and UCL Bartlett
School) and Urban Sustainability & Resilience (UCL Civil,
Environmental & Geomatic Engineering and UCL Bartlett School).
The CDT bid was led by the UCL Energy Institute, a new body
bringing together a wide range of perspectives, understandings
and procedures in energy research, transcending the boundaries
between academic disciplines. In particular, it develops and
undertakes research in the area of energy-demand reduction,
to improve energy security and facilitate a transition to a
low-carbon economy.
Yvonne Rydin, Professor of Planning, Environment & Public Policy,
is Co-Director (Cities & Climate Change) of the UCL Environment
Institute, which organised the seminars. She said:
“We live in an era of urbanisation but also of increasing urban scale.
Not only are cities getting bigger, but they are increasingly best
seen as forming parts of urban regions with complex internal
interconnections. Such megalopolises are increasingly going to
define the urban experience in the 21st century. The seminars
addressed critical questions: Can a megalopolis ever
be sustainable? Are megalopolises particularly vulnerable
to climate change and other 21st-century hazards? How can
they be made more resilient?”
Sponsored by Bridging the Gaps (see page 1.2), the seminars were
‘Climate Change and the Megalopolis’, ‘Transport, Energy & Water
Infrastructure’, ‘Sustainability and the Megalopolises’, ‘Health,
Climate Change and the Megalopolis’, ‘Security, Resilience and the
Megalopolis’, ‘Sustainability, Society and Culture in the Megalopolis’
and ‘Policy Frameworks for Megalopolises: Economics, planning
and governance’.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.1
INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION
Bridging the Gaps invests in sustainability
Bridging the Gaps began at UCL in Summer 2008, fuelling
interdisciplinary research in all aspects of sustainable cities,
particularly in the context of climate change. The three-year
£250,000 scheme is funded by the Engineering & Physical
Sciences Research Council.
Under its Open Programme, Bridging the Gaps made awards
to researchers in 12 UCL departments. Initially the awards were
up to £1,000, but since the beginning of 2009 the awards have
been increased to £2,000. Recipients included:
ıı Dr Alexandre Frediani (UCL Development Planning Unit) and
Dr Jean-Francois Trani (Leonard Cheshire Disability & Inclusive
Development Centre at UCL), who visited Project Why in New
Delhi to learn about the work that is being done in developing
countries to provide sustainable urban spaces for people with
disabilities
ıı Dr Liora Malki-Epshtein (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic
Engineering), a lecturer in fluid mechanics, and Dr Serge Guillas
(UCL Statistical Science), a functional data analyst, who worked
together to develop a model that relates the dispersion of
traffic-related pollution in an urban street canyon to traffic
density. Potential benefits of this work are a reduction in the
impact of pollution on human health at street level, and
increases in urban energy efficiency. Dr Malki-Epshtein and
Dr Guillas subsequently received funding under the Staff
Exchange Programme, allowing them to work on calibrating
a computational fluid dynamics model based on the laboratory
data that they gathered earlier.
The ‘sandpit’ also made £30,000 available to allow
interdisciplinary teams to start looking at four projects:
ıı ‘Modelling How Nano-Scale Processes Relate to Macroscale
Function’, led by Dr Alexandra Olaya-Castro (UCL Physics
& Astronomy)
ıı ‘Duracoat: Using Nanoscience to Protect Wood’, led by
Dr Nikos Karadimitriou (UCL Bartlett School of Planning)
ıı ‘Pseudo-Living Material Modification’, led by Dr Matija Strlic
(UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies)
ıı ‘Novel Nanostructures for Water Purification & Treatment’,
led by Dr Felicity Sartain of Bio Nano Consulting, which is
part-owned by UCL.
In Winter 2009, Bridging the Gaps held its first ‘sandpit’ event,
‘Little Green Things: Nanotechnology for sustainability
challenges’. Nanotechnology researchers joined researchers
from other departments – including the UCL Bartlett School of
Architecture, UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment and UCL
Statistical Science – to explore current sustainability challenges
and the potential for nanotechnology to provide solutions.
Bridging the Gaps also provided funding for symposia including
‘Sustainability and the Megalopolis’ (see page 1.1) and ‘Climate
& Uncertainty Symposium’. The latter, organised by Dr Julien
Harou (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering) and
Dr Richard Chandler (UCL Statistical Science), addressed the
impact of uncertainties in climate predictions on the ability to
forecast the effects of climate change. Presentations covered
hydrology and aquatic systems, the built environment, health
impacts of climate change, developments in climate models,
statistical methods and downscaling.
The Visiting Scholar Fund also made it possible for Professor
John Friedman (UCLA) to give the inaugural Professor Sir Peter
Hall Annual Lecture, ‘Encounters with Development Planning’.
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Award for Victorian refurbishment
A Victorian house in Camden refurbished for energy efficiency
by UCL Bartlett researchers won the ‘Low Energy Upgraded
Social Housing Project of the Year’ at the 2008 Sustainable
Housing Awards.
Professor Robert Lowe and Dr Ian Ridley played a major part in
the design and implementation of the energy-efficient
refurbishment measures, which is expected to lead to an 80%
drop in the house’s carbon emissions. The researchers were
funded by UrbanBuzz (see page 1.3), a UCL-led sustainable
communities programme of knowledge exchange.
The carbon-saving ‘EcoHome’ is an experiment led by Camden
Council and UCL to cut emissions from a house built in 1850 by up
to four-fifths. Professor Lowe was involved in teaching construction
workers how to make 17 St Augustine’s Road as airtight as
possible. Dr Ridley designed and installed a monitoring system to
measure the heat and electricity used by the house, and humidity
sensors to check the air quality in the home. Improvements to the
house included floor, wall and roof insulation, solar UV panels, solar
hot water, heat-recovery ventilation and double-glazed windows.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.2
The house is one of only three ‘ecohomes’ being monitored
for energy performance in the UK.
Professor Tadj Oreszczyn, Head of the Bartlett School of
Graduate Studies and Director of Environmental Design
& Engineering, said:
“The house is in a conservation area and has been refurbished to
reduce carbon emissions by 80%, making it significantly better
than most new houses built today. The predicted energy costs
should be around £5 a week, which for a six-bedroom Victorian
house – three times the size of a typical UK house – is
astonishingly low.
“During a typical winter day the house should only
require around 3.5kW of heat input, compared with
most modern domestic boilers rated at 12–24kW. It is
hoped that this project will lead onto further low-carbon
collaborations between UCL and Camden Council.”
COMMUNITY TOOLS
UrbanBuzz launches final publication
UCL celebrated its UrbanBuzz: Building Sustainable
Communities programme with a publication, ‘The Complete
UrbanBuzz’ (see page 5.6), in Summer 2009.
In 2007 UCL received an unprecedented £5 million award
from the Higher Education Innovation Fund, and leveraged
that amount up to £7.75 million, to create a unique two-year
knowledge-exchange programme, the outcomes of which are
described in the final publication. UCL used this ‘risk capital’
to unlock potential by funding 27 projects, most of which have
delivered new tools and processes grounded in the evidence
base for the benefit of those interested or engaged in creating
and shaping the places in which people live.
Alan Penn (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies),
Professor of Architectural & Urban Computing, provided
the academic lead on the programme. He said:
“ All the UrbanBuzz projects delivered different
kinds of lasting change to their target communities.
Some have exceeded beyond expectations; others
have faced insuperable challenges. The accounts in
this book give some idea of what has been achieved
and lessons learned.”
UrbanBuzz projects tackling many of the current barriers
to the building of sustainable communities included:
ıı the impact of climate change on the Mayor of London’s
transportation strategy
ıı spatial mapping techniques relating to antisocial behaviour
and designing out crime
UrbanBuzz Choir at the Kunsthaus in
Graz, Austria, a public space designed
by the UCL Bartlett School of
Architecture’s Professor Sir Peter
Cook and Professor Colin Fournier
ıı energy-use reduction through refurbishing London’s
Victorian housing stock
ıı urban agriculture and Thames Gateway stakeholder
governance and management
ıı understanding cultural demographics and how to design
for the shifting populace.
David Cobb, UrbanBuzz Programme Director, said:
David Cobb with the UrbanBuzz
banner on top of Cerro Aconcagua,
Argentina, the highest mountain
outside of Asia
‘“The Complete UrbanBuzz’ tells a story of risky
ventures and triumph over unreasonable logistics and
deadlines. The programme will be remembered by its
more than 150 participating organisations for its
unique culture of openness and its focus on outcomes.
The enduring human and virtual networks created
by UrbanBuzz will continue to be harnessed by
UCL to help it deliver future aspirations, such as the
Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities, the planned
new Thames Gateway Institute for Sustainability,
the UCL Environment Institute, the UCL Urban
Laboratory and the new UCL Energy Institute,
to name just a few.”
PROGRESS SECTION 1.3
URBAN STUDIES
Inaugural year for interdisciplinary MSc
The UCL Urban Laboratory launched a new MSc
in Urban Studies in Autumn 2008, taking advantage
of the range of expertise on offer at UCL. This unique
course is a collaboration between four faculties:
UCL Arts & Humanities, the UCL Bartlett School,
UCL Engineering Sciences and UCL Social &
Historical Sciences.
Students take two core modules in ‘Urban Imaginations’
and ‘City, Space & Power’, then choose from more than
20 optional modules including ‘Creative Cities’, ‘Urban
Design’, ‘Asian Cities in a Globalising South’, ‘Italian
Cinema & the City’ or ‘Post-Colonial Theory & the
Multicultural City’.
The first cohort of students was highly multidisciplinary,
with backgrounds in fields such as anthropology,
architecture, geography, sociology and political
science, as well as international, from countries
including Greece, Portugal, Russia and Taiwan.
The course is also a means for the UCL Urban
Laboratory, which was formally launched in Spring
2009, to strengthen its links with urban practice,
through the support and interest of companies such
as Arup Associates, Alan Baxter & Associates,
Terry Farrell and Partners, and EDAW, as well as
its public-sector engagement with CABE, the
Department for Culture, Media & Sport and the
London boroughs of Hackney and Camden.
Regan Koch, one of this year’s students, said:
“I came to the MSc with a background of teaching
secondary-level geography and a desire to further
engage with critical concepts and theoretical debates
in the field. The knowledgeable and supportive
members of staff, as well as the diverse viewpoints
and interests of fellow students, enriched my
understanding and enthusiasm for a vast range
of interdisciplinary topics. Studying within the
cosmopolitan context of London provided a fantastic
opportunity to benefit from the wealth of expertise,
institutions, places and events that make up the city.
I would strongly recommend the course to anyone
interested in building a foundation of theoretical
and analytical approaches to understanding life
in the contemporary city.”
Students visiting Battersea
Power Station
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
Making sustainable cities through sustainable universities
A symposium on ‘The Sustainable University: Relating
ecological thinking, learning and research’, held at UCL in
Autumn 2008, drew together researchers and policymakers
interested in the role of the university in sustaining the world.
An important focus was the role of the university in making
sustainable cities, building on the idea that many big universities
are in effect small cities – with their own libraries, theatres,
museums, gyms, offices, housing hospitals, parking and
stores – and with a correspondingly significant environmental
impact in terms of the use of energy and other resources and
waste generation. However, the main theme of the symposium
was that universities also offer great opportunities for reconfiguring
learning and networking, making them an interesting laboratory
and breeding ground for the larger-scale social, economic,
environmental and cultural regeneration of the city.
Dr Jane Holder (UCL Laws), Reader in Environmental Law,
organised the event, which was hosted by UCL Laws,
the UCL Environment Institute and the UK Centre for
Legal Education. She said:
“However we might currently map the journey to the sustainable city
through sustainable policies and practice in universities, a major
trajectory is community engagement. For this reason, an important
outcome of the symposium is the Legal Action & Research for
Communities Clinic (LARCC), a project initiated by UCL Laws in
partnership with Capacity Global, a social enterprise,
non-profitmaking organisation and environmental justice pioneer.
“LARCC provides UCL students with valuable experience in
the NGO sector and grounds their legal learning and research
in practice. Important lessons are learnt by the students from
their research and giving advice to local communities, such
as the political realities of power, the numbness of administrations
and organisations to a range of social and environmental
injustices, and, most importantly, the role – and also limits – of law
and lawyers.”
The LARCC partnership project currently fosters ongoing
connections between legal academics, law students and local
communities, an example of ‘comprehensive local innovation’ – an
approach that seeks to draw upon the university’s diverse human
expertise and energy and the global reach of its inhabitants and
invest these in local actions with global scholarly significance.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.4
The Experience of Recovery
DESIGN STRATEGY
A new recovery package for the USA
Professor CJ Lim (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture),
UCL Pro-Provost for Canada, Mexico and the USA, has
proposed six design strategies to bring about an urban
renaissance in the USA.
Professor Lim said:
“The USA is a nation built on agriculture, and it
still exports more food than any other country.
Yields are high relative to other countries, but
40–50% of food ready for harvest is never
consumed. In order to keep the nation at the
vanguard of food production, and to be a model
that can be replicated worldwide, transferring
food production towards the cities would save
consumers and manufacturers tens of billions
of dollars per year and keep wastage to a
minimum. The proposed strategies address how
the USA might recover from its current woes.”
The strategies advocated in ‘Imagining Recovery USA’ are:
ıı Lexicon of Urban Agriculture – the reintegration of
cultivated land within an urban economical and
ecological context
ıı Site – positioning farming within the city, taking advantage
of beneficial adjacencies of programme and function,
utilising solid waste and greywater, and reclaiming the
public realm
ıı Cultivating Community – the global recession as an
opportunity, enabling society at large to realign itself with
a grounded value system that repudiates rampant
consumerism and exploitation
ıı The New American Dream – visualising an alternative
reality that can be shared with society to overcome cultural
bias and financial conservatism
ıı From Soil to Table – the citizen farmer will harvest crops
from the concrete jungle, cutting unnecessary carbon
emissions in a single stroke
ıı The Perpetual Motion Machine – channeling urban waste
back into farming, which in turn feeds the cities, creating
a closed production cycle that is self-perpetuating.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.5
SOLAR BEACON
Paving the way ahead for street lighting
A six-metre tower of solar-powered multicoloured
lights designed by Dr Beau Lotto (UCL Institute
of Ophthalmology) was installed in Shoreditch,
London, in Autumn 2008.
The tower, officially known as the Beacon, was
commissioned by Shoreditch Trust, a charitable
regeneration agency, funded through the Department
for Communities & Local Government’s New Deal for
Communities programme. The Beacon produces its
own electricity through a collection of solar panels and
unique paving slabs, which are partially made from
recycled local bottle-glass. At night, the batteries use
their stored-up solar power to light the Beacon from
within using fluorescent tubes, according to the volume
of passers-by.
Dr Lotto said:
“The Beacon is an experiment into the potential of
turning the ground on which we walk into areas for
harvesting energy from the sun. Every day we will
measure how much energy is generated by the path
made of glass and solar panels. If it has been good
weather and enough energy is harvested, the Beacon
will light up during the night. If the weather has been
rubbish and too little energy has been harvested, it
won’t – which means people will be able to get a more
intuitive sense of what is and what is not possible with
solar power.
“It’s also a social experiment into ownership and social
ecology: the community that took the risk to support
this project also owns the solar-energy system I
invented for it. Half of the money made from future
sales will go back to fund social projects in the local
London area through Shoreditch Trust.”
The Beacon: a solar and
social experiment
URBAN HEALTH
Mumbai project findings
Members of the City Initiative for Newborn Health
– a Mumbai programme of which the UCL Institute
of Child Health (ICH) is a lead partner – presented
findings at the Autumn 2008 International Conference
on Urban Health.
Dr David Osrin (UCL ICH) said:
“The initiative has been running for three years, during
which we have introduced a number of new threads
concerned with the need to think about cities and
health. We have therefore begun to work on issues of
women’s empowerment, equity in healthcare and the
complexities of a system that involves both public and
private healthcare.”
Child in Mumbai slum –
Rebecca Sherman (Society
for Nutrition, Education &
Health Action)
PROGRESS SECTION 1.6
Neena Shah More and Sushma Shende, who head
the initiative’s community and health-service strands,
briefed an international audience on the success
of interventions with community women’s groups,
research on health inequalities within slum
communities, the introduction of maternity-care
services at health posts in slum areas and the use
of the organisational approach of Appreciative Inquiry
in urban-health development.
BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Renewal for the UCL Space Group
The UCL Bartlett’s Space Group received a renewed five-year
Platform Grant – designed to underpin the research work
of world-leading groups – from the Engineering & Physical
Sciences Research Council in Spring 2009.
The £1.2 million grant – a very rare second renewal of a Platform
Grant – will allow the UCL Space Group a great deal of flexibility
in terms of how it develops basic research and applies it to urban
scenarios. Alan Penn (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies),
Professor of Architectural & Urban Computing, leads the group
and is incoming Dean of UCL Built Environment. He said:
“We will be developing a better understanding of the effects of the
way we construct the built environment on the way communities
form and interact with that environment. The flexibility allowed by
a Platform Grant is crucial. In the past, for example, we’ve used
it to bring in new specialists as well as to retain key staff to
investigate the relationship between spatial patterns and
observed patterns of social use.”
The group’s future work will focus on three areas:
ıı multiscale spatial systems – expanding detailed work on
the street, neighbourhood and city levels to the regional
and continental scales
ıı building design for the digital era – understanding the changing
nature of organisations, as they respond to new technologies,
service modes and globalisation, and their relation to human
behaviour, cultures and the spatial environment
ıı adaptive design and fabrication – the incorporation of new
technologies into every aspect of the design, procurement,
fabrication, construction and operation of the built form.
Professor Alan Penn
SPACE-SYNTAX ANALYSIS
What makes town centres work?
Researchers on the ‘Towards Successful Suburban Town
Centres’ project presented their findings to a group of
policymakers, planners and local stakeholders involved
with London’s outer suburbs in a Spring 2009 workshop.
The aim of the project – funded by the Engineering &
Physical Sciences Research Council – is to develop an
integrated methodology to enable the visualisation and
analysis of the structure of streets and the layout of
buildings in suburban town centres, in combination with
information about the people who live and work in them.
Researcher Dr Laura Vaughan (UCL Bartlett School of
Graduate Studies), Senior Lecturer in Urban & Suburban
Settlement Patterns, said:
“We have used space-syntax methodology in a geographical
information system to arrive at a novel understanding of the
relationship between urban form and patterns of land use.
Our initial findings suggest that the success of suburban
town centres depends on the ability of their built
environments to adapt to social and economic change by
facilitating pedestrian movement around an extended
central area. Centres that support a wide range of locally
generated activity are likely to be more resilient in the face
of change than, for example, retail monocultures.”
Local vitality is sustained by an
adaptable street pattern
The workshop provided an opportunity for the project
team to find out how their research could be used to
guide the formulation of planning policies aimed at
improving the long-term economic, environmental and
social sustainability of suburban town centres.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.7
BLOOMSBURY DEVELOPMENT
The UCL Bloomsbury Project reports
The inaugural conference of the Bloomsbury Project, ‘Aspects
of 19th-Century Bloomsbury’, was held at the Wellcome Trust
in Summer 2008.
Opened by Professor Rosemary Ashton (UCL English Language
& Literature), co-head of the project, the conference comprised a
series of taster lectures. These gave the delegates – who included
members of local associations in Bloomsbury and Camden –
a flavour of different Bloomsbury research projects.
Mary Ward House, Tavistock Place,
built in 1897 to give universal access
to educational and social amenities
– Dr Deborah Colville (UCL English
Language & Literature)
The three-year Bloomsbury project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust,
brings together a range of researchers from across several disciplines
and institutions. The aim of the project is to piece together an archive,
illustrating 19th-century Bloomsbury’s development from swampy
rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life.
Presentations included the portrayal of Russell Square in fact and
fiction, educational reform in Bloomsbury and medicine in Bloomsbury.
SPACE SYNTAX
Two decades connecting research to practice
UCL consultancy Space Syntax Limited is celebrating its
20th anniversary in 2009. The company is a key agent in
communication and collaboration between academic
research and professional practice for sustainable cities.
Tim Stonor, a UCL Bartlett School graduate who is Managing
Director of Space Syntax Limited, says:
“We work closely with UCL in shaping knowledge
to advance urban theory and technology. This is
a reciprocal process: UCL research delivers ideas,
tools and methodologies that help us address the issues
our clients face – for example, in the re-urbanisation
of unplanned settlements or the transformation
of motorways into boulevards. In return, we identify
new research questions and help to design the research
focus for UCL staff and students. Many of our
staff are UCL graduates and many of our interns
are UCL students.”
PROGRESS SECTION 1.8
Analysis of pedestrian activity in
Trafalgar Square before (left) and
after (middle) its redesign (right).
Space syntax is an advanced spatial technology as well as
a highly influential theory of architecture and town planning,
originally developed in the 1970s by Professor Bill Hillier and
his colleagues at UCL. Research using space syntax, backed
up by the experience from live projects, shows how:
ıı the street network powerfully shapes movement patterns and
flows in cities
ıı this relation in turn shapes the patterns of social and economic
value that make places sustainable
ıı spatial segregation and social disadvantage are related in cities
ıı places that harness the potentials of space can transform
themselves through their planning and design.
The company has offices in London, Sydney, Brussels, Durban,
Stockholm, Tokyo, Boston, Jeddah, Bucharest and São Paulo.
Perhaps its best-known project was the rejuvenation of London’s
Trafalgar Square, completed in 2003, primarily through advanced
analysis of pedestrian activity. The result is a vibrant public space
in the centre of London. Space Syntax Limited’s current projects
include the replanning of the entire city of Jeddah in Saudi
Arabia, as well as the redesign of social housing estates
throughout the UK.
Community groups engaged in
participatory mapping
MAPPING CONFERENCE
Participatory mapping as a catalyst for change
The ‘Mapping for Sustainable Communities’ conference in
Summer 2008 brought more than 110 participants to UCL from
across the UK and Europe, to discuss the applications and
developments within participatory mapping and participatory
geographical information science (PGIS) in the UK.
The conference‘s major themes included key concepts and the
theory of PGIS, practical approaches to PGIS, advantages and
limitations of participatory mapping and PGIS, the need for PGIS
to act as a catalyst for change, and communities’ experiences of
mapping projects.
It was organised by Dr Muki Haklay (UCL Civil, Environmental
& Geomatic Engineering), a senior lecturer in GIS, as part of
the UrbanBuzz (see page 1.3) project ‘Mapping for Sustainable
Communities’. He said:
“The conference offered the unique opportunity for
researchers to exchange views on the effectiveness of
various methodological approaches to PGIS as well
as to discuss these approaches with practitioners
working on the ground with communities. In addition,
community groups shared experiences from their own
mapping work, which is being supported by London
21 and UCL, allowing researchers and practitioners
alike to learn from this experience. This unique event
offered an opportunity for individuals to meet and
network with those outside their immediate field
of work, bringing together the wide and varied
interdisciplinary community working to develop
and improve the exciting field of community and
participatory mapping.”
Participants included Kieron Stanley, Principal Social Scientist
in the Environment Agency, and Louise Francis, Mapping &
Development Project Coordinator in the London 21
Sustainability Network. Working sessions addressed issues
such as:
ıı how professional agencies can work with and support
community organisations
ıı what empowerment is being facilitated with information
ıı the balance between community inclusion and action
ıı techniques used in community mapping.
Community showcases through poster presentations and open
questions also connected academics and practitioners to local
concerns and experiences.
A further development to arise from the UrbanBuzz project is
a new social enterprise, Mapping for Change, established by
UCL and London 21. It is developing processes which use
maps, both online and offline, at a local and regional scale, to
help voluntary organisations, local authorities, developers and
communities understand and change the places in which they
live. The processes enhance participation by enabling people
to identify the kind of information they want on a map, to decide
how it should be presented and to use this information to shape
their community.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.9
‘Punch’, 3 July 1858
‘Punch’, 21 July 1855
Both reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd.,
HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
www.punch.co.uk
150 years after the Great Stink: Stinkfest
The UCL Environment Institute brought together geographers,
scientists, engineers and town planners in Summer 2008 for
‘Stinkfest’. The one-day conference marked 150 years since the
Great Stink of London and analysed the environmental issues
facing London in the 21st century.
Dr Sarah Bell (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering),
the institute’s co-director, said:
“The Great Stink was massively important for the capital. 150 years
ago the River Thames was practically an open sewer and it took
the stinking misery of the summer of 1858 to prompt the
government into taking action – something which ultimately led to
the creation of the modern sewerage system. London and other
world cities face another ‘Great’ problem, namely climate change.
Can London again rise to the environmental challenge, reduce its
carbon footprint and protect its citizens from the inevitable
consequences of climate change? These are the kind of issues
that were discussed at StinkFest.”
In addition to discussion panels and Q&A sessions, presentations
at StinkFest included:
ıı how recent ecological gains in the Thames Basin could be
undone by climate change, by Dr Bell
ıı an examination of the conflict that arises between the various
groups that live near, work on and plan for the future of the
Thames, by Jill Goddard (Thames Estuary Partnership)
ıı how the Thames Tideway Tunnel will capture and treat millions of
tonnes of storm sewage, preventing it from entering the river, by
Phil Stride (Thames Water)
ıı questioning how effective London governance can be in
delivering an environmentally sustainable future, by Professor
Yvonne Rydin (UCL Bartlett School of Planning).
PROGRESS SECTION 1.10
WATER OUTREACH
Developing countries tap water expertise
The UCL Development Planning Unit (DPU) held the first
in a series of water-health workshops in Accra, Ghana,
in Summer 2008.
With a background of increasing urban-slum sprawl around
the world, the five-day meeting, held at the University of
Ghana’s Centre for African Wetlands, focused on the needs
of the developing world and drew participants from
13 Commonwealth countries.
Dubbed an ‘Executive Exposure Programme’, meetings
such as this aim to introduce civil servants and other
water-industry professionals to new ideas and to encourage
international networking.
Dr Julio Davila, a senior lecturer with the UCL DPU, said:
“The programme went extremely well, and included a combination
of classroom lectures, discussions, films and group exercises, and
a day in the field. In the morning, we visited the Old Fadama slum
– a centrally located, highly precarious settlement in an
environmentally sensitive spot – where the group interacted with
the community and water supply and sanitation entrepreneurs.
“Out of the 31 participants in the programme,
all from Africa and Asia, only a handful had
visited a slum before, even though most of them
are responsible for some aspect of water supply
and sanitation in their respective cities and regions.
An eye-opening experience, to say the least.”
EARTHQUAKE VULNERABILITY
Abandoning simplistic assessment methods
Dr Tiziana Rossetto (UCL Civil, Environmental &
Geomatic Engineering) called for traditional barriers
between disciplines – such as engineering and social
sciences – to be overcome in order to advance
earthquake vulnerability assessment, in her
Autumn 2008 UCL Lunch Hour Lecture entitled
‘Earthquake Vulnerability – An engineer’s perspective
with a difference’.
Dr Tiziana Rossetto
In engineering, she noted, earthquake vulnerability is
traditionally thought of as the likelihood of damage
occurring in the built environment under earthquake
loading. Human losses, in terms of deaths and injuries,
are assumed to be linked to the vulnerability of the
built environment and are derived through fairly
simplistic approaches. Societal impact is practically
never assessed, nor are societal composition or
factors of resilience included in the majority of
human-loss calculations.
Dr Rossetto, UCL Lecturer in Earthquake Engineering
& Geohazards, was in one of the first international
teams to visit the region affected by the earthquake
that struck China in Spring 2008. The Earthquake
Engineering Field Investigation Team spent a seven-day
reconnaissance mission in the affected region, with the
aim of recording structural and geotechnical damage.
The UCL Earthquake & People Interaction Centre
(EPICentre), headed by Dr Rossetto, is part of
an international consortium to develop a unique
‘Virtual Disaster Viewer’, a website with satellite
images which will have the data collected from the
disaster zone superimposed on them. The aim is
to produce a way of generating a preliminary
estimate of the damage caused by an earthquake
event, before visiting affected areas, from
satellite imagery.
Dr Rossetto explained:
“There are areas of damage which are
inaccessible on foot during post-disaster surveys,
either because of geographical or political
reasons. We are looking to be able to estimate
damage remotely using satellite images and data
already collected by ground truthing.”
UCL EPICentre brings together earthquake
engineers, social scientists, coastal engineers and
statisticians to provide decision-makers with better
guidance for where and how to invest to mitigate
earthquake losses.
UCL Lunch Hour Lectures, which are free to attend
or view online (www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl) offer the public
an insider’s perspective on cutting-edge research.
INTELLIGENT ENERGY
Open and shut case
New ‘intelligent’ thermal shutters were on display during the UCL Bartlett
Summer 2008 Show, in a small conservatory-type building showing the
possibilities of deployable external insulation over a glazed screen.
Advances in technology mean that shutters could insulate a building on a cold,
dark winter day, open locally on demand on a spring morning and open fully
on a sunny afternoon. The thermal shutters, built into a show pavilion,
automatically open or shut when it is too hot or too cold outside, minimising
loss of heat energy from the pavilion. The shutters are designed to encourage
big windows back into buildings, countering recent trends to reduce window
size to prevent heat loss.
Stephen Gage (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture), Professor of Innovative
Technology, developed the Deployable External Insulation Demonstration
Installation as an UrbanBuzz (see page 1.3) project, with support from
Make Architects, DSP Architecture, the UCL Bartlett Architecture Research
Fund and the UCL Graduate School. Professor Gage said:
“Over the past few centuries, buildings have become lighter with more glass
introduced into their walls. Now windows are shrinking again, sometimes to
medieval proportions, to reduce heat loss from buildings. Heat energy can go
through windows five to 20 times faster than through well-insulated walls.
Sadly, the use of windows to flood spaces with light is being lost, and people
find themselves living drab lives under increasingly dull artificial lighting. We
want to bring big windows back to buildings.”
Deployable External
Insulation Demonstration
Installation at the UCL
Bartlett Summer 2008 Show
Deployable external insulation could be retrofitted to existing buildings to
retain existing window opening sizes, especially to the front elevation of many
old buildings that were constructed to give effective day lighting to main
rooms. The use of natural daylight and sunlight for lighting and heating will
reduce energy loads and CO2 generation.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.11
progress
APPOINTMENTS
MIGRATION DYNAMICS
THAMES GATEWAY
Professor Christian Dustmann (UCL
Economics), was appointed International
Programme Director of the New
Opportunities for Research Funding
Agency Cooperation in Europe (NORFACE)
programme, ‘Migration in Europe – Social,
Economic & Policy Dynamics’.
Professor Malcolm Grant, UCL President
and Provost, was appointed Board Chair
of the new Thames Gateway Institute for
Sustainability, a major centre of excellence
set to support the development of practical
and commercial innovations aimed at
reducing negative impacts on the
environment.
NORFACE is a partnership between
the social-sciences research councils
in 13 European nations, to increase
cooperation in research and research
policy in Europe in the fields of social
sciences. Its migration programme has a
budget of £18 million, while the directorship
is linked to a £1.27 million grant.
The institute has signed a memorandum of
understanding with engineering giant Arup
and Tongii University, China, to promote
collaboration on research in Sustainable
Design & Construction of the Urban
Environment.
AUSTRALIAN ENERGY
HERITAGE LEAD
Professor May Cassar, Director of the
UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage,
was appointed Programme Director of
the new UK Science & Heritage Research
Programme, by the Arts & Humanities
Research Council and the Engineering
& Physical Sciences Research Council.
The programme draws on a range of
disciplinary expertise and resources
in order to transform the ways in which
changes to cultural heritage and its
conservation are understood. One of
the aims is to develop the research
community by building capacity and
supporting new researchers.
UCL SERAus is the outcome of a
partnership agreement between UCL, the
Government of South Australia and Santos
Limited, one of Australia’s largest energy
companies. It will provide a range of
programmes, designed for both new
graduates and established professionals,
to address areas of skills shortage
identified by industry and government,
and provide scientists and engineers
with management skills through courses
designed specifically for the energy sector.
TRANSPORT RESEARCH
ENABLING ARCHITECTURE
Professor Peter Jones (UCL Centre for
Transport Studies) was appointed Director
of the new UK Transport Research Centre
(UKTRC), created by the Economic &
Social Research Council, the Department
for Transport and the Scottish Government
to revolutionise research and knowledge
transfer in transport and the social
sciences. Professor Roger Mackett (UCL
Centre for Transport Studies) will manage
the centre’s knowledge transfer and
engagement activities.
Professor Yvonne Rydin (UCL Bartlett
School of Planning), pictured, and
Dr Pushpa Arabindoo (UCL Geography)
were appointed to the Commission for
Architecture and the Built Environment
(CABE) Enabling Panel.
A core objective of the UKTRC is to bring
new ideas and research capacity from the
social sciences into the transport arena.
It will also develop an extensive programme
of engagement activities to strengthen
links between academics, policymakers
and practitioners.
PROGRESS SECTION 1.12
Professor Tony Owen was appointed
founding Director of the UCL School of
Energy & Resources, Australia (UCL
SERAus), UCL’s first overseas campus.
CABE advises the UK government on
architecture, urban design and public
space. Its panel of specialist enablers
offer expert advice and support to
organisations involved in projects for the
built environment. The UCL academics
will help CABE to develop its recently
launched sustainable cities website and
the associated learning programme.
portfolio
SECTION 2
LOOKING AT
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
Jack’s Garden
Gillian Cope (UCL Anthropology)
“I was researching Japanese gardens in the UK
and this was one of my informant’s gardens –
everything in a Japanese garden is symbolic and
when I asked my informant, Jack, what the poles
symbolised he said, ‘nothing, I just thought they
looked good!’”
PROFILE SECTION 2.1
PORTFOLIO SECTION 2.2
Los Angeles and the technological sublime
The omnipresent slum
Professor Matthew Gandy (UCL Geography)
Rosalina Babourkova
(UCL Development Planning Unit)
“Landscapes next to the Los Angeles River reveal
the complexity of relationships between nature,
technology and modernity in the marginal spaces
of the contemporary city. The term ‘technological
sublime’ has recently emerged as part of a
interdisciplinary attempt to expand our
understanding of landscapes that appear to fall
outside of or in some cases to contradict
established genres of landscape interpretation”
‘That Wonderful Scheme’
Simon Cook (UCL Earth Sciences)
“‘That Wonderful Scheme of Water Supply for
London’ is a quotation from W Whitaker (1921),
describing the New River aqueduct. Completed in
1613, and historically the main source of drinking
water for London, the New River draws much of
its water from a spring line in the Chalk aquifer.
Recently the quality of the spring water and of the
New River has come under threat from a large
industrial pollutant plume originating some 20km
to the west. An example of the best and worst
aspects of engineering in the environment”
“This photo was taken in Mankhurd, a
north-western suburb of Mumbai. The area of
Mankhurd is where the Slum Rehabilitation
Authority, a government agency, is building blocks
of flats (like the one at the back of the photo) to
re-house different kinds of slum dwellers, such as
pavement dwellers or railway slum dwellers.
However, the need for affordable housing in
Mumbai is so great that even in areas such as
Mankhurd, where former slum dwellers are
re-housed, new huts and shacks take up every
piece of empty space. Although the new housing is
supposed to be more hygienic and of superior
quality to the slums, the presence of the open
canal used as a gutter as well as a waste dump
presents new health hazards. The lack of
convenient access between buildings forces people
to use a makeshift, narrow path over the canal”
PORTFOLIO SECTION 2.3
Oil on water 3
Helen Brand (UCL Earth Sciences)
“This photo was taken at the tar pits geological
museum in Los Angeles which is the site
of a natural oil seep”
Con_y Island
Dr Maurizio Gibin (UCL Geography)
“This picture was taken during training in New
York City. At the end of the day I walked around
Coney Island. I shot this photograph while I was
crossing a street in front of Coney Island subway
station. The natural blur and shaking effect added
to the missing “e” suggest the struggle in
rediscovering and reinventing the identity of a
neighbourhood with an uncertain future”
PORTFOLIO SECTION 2.4
perspectives
SECTION 3
THINKING ABOUT
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
Yvonne Rydin
3.2
Learning to change
Matthew Gandy
3.4
Tadj Oreszczyn
3.6
Adriana Allen
3.8
Caren Levy
local tensions
Urbanisation without social justice
is not sustainable
Sustainability and architectural design
3.18
Sustainable cities or
sustainable urbanisation?
Governing London: World city,
Iain Borden
3.15
Our innate ability to think
of new ways to use energy
Future vision of a sustainable
zero-carbon world
Mark Tewdwr-Jones
3.13
Engineers’ identity crisis
Less speculation, more imagination
Mark Maslin
Sarah Bell
3.21
3.10
Michael Batty
3.23
How big can a city get?
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.1
perspective
Yvonne Rydin
Learning to change
We may not know exactly what a sustainable city
will look like; right now we have only a partial
window onto this utopian future. But it is clear that
it will be very different to the way we live now,
radically different. Some of our buildings and public
spaces will be quite strange by present-day
expectations. We will change our travel patterns,
using some familiar but underused modes and
some quite unexpected ones. We will buy new
goods in new locations and using new methods.
Our relationship to urban nature will be transformed.
And we will interface with the water and energy
systems that underpin our urban lifestyles in quite
different ways. Urban life will be a mixture of the
recognisable and the strange.
All this means that we will have to plan, design and build our cities
differently. This is an important challenge for built environment
professionals. It will involve a change in priorities and value sets.
It will involve a creative challenge to imagine new built forms and
public environments. But above all it will involve a learning process.
Central to this is an understanding of how urban living relates to a
variety of natural systems, notably water, energy, biodiversity and
climate systems. We need to understand these systems, their support
for how we live and our impact on their processes.
Then we need to know how contemporary technological systems can
be used and developed in order to change these inter-relationships in
order to reduce our impacts on natural systems. This is not a purely
technological question though. The application and development of
technologies is always dependent on economic, social and political
frameworks. So we need to understand these dependencies,
otherwise new technologies will not deliver the anticipated benefits.
We also need to think about both the social and economic
impacts of following particular technological routes and whether
implementation options can be identified that avoid the downsides
of harm to specific economic sectors and social groups.
If we want to consider how renewable energy systems can be integrated
into the built environment of cities, we need to understand how they
can be made financially viable, both for installation and continued
operation. We need to ensure that the skills are available for installation,
maintenance and operation within specialist labour markets but also
that the users of such systems – the firms and households that occupy
buildings and ultimately use the energy generated – appreciate these
new ways of generating and consuming energy without unexpected
and perverse effects. We need to think about the cost implications for
households and firms and how that might impact on fuel poverty and
the viability of SMEs. We need to think about innovative social and
economic delivery mechanisms for renewable energy such as
community-based biomass Combined Heat and Power plants or wind
turbine schemes, with ownership and management based in the
community group. Or, again, how new forms of institutional
arrangements between energy suppliers, building owners and building
occupiers – such as green leases and local Energy Service Companies
(ESCOs) – could ensure that technological applications go alongside
behavioural change to deliver desired outcomes.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.2
So the learning that is involved in delivering sustainable cities is much
more than knowledge of the right equipment to buy and the right bit
of kit to invest in. Just as sustainability is a holistic concept, so the
learning challenge is also holistic and will place demands on all
disciplines. More importantly it will require the different disciplines
to engage with each other so that the economic incentives work with
social and cultural change, so that all such change supports the
desired technological developments, and so that new technologies
impact on natural systems as expected.
This begs the question of how such learning can best be fostered,
an important question for any university. There are several different
dimensions to learning for sustainable development.
First, it is clear that individuals need new types of knowledge and
understanding. Sustainability needs to be incorporated into all the
courses that educate professionals who contribute to how cities work
and change. Work is already underway to achieve this, with the
backing of disciplinary and professional bodies and the Higher
Education Funding Councils. It is not without difficulties though.
There are the problems of overloading the curriculum, pushing
against established ways of doing things and creating turf-wars
within academe.
Second, it could be argued that we need a new type of professional,
a sustainability professional who has a multidisciplinary education
and is able to see a problem from many different perspectives – social,
economic, technological and political. It would be unrealistic to
imagine that any single professional could encompass all the
knowledge needed to deliver sustainable cities, so perhaps what is
needed is a range of new sustainability professionals – sustainable
energy professionals, sustainable design professionals, etc. Again,
movement is happening towards multi-disciplinary cooperation to
deliver new programmes along these lines.
Third, we need to think about how existing professions engage with
each other and with newly educated professionals. The literature on
learning and knowledge within the social sciences has been
emphasising the importance of knowledge networks in which people
engage with each other and exchange information and understanding,
fostering learning by individuals and within the network as a whole.
In particular, communities of practice have been highlighted as a way
of generating change. Such communities are groups of actors focused
on a specific shared problem; they are identified by agreement on the
nature of that problem and repeated, ongoing exchanges on how to
tackle that problem. The essence of such communities is that
members learn from each other and, importantly, that they come to
change their view of themselves and their work through such
exchanges. Engagement in a community of practice based on a
sustainable cities issues will create a group of people who align
themselves with the sustainability goal and define themselves as
sustainability practitioners.
But, fourth, learning needs to extend beyond the individual to the
myriad organisations that are involved in creating and managing
cities. Knowledge networks and communities of practice can help to
transform the organisations they are based in. But learning by
organisations raises other issues. These include questions as to how far
learning is prioritised within an organisation as opposed to routine
business-as-usual. And does the organisation have clear lines for
disseminating knowledge within the organisation? Are there rewards
Hotel/casino, Macau
– Hang Kei Ho (UCL Geography)
“We don’t know what will actually turn out to be
sustainable in terms of urban living and how to
get there. We need to experiment and to innovate.
That means we need to be allowed to fail”
for learning and using new knowledge? Is there someone
– a knowledge node or knowledge entrepreneur – who can act as
a focal point for the flows of new information, knowledge requests
and learning activities within the organisation?
Perhaps though the most important aspect of learning is –
paradoxically – failing. In universities failure is regarded negatively.
Students are supposed to pass their courses. Research projects are
supposed to achieve their objectives and deliver outputs. Knowledge
generation and acquisition is a journey on an escalator travelling
upwards. But on the journey towards the sustainable city there can be
no such certainty. To return to the start, we don’t know what will
actually turn out to be sustainable in terms of urban living and how
to get there. We need to experiment and to innovate. That means we
need to be allowed to fail. Only by trying out new ways of creating
and changing built environments and new ways of living within cities
can we be sure what will deliver the future that will turn out to be
sustainable. In learning to be sustainable we need some space for
failure as well as success and we need to ensure that organisations are
not so tightly managed that such space is crowded out.
The journey to the sustainable city is not yet mapped and the
exploration will have its ups and down. Without doubt though it
will be an exciting journey, one that we can travel hopefully in the
spirit of learning.
Profile / Professor Yvonne Rydin
Yvonne’s research is within an institutionalist
paradigm looking at the networks and discourses of
local planning. She has studied housing land policy,
urban redevelopment, transport management, local
air quality policy, countryside protection and water
management. Particular interests are processes of
strategy development, public participation, the role of
social capital in planning, and the analysis of policy
discourses.
She has also worked on urban sustainability and its
relationship to urban governance in a multi-level
context. Here there has been a particular focus on
sustainability indicators and on the promotion of
sustainable construction. Learning how to be
sustainable within organisations and governance
structures is a current emphasis, looking across the
public and private sectors. This includes consideration
of the response of the property sector to the climate
change agenda, including adaptation to climate risks.
Yvonne researches planning and development, urban
sustainability and governance for sustainable
development. The current focus of her work is
sustainable construction and progressing towards
zero-carbon built environments. She is the Chair of
the Lead Expert Group for the government’s Foresight
Project on Sustainable Energy Management and the
Built Environment.
Contact
Professor Yvonne Rydin
Professor of Planning, Environment & Public Policy
and Director of Learning & Teaching
UCL Bartlett School of Planning
Co-Director (Cities)
UCL Environment Institute
+44 (0)20 7679 4805
y.rydin@ucl.ac.uk
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.3
perspective
Matthew Gandy
Less speculation,
more imagination
In the early hours of 26 August 2005 a fire swept
through a dilapidated apartment in central Paris
crowded with African immigrants. Among the 17
dead there were 14 children. In April 2005 another
similar fire had killed 24 people, again mostly poor
immigrants. The buildings in which these people
lived were unfit for human habitation: cracked walls,
lead paint, dangerous wiring, infested with vermin.
By 2004 some 100,000 people were searching for
social housing in Paris, a marked increase on ten
years earlier, but only 12,000 homes were allocated
leading to excessive overcrowding1.
Lagos, Nigeria (2003) – Professor Matthew Gandy
(UCL Geography)
In Paris and elsewhere we find the persistence of 19th-century forms
of poverty and human exploitation. In the cities of the global South
the scale of suffering and human degradation is far worse, yet the
technical means to improve urban living conditions are not obscure
– better housing, improved healthcare, modern plumbing and so on.
Despite the efforts of early social scientists to demonstrate the
connections between labour markets and poverty or the role of public
health advocates in forcing improvements in the way cities are
managed we have nonetheless retained nefarious elements of the
19th-century mindset such as the neo-liberal revival of laissez-faire
public policy combined with renewed moral admonitions towards
people living in poverty.
It is striking how the middle-class mix of fear and disdain for the
urban poor remains so powerful today through the proliferation of
gated communities and the clearing away of informal settlements. In
India, for example, the war on the poor has become one of the
dominant elements of environmental demands to “clean up” cities and
remove “encroachers and polluters” 2. Whether in London or Mumbai,
a vast army of cheap labour is needed to allow the urban economy to
function yet the rich increasingly prefer not to mix with these people.
Many architects and planners acquiesce in these processes, seemingly
willing to transform cities into playgrounds for the wealthy where
professional ethics is subsumed by the cult of celebrity, real-estate
speculation and a new homogeneity in urban life 3.
The 19th-century city has left us with a dualistic legacy of “urban”
and “rural” where the supposed benefits of small-town life are
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.4
routinely juxtaposed with the dangers of urban living. The city itself
is characterized as a greedy behemoth gobbling up people and
resources. These antiquated ideas persist today through various forms
of anti-modern architectural and environmental thought. Yet as the
French sociologist Henri Lefebvre argues, it makes little sense to
artificially separate cities from our understanding of society as a
whole: the transformation of the urban and the rural is part of the
same set of processes and the city considered in isolation can never
be properly understood 4.
It is striking how 20th-century utopian ideals in architecture, modern
living and urban design are now in such disrepute: the exhilaration of
speed has been replaced by gridlock and frustration, the high-rise
apartments that were to cut through the gloom and congestion of the
industrial city have become sink estates, and the idea of an inclusive
public realm is now assailed from all sides, whether through the
privatization of public services or the incessant exhortations to
consume.
References
1. David Fickling, ‘Paris apartment fire kills 17’,
‘The Guardian’, 26 August 2005
2. Partha Chatterjee, ‘Are Indian cities becoming bourgeois
at last?’, in Indira Chandrasekhar and Peter C. Seel (eds)
‘body.city: siting contemporary culture in India’
(Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Delhi:
Tulika Books, 2003) p178
3. Jonathan Raban, ‘My own private metropolis’,
‘Financial Times’, 9/10 August 2008
4. Henri Lefebvre, ‘La Révolution urbaine’
(Paris: Gallimard, 1970)
What kind of ideas do we need for the 21st-century city? Certainly
we need to begin by disentangling past thinking: retain the
engineering brilliance of the 19th century, for example, but not
its moral hypocrisy; nurture the 20th-century public realm but not
the autocratic or dysfunctional dimensions to state power.
What kind of distinct ideas are now emerging? An alternative to
conservative environmentalism, for instance, is provided by an
emphasis on the “living city” where the ecological dynamics of urban
space become part of public policy: the aesthetic and biotic diversity
of the city is celebrated and encouraged in order to enliven the urban
experience; urban landscapes are themselves used for the production
of food, the cleansing of water or the improvement of flood defences;
and the artificial distinctions between the “natural” and the “artificial”
are extensively broken down.
“It is striking how the middle-class mix of fear and
disdain for the urban poor remains so powerful today
through the proliferation of gated communities and
the clearing away of informal settlements”
In the political sphere, the idea of secular cosmopolitanism presents
a real alternative to the incessant drift towards greater division and
segregation that is fuelled by poverty and racism but exacerbated by
new forms of religious intolerance. London, for example, despite
recent racist and homophobic attacks, presents a remarkably
successful model of a world city with its long history of incorporating
new communities. It is the “island” function of the city as a safe
haven that links the contemporary metropolis with the medieval
city as a place of sanctuary.
A global commitment to improving human health is also a crucial
component of a new urban politics. There are few areas of public
policy that can so easily be transformed yet have been so
systematically neglected. The scale of the threats demands an
emphasis on the politics of human body in all its cultural, social and
epidemiological complexity. Whether we are engaging with the HIV
threat faced by impoverished women in West Africa or the spread of
dengue fever on construction sites in south Asia there is an urgent
need to pool knowledge and expertise from every discipline in order
to exert maximum leverage on governments, international agencies
and others charged with the responsibility for human health.
Finally, we need to recover the urban imagination in order to enrich
21st-century public culture. From galleries to lidos, carnivals to
theatres, the historic role of cities as generators of ideas must be
recognized and nurtured.
Profile / Professor Matthew Gandy
Matthew completed his PhD at the London School
of Economics in 1992. From 1992 to 1997 he was
a lecturer in the School of European Studies at the
University of Sussex. In 1995 he was a visiting
scholar in the Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning & Preservation at Columbia University,
New York, and since 1997 he has taught at UCL.
His book ‘Concrete and clay: reworking nature in
New York City’ examined five interrelated aspects
to New York’s urban environment: the building of
a modern water supply system; the creation and
meaning of public space; the construction of
landscaped roads; the grassroots environmental
politics of the ghetto; and the contemporary politics of
pollution. It won the 2003 Spiro Kostof award for the
book within the previous two years “that has made the
greatest contribution to our understanding of urbanism
and its relationship with architecture”.
With Professor Alimuddin Zumla, Director of the UCL
Centre for Infectious Diseases & International Health,
he edited ‘The return of the White Plague: global
poverty and the ‘new’ tuberculosis’.
His ESRC-funded project ‘Cyborg urbanization:
Theorizing water and urban infrastructure’ involved
research in Berlin, Lagos, Los Angeles and Mumbai,
and his AHRC-funded project ‘Liquid city’ led to the
production of a film which has just been shown at the
London Documentary Film Festival. In addition to his
research on the metabolic dimensions to urban space
he also writes on the representation of nature and
landscape in the visual arts, including recent essays
on Michelangelo Antonioni and Todd Haynes.
Contact
Professor Matthew Gandy
Professor of Geography
UCL Geography
Director
UCL Urban Laboratory
+44 (0)20 7679 5517
m.gandy@ucl.ac.uk
Less speculation, more imagination!
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.5
perspective
Mark Maslin
Future vision
of a sustainable
zero-carbon world
“ Technological solutions to both emission reductions
What could a future sustainable world look like?
One of the key concerns is climate change and
and adaptation to climate change have occurred at
moving to a zero-carbon world. But many people
a faster and faster rate through the 21st century,
now throw around the terms zero-carbon cities
producing a global developed society unrecognisable
and zero-carbon economy but have no idea how
from that a hundred years previous”
to achieve them. What this article provides is a
look at how our world will have to change to achieve
ıı the house is as water efficient as it is energy efficient. Outside you can see
these goals. Because we must realise that our
the pipework for the rainwater-harvesting system, collecting water into a
buildings, neighbourhoods, transport networks
special tank for feeding through into the house’s plumbing system. Water
and cities will all have to change.
separation is a feature of the house’s plumbing but the household hardly
notice this or the water saving features in the toilets, showers and sinks
Home of the Future
ıı the three-storey town house is part of a group of houses, which
collectively make up the GreenHomes Neighbourhood in Anywhere
Town in Any Country. They are grouped around a pleasant green space
with some play and keep-fit equipment in the centre. There is lots of
greenery, some of it acting as sustainable urban-drainage systems and
the rest as shade from the midday sun. There is a network of local
pathways, which are well lit and well used
ıı close by are local shops, a primary school and a community centre.
The community centre noticeboard is testimony to the amount of local
activities occurring there. Just outside the centre is the express tramway
stop and behind is a small car park with some of the community
electric car-share vehicles and communal bicycles
ıı the house displays its zero-carbon energy certificate in the hallway but
the high levels of insulation in the building fabric are invisible to most
visitors. Next to the certificate is the smart meter. This shows the
remarkably low levels of electricity usage within the house, thanks to
the energy efficiency measures and the solar water heating system on
the roof. But the meter also shows when electricity is being generated
by the household through the photovoltaic cells incorporated into the
roof-tiles, window shutters and other flat surfaces
ıı the house is built to deal with the extreme weather predicted for the
region. High ceilings, solar shading and efficient air conditioning
powered by solar panels for the more frequent heat waves. Raised
ground floor and flood channels in the surrounding area to deal with
floods, especially urban flash floods. Deep foundations prevent damage
to the house from soil shrinkage
ıı there is no garage or off-street parking for the house. Instead there
is a secure cycle store, next to the composting unit. The rest of the
household’s waste goes into a vacuum waste removal system that
also automatically sorts waste for collection and recycling at the
community centre.
Office of the Future
ıı FutureOffices are proud of their new headquarters. Approaching it from
any of a number of nearby bus-stops, tram-stops or the train station,
visitors are often surprised by its attractive design incorporating greenery
at the ground floor, on numerous balconies and right up to the green
roof. The blades of the wind turbines catch the light, giving a clue to how
some of the electricity demands of the occupiers are met
ıı less obvious is the system of district heating pipes that connect the office
building with other local uses – shops, restaurants, the cinema, local
health centre and the college. The mix of users means that the heat
demand is more or less balanced over the day and the week. All these
users are connected in to the area’s combined heat and power unit
ıı however, FutureOffices have found the energy demands of their new
building are much lower than those of its older buildings. The building’s
fabric is highly energy efficient but equally as important is the design that
maximises natural daylight while providing shading during the middle
of the day, even when the sun is at its hottest. This and the natural
internal ventilation system have removed the need for air conditioning
except during extreme heat waves and made for a much healthier
internal environment
ıı FutureOffices have made the health of its workers a key aspect of the
building. The stairs are visible features linking floors, with cafes on
mezzanine levels. These are heavily used; the lifts don’t stop at every floor
so it is often more convenient to use the stairs. In any case, they are
tucked away rather than being the focal point of the lobbies
ıı water efficiency measures have also reduced the water bill hugely.
This is despite a dedicated cycle-and-shower unit on the ground floor,
with secure cycle storage and changing room facilities
ıı most of the office functions are not at ground floor level, however, and
neither are the core services. The building is not far from the river and
flooding has become more common recently, so the ground floor is
flood-proofed to ensure that the next flood will not disrupt business.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.6
Cities of the Future
Economy of the Future
ıı our cities have been transformed across the world. Mixed-use
developments are situated around vibrant public spaces. These spaces
create a strong sense of distinctive place for new developments.
The old is integrated into the new, with high quality urban design
ıı Carbon Auditors Ltd have just opened their new headquarters in
London using all 143 floors of the first zero-carbon skyscraper.
This attests to the huge market created in carbon trading since the
momentous post-2012 international agreement
ıı pedestrians are given priority over the car in the planning of cities.
There are dedicated routes for trams, guided buses and cycles linking
the different land-uses
ıı renewable and alternative energy companies flourish, replacing the old
oil giants as one of the main profit-generating industries in the world.
They have been made so profitable by global carbon trading, which is
driven by the gradually shrinking global cap on carbon dioxide and
other GHG emissions
ıı a mix of micro-generation technologies provides energy for building
users. Combined heat and power and district heating schemes are
routine for new mixed-use developments, some using renewable
fuels. Many of these schemes draw the existing buildings into their
scope as well
ıı greenery abounds on the ground but also on roofs, providing
multi-functional spaces for amenity, leisure, natural habitats and
water drainage. Sustainable urban-drainage systems are standard,
transforming the look of urban areas. Cities are as green and
attractive as the countryside
ıı nearby rivers are managed for their landscape, leisure, and nature
conservation value. But they also form part of urban transport
networks, with riverside cycle paths and walkways. Most importantly,
the riverbanks and surrounding land absorb rainfall run-off and
prevent flooding of built-up areas
ıı such cities encourage people to use their urban areas and to be active
within them. Safe, pleasant and green, cities therefore contribute to the
physical and mental health of their residents all over the world.
ıı technological solutions to both emission reductions and adaptation
to climate change have occurred at a faster and faster rate through the
21st century, producing a global developed society unrecognisable
from a hundred years before. Everything from how plants grow to
how we produce electricity has been improved
ıı contrary to the doom merchants, the global economy in the middle
of the 21st century is growing at nearly 5% per year, twice the yearly
average in the early 21st century. This is due to the increasing flow of
money and expertise to the developing world through the post-2012
agreement and global carbon trading. The increased spending power
of the developing world has stimulated the global economy, benefiting
everyone with increased standards of living. The threat of global
warming thus ultimately led to a more equal distribution of wealth
across the world, and a stronger, faster-growing global economy.
Transport of the Future
ıı local travel is now routinely made with public transport which includes
underground trains, trains, buses, trams, and boats. The majority
of private cars and taxis are electric. A significant proportion of goods
are moved by rail and then efficient electric vans and lorries. Separate
cycle lanes and clear, well-lit pedestrians walkways are provided in all
urban areas
ıı continental travel has been revolutionised as air traffic has been
replaced with Maglev (magnetically levitating) trains travelling at
900 km/h (about 600 mph) using renewable sources of electricity.
These rail networks extend between major cities throughout the world
and fast connections allow you to travel between continents. The first
coast to coast train verses plane race in the USA was won by the train;
as the walk-on walk-off train service removed any lengthy delays which
occurred at the airports
ıı intercontinental travel still uses traditional airplanes but these
super-sized commercial jets carry over 1000 passengers each and are the
most efficient ever made. Flights have become very expensive due to
the global carbon tax on aviation fuel and thus are always operating at
full capacity. They are towed to and from the runway saving a
significant amount of fuel and of course money
ıı by the end of the 21st century resources to fuel the new low-carbon
global economy are running low. This is due to both the huge demand
as the world rapidly develops and strict new global environmental
protection laws. Space exploitation thus becomes cost effective in the
early 22nd century. Carbon tax breaks on international space launches
enables private companies and countries to set up orbiting space
stations and the mining of the Moon begins.
Profile / Professor Mark Maslin
Mark is a leading climatologist with particular
expertise in past global and regional climatic change,
and has published more than 80 papers in journals
such as ‘Science’, ‘Nature’ and ‘Geology’.
He has been awarded grants of more than £3 million,
19 of which have been awarded by the Natural
Environment Research Council. His latest
co-authored paper in ‘Science’ provides a new view
on the causes of human evolution. His areas of
scientific expertise include global warming, causes
of past and future global climate change, ocean
circulation, ice ages, gas hydrates, Amazonia, East
Africa palaeoclimates and human evolution, and
climatic consequences of volcanic eruptions.
In addition Mark has written five popular books, more
than 20 popular articles (eg, for ‘New Scientist’,
‘The Guardian’ and ‘EOS’), appeared on radio and
television, and is consulted regularly by the BBC.
He was a consultant and filmed for the BBC’s highly
successful ‘Supervolcano’ and is currently consulting
for their follow-up series ‘Superstorm’. His latest
popular book is the second edition of the Oxford
University Press ‘Global Warming: A Very Short
Introduction’, a pocket-sized book summarising the
historical background, scientific debate, future
impacts and the politics of global warming.
Contact
Professor Mark Maslin
Professor of Physical Geography and Head
UCL Geography
Director
UCL Environment Institute
Member
UCL Environmental Change Research Centre
+44 (0) 20 7679 0556
mmaslin@geog.ucl.ac.uk
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.7
perspective
Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Governing London:
World city,
local tensions
The institutions of change are constantly
undergoing reform and modernisation, in order
to set a strategic framework for growth and
investment. But choosing an appropriate governing
and institutional framework for London has always
been problematic. With the city serving as the
economic core of the UK’s global position and as
her capital city, London’s effects are felt over a
much wider territory than the administrative
boundary of London alone. Questions have been
addressed continually as to the nature and form of
the governance of London. Should London possess
a city-wide top-level authority? How should this
authority be established and over what
geographical area? What is the relationship
between the national government and London, and
between the South East region within which London
is situated and the city itself? And what is the
governing relationship between London and its
constituent boroughs?
London’s role as the capital city and as the location of central
government, global business interests and the financial markets,
significant arts and cultural facilities, a place of tourism, and as a
renowned worldwide centre for education, have all justified successive
governments’ desire to promote London and its wider region
economically, and to protect the city as a world urban power. A range
of interventions by government have demonstrated a commitment to
promote and strengthen London further over time in the face of
global competition and as the UK’s premier city. This is evidenced by
decisions to support massive regeneration schemes in and around the
capital such as the Thames Gateway, to invest in infrastructure and
transportation developments like the Channel Tunnel rail link, the
extension of Heathrow Airport, and Crossrail, to lead on the Olympic
Games 2012 bid, and to support the city financial hub of London as
a focal point for global business. The provision of highly specialist
support systems for international finance and business generates
economic growth that is in the interests of the UK’s economy.
This is London as the world city, a success story that is physically
bursting out of the urban core, forming new patterns of growth and
pressure around the capital, and causing externalities that Londoners
experience through high prices, housing and transport costs, and
social polarisation, and makes the city one of the world’s most
expensive cities to live and work within. House prices remain ten
times the average London salary and there remain difficulties to house
and accommodate key workers essential to deliver London’s services.
London’s population doubles during the working day as millions of
people commute into the city from a significantly wide and
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.8
increasingly extensive catchment area. The infrastructure necessary to
support this growth and pressure remains archaic and so delay and
frustration have become part of the commuting experience for many.
London has also been a principal gateway for in-migration into the
country, a subject politically controversial, and one ever-folding to the
extent that in 2006, London plays host to 300 different nationalities
of people, speaking 200 different languages. The social and ethnic
mix of London today is in marked contrast to the London of 60 years
ago, when the politicians and planners first attempted to coordinate
change and bring about reconstruction in Patrick Abercrombie’s
Greater London Plan of 1944. It was a subject concerned with
questioning the ability of government to exercise authority over a
significant metropolitan territory, the meaning and extent of London
itself, and of those various populations and communities that make
up the city. These are exactly the same issues that London is facing
today: numerous and overlapping contentions for future direction
between competing interest groups.
These tensions are associated with divisions between advocates of
continuous growth for wider regional and national economic benefit,
and proponents of restraint and environmental – and to some extent
social – protection. They encompass not simply growth vs. protection
interests, but also national and local priorities, and inner London and
outer London contentions. These arguments are persistent, often
hostile, and are played out within a turbulent theatre of governance
which itself is often changing. Generating a vision, strategy and plan
to coordinate change in London is a task that politicians and policy
makers find incredibly difficult to undertake.
London, governmentally and institutionally, is in a continual state
of flux, searching for an institutional fix to govern and coordinate
intervention, while arguing about the delineation of power to
strategise the range of ongoing economic, social, and environmental
problems and bring about change. Since 2000, London has been
governed by an elected Mayor, within a broader governmental
framework provided by: central government; regional governing
structures; local municipalities; an elected London-wide Assembly;
a range of quasi-autonomous central government bodies; and ad hoc
partnerships. There has been little consensus by commentators in the
period since on the right relationship and degree of responsibilities
between these bodies, even though the Mayor was awarded further
powers in 2007, particularly in relation to strategic matters. The
growth of mayoral powers raises significant wider issues concerning
democratic accountability across the region, and serves to highlight
the ongoing and perhaps historic tensions that exist between the
agencies of change on the one hand, and different forms of
democracy and claims to democracy that are indecorously present in
London on the other.
The direct powers of the Mayor remain limited, when compared to
similar offices in other world cities, but he does perform an essential
catalytic and influencing role across agencies, performing an
ambassadorial role both outside the UK and inside government,
and with the business community. This new role has, in turn,
created a new form of integrated strategic planning at the London
metropolitan scale, with a commitment to planning, and a
determination for public, private and voluntary actors to enter into
partnerships to realise development. If anything, this should have
taken some of the political heat out of controversial large-scale
development projects. But the fact that both central and decentralised
government each operates at the Greater London level (through the
Government Office for London and the GLA) exacerbates the
landscape of governance and also leads to a confusion of roles at this
level. There remain huge questions about London’s capacity to deliver
and to galvanise political leadership across multiple competing
agencies, particularly in relation to issues such as planning, housing,
transport, and other public investments.
“There is no doubt that London – whether intentionally
or not – has been given a competitive edge over other
world cities by this institutional structure and flexible
responsive and partnership style of working”
These tensions have been ever-present in London for most of the last
120 years, despite government restructuring and questions over the
division of power and responsibilities. Despite or perhaps because of
this, the surprising point is that London nevertheless seems to have
been highly successful in its transition from a manufacturing to a
global–financial city and remains an attractive place to live and work
with new migrants from within and outside of the UK. This has been
achieved, perhaps in part, because the office-holder of London Mayor
has been instrumental in circumventing such a tightly-defined set of
parameters to nevertheless carve out a role for themselves that creates
achievements. With little in the way of direct responsibility for social
services and housing (unlike council leaders and directly-elected
mayors elsewhere) the London institutional framework has forced the
Mayor to concentrate specifically on economic development,
planning and transport policies while also engaging in the type of
networking, brokerage and partnership that New Labour requires in
the new elite governance structures.
The post-2007 powers vested in the Mayor provide a powerful but
potentially controversial set of tools for planning. The degree to
which they will be utilised will probably vary according to the
personal interests of the office holder. The relationship between the
Mayor and the boroughs to work the new powers is essential but
may lead to further, or perhaps that should be on-going, friction.
The unique combination of a strong institutional framework of
government, with a flexible and responsive form of working, has
enabled the bidding of projects (that can benefit the whole of
London) to be streamlined, and to be embedded within local
municipalities. There is no doubt that London – whether
intentionally or not – has been given a competitive edge over other
world cities by this institutional structure and flexible responsive
and partnership style of working, as the successful Olympic bid
illustrates. Between 2000 and 2008, London witnessed a form of
government working that owed its style and origins to New
Labour ideology, but also to the legacies of working within a
strategic vacuum in the 1980s and 1990s. This period saw a new
political commitment to strategic enabling, rather than strategic
governing, and was the breeding ground for innovation and
competitiveness across governance actors in London. Confidence
was created in collaborative working, but the style of London
politics and governance is already changing markedly. Party
politics has returned to the centre stage in London political
debates, and as the mayoral office has gained enhanced powers and
the office-holder cemented his position within the institutional
framework much more prominently, so older tensions and
conflicts have begun to emerge. The key question is whether the
legacies from the early 21st century experience of governing
London will deliver in the long term and provide social as well
as economic benefit.
Profile / Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Before joining the UCL Bartlett School of Planning,
Mark held the posts of: Planning Assistant, South
Hams District Council; Lecturer, Department of City &
Regional Planning, Cardiff University; and Reader,
Department of Land Economy, University of
Aberdeen. He is co-author of ‘Decent Homes for All:
Planning’s Evolving Role in Housing Provision’ and
‘Shaping and Delivering Tomorrow’s Places: Effective
Practice in Spatial Planning’.
Mark’s research focuses on the politics and
governance of planning, including spatial planning,
urban and regional development, governance and
devolution, and certain substantive disciplines within
spatial governance including regional planning and
development, representations of planning and urban
life, economic and spatial governance, and the
relationship between housing and planning and
second homes in Europe. His current research is on:
the spirit and purpose of planning, including reforms
and modernisation of planning; the principles of
spatial planning; and media representations of
planning and planners.
Contact
Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones
Professor of Spatial Planning & Governance and
Director of Research
UCL Bartlett School of Planning
Steering Committee Member
UCL Urban Laboratory
+44 (0)20 7679 4873
m.tewdwr-jones@ucl.ac.uk
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.9
perspective
Iain Borden
Sustainability and
architectural design
In April of 1958, a momentous event took place in
the history of UK architectural education: the
“Oxford Conference”, at which 50 architects met to
consider how architecture was to be taught. Their
decision? That, in contrast to previous
arrangements involving architectural practices,
architects should be predominantly taught within
universities, leading to a higher standard of both
professionalism and academicism among
architects. The result was a profound shift both in
the content and practice of architecture in the UK.
Half a century on, another “Oxford Conference” has been held, with
similar ambitions to “reset the agenda for architectural education”.
But this time around the focus is different, no longer about general
operations and standards, and instead concentrating on sustainability,
climate change, environmental responsibility and renewable energy.
The need and urgency for such discussions is, undoubtedly,
considerable. The exigencies of a world in which temperatures,
sea-levels, populations, pollution and fuel costs are all rising, while
fossil-based energy reserves are falling, mean architecture must do
more to help in the creation of truly sustainable cities and buildings.
So why do I feel a certain sense of unease at the clarion call of this
latest Oxford Conference, and why, indeed, could it even threaten to
reduce architecture’s great capacity to contribute creatively to our
cities today?
One of the suggestions implicit in many discussions of sustainability
is that the architectural profession in general and architecture schools
in particular are somehow unaware of the environmental agenda, and
that some kind of enormous restructuring or “resetting” of
architectural education is therefore required. This is just poppycock.
Most if not all architectural schools are acutely aware of the relevance
of sustainability, and even the most cursory of glances at the various
summer degree shows held around the country shows an incredible
variety of approaches. At the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture,
both whole teaching groups and innumerable individuals are
looking at a whole range of different ways in which sustainability
can be developed and embedded within architecture in general
and architectural education in particular. Perhaps most readily
understandable here are technical solutions to problems of
sustainability in architecture – those dealing with materials,
insulation, construction and the like in order to decrease energy
usage and increase energy-efficient performance.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.10
Prototype pavilion with deployable external insulation.
Funded by UrbanBuzz, Make Architects, DSP
Architecture, the UCL Bartlett Architecture Research
Fund and the UCL Graduate School
For example, one group within the school, lead by Stephen Gage
(Professor of Innovative Technology), is exploring ways in which
buildings might actually adapt physically according to the usage
patterns of its inhabitants, and so minimise energy use and losses.
Part of their exploration has been through a full-scale prototype
pavilion (ingeniously based on a standard shipping container unit)
which uses deployable external insulation to dramatically enhance the
environmental performance of windows, simply by closing them up
whenever people are not actually present in the internal space. The
thermal shutters are designed to encourage big windows back into
buildings, countering recent trends to reduce window size to prevent
heat loss.
But architecture is not just about technology, and we need social
propositions as to how architecture interacts with lifestyle and urban
design. Here the imaginative and creative architecture can help to
speculate about possible futures outside of some of the more usual
constraints of commercial architectural practice. For example, one of
our graduate teaching groups, Unit 12, led by Jonathan Hill
(Professor of Architecture & Visual Theory) and his colleagues
Matthew Butcher and Elizabeth Dow, explored the architectural and
urban design of the town of “Hubbert Curve” (named after
geoscientist M. King Hubbert who predicted that available fossil fuel
reserves would be dramatically reduced by 2050 and fully depleted by
2200).
“Town of Hubbert Curve/Levittown”, section through
hemp-farmer’s house, with ice room cooling system
– John Ashton, Diploma Unit 12, tutors Jonathan Hill,
Matthew Butcher and Elizabeth Dow
In this stimulating proposition, each student’s project has a
reciprocal relationship with at least three other projects in the town.
As they explain:
“Sustainable, the town trades and exchanges with its environment; one
expands and contracts, receives and donates, adapts and adjusts, in
response to the other. Self-sufficient, the town generates its own energy;
each building produces its own energy and creates an excess that serves the
general needs of the town. Discursive, the town encourages social and
political engagement, and the interaction of public and private lives.
Independent, the town learns from earlier centuries as well as those more
recent, inventing and adapting narratives, histories and myths that define
its character. Seasonal, the town is responsive to its climate and site,
creating conditions that are conducive to its survival and growth.”
Significantly, these kinds of architectural and urban proposition not
only suggest new technical and social ways of addressing
sustainability, but also ways in which issues of sustainability can enter
into architecture in more subtle ways, and particularly by creating
new agendas for architectural aesthetics and representation. In
projects such as Kyle Buchanan’s “Super-Sextant” (graduate teaching
group Unit 11, led by Laura Allen and Mark Smout), one sees a new
architecture of vision, a project that responds to the landscape, the
horizon and the tides of the River Thames – that is, an architecture
which both reflects and helps to engender a deeper and more varied
appreciation of our natural landscape.
“Super Sextant”, view of model from above
– Kyle Buchanan, Diploma Unit 11, tutors Laura Allen
and Mark Smout
And in the proposal by cj Lim (Professor of Architecture & Cultural
Design) for a new eco-city in GuangMing, one sees an even more
ambitious proposal. Shortlisted by the Chinese Government in
an international competition, this design creates a whole new
landscape typology, incorporating farming into the fabric of
the city – lush grazing and arable land are placed on the roofs of the
huge circular towers that make up the city. Additional land for crops
is available on a series of eighty vertical farms; 10m2 allotments are
cantilevered off a central spine and stacked one above the other like
the branches of a giant tree, and dispersed throughout the city.
Water also plays a significant part in the proposition,
as cj explains:
“Lakes and reservoirs are used to reinforce the hydrology and ecological
dynamics of the site. The increased expanse of water encourages
displacement cooling of the surrounding areas and freshwater
fish-farming. The lotus, a multi-use cooking plant, displays poetic beauty
in the lakes, providing contrast to the robust arable fields.”
So what do these highly varied design propositions tell us about
sustainability, architecture and cities? Above all, they demonstrate
that what we need in architecture is not the unfortunately
all-too-common simplistic approach to architectural sustainability –
emphasizing environmental performance in largely functional and
economic terms and/or reducing it to a set of aesthetic and cultural
clichés based around green roofs, wind turbines and open-toed
sandal-wearing vegetarians – but a whole variety of different kinds of
architecture and architectural education. Above all, architecture
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.11
“Architecture is not just about technology, and we need
social propositions as to how architecture interacts with
lifestyle and urban design. Here the imaginative and
creative architecture can help to speculate about possible
futures outside of some of the more usual constraints
of commercial architectural practice”
Project for GuangMing eco-city, China
– Prof cj Lim with Fulcrum, Techniker,
Alan Baxter Associates and others
schools must continue to develop and explore their own ways of dealing
with sustainability, and the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture is
determined to pursue exactly this path.
Individual students, too, must be free to develop their individual
agendas and research, as befits graduate-level university study. It is
worth remembering that students’ general competence in matters
of sustainability and the environment is already guaranteed by the
regulatory prescription of architecture courses, and this leaves some
free to take on the sustainability agenda in much greater depth,
but also others free to head off in other directions of investigation
and speculation.
This raises the other subtext which often underlies calls for a greater
focus on sustainability, the suggestion – sometimes implicit, sometimes
explicit – that sustainability is the problem, the most important issue
with which architecture must now get to grips. Well, no. Without for
one minute wishing to decry the importance of sustainability, there are
at least three other areas of equal or perhaps greater significance,
as UCL’s Grand Challenges for research make clear: global health
(beyond malaria and HIV to all aspects of medical need across the
world), intercultural interaction (how societies, groups and individuals
understand, respect and live with each other) and human wellbeing
(all of the qualities of everyday life that make us truly alive, from
political rights to personal love, from enjoyment of the arts to
expressions of ideas). Whatever the exigencies and urgency of
sustainability, these other three agendas also require our architectural
attention, for without these qualities and standards of life then we
cease to be truly human, to be really global citizens.
What are we left with? Sustainability in architecture and architectural
education? Yes, of course. Is there more to be done? Yes, undoubtedly.
Is this the only thing facing architecture today, and which must be
focused on above all else? Clearly, no. Instead, we need that diversity
of approaches to architecture that, when vigorously and creatively
adopted, can serve both architecture and society as a whole so well.
A diversity of architecture schools (and other schools in the UK and
across the world are pursuing their own ways of tackling sustainability
in architecture and urbanism), a diversity of practices, a diversity of
architectures, a diversity of students. This is how architecture can best
continue to be at once imaginative, creative, thoughtful and truly
useful, and this is how, ultimately the real challenges facing us today –
including sustainability – can be best addressed.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.12
Profile / Professor Iain Borden
Educated at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
UCL, University of London and UCLA, Iain is an
architectural historian and urban commentator. His
wide-ranging historical and theoretical interests have
lead to publications on, among other subjects, critical
theory and architectural historical methodology, the
history of skateboarding as an urban practice,
boundaries and surveillance, Henri Lefebvre and
Georg Simmel, Renaissance urban space,
architectural modernism and modernity, contemporary
architectural practice and theory, film and
architecture, gender and architecture, body spaces
and the experience of space. His photographs have
been widely published both in his own publications
and those by other historians and architects. He is
currently working on a history of driving as a spatial
experience of cities and architecture.
Iain is a frequent contributor to conferences and
exhibitions and has lectured widely around the world.
He is currently a member of the RIBA Education
Committee and of the Standing Conference of Heads
of Schools of Architecture. He serves on the Editorial
Board of the ‘Journal of Architecture’, and is a Visiting
Examiner at Central St Martins. He has made
frequent appearances on television and radio in the
UK and abroad, and is currently working on a
television documentary about skateboarding and
urban space.
He has a number of PhD students researching
historical and theoretical studies of architecture in the
USA, Indonesia, South Africa and Europe, and
dealing with such topics as representations of
landscape, race and politics, sexuality and space,
postcolonialism, wastelands, architectural modernism
and postmodernism, and 18th-century roads.
Contact
Professor Iain Borden
Professor of Architecture & Urban Culture
and Director
UCL Bartlett School of Architecture
Steering Committee Member
UCL Urban Laboratory
+44 (0)20 7679 4821
i.borden@ucl.ac.uk
perspective
Sarah Bell
Engineers’ identity crisis
Engineers build cities. More precisely, labourers and technicians,
employed by contractors working more or less within the
technical direction of engineers, build cities. The technical
authority and know-how of engineers is fundamental to the
creation and development of the modern city. Engineers have
been responsible for the provision of clean drinking water and
sanitation in cities, and as such argue to have delivered greater
benefits to the health of modern citizens than the medical
profession. Engineers are responsible for the aeroplanes,
televisions, mobile telephony and high-speed broadband that
underpin the global economy, which financiers and industrialists
lay claim to. Engineers keep the trains on the tracks, the cars
moving on the motorways, the buildings standing and the lights
on so that citizens can go about the everyday business and culture
of the modern metropolis. Conventionally, engineers are at once
humble servants to cultural, political and economic masters, and
quiet heroes making the good modern life possible.
As heroes, engineers claim credit for the great technological
advances of the modern city; as servants, they escape
accountability for its failures. The heroics of Joseph Bazalgette
and the engineers of the Metropolitan Board of Works
constructed the intercepting sewerage system and delivered
Victorian London from the perils of cholera and stench. The
failure to deliver improved sanitation to 52% of the world’s
population by 2005 is the responsibility of inept, inhumane and
Conversion of the old Arsenal Stadium,
London, into luxury apartments –
Dr Sarah Bell (UCL Civil, Environmental
& Geomatic Engineering)
corrupt politicians and economists. Cleaning city and household
air by replacing coal fires with gas and electric heating in millions
of homes was a major achievement of engineering innovation and
management. The continued growth in energy consumption
feeding ever more extravagant gadgets and expectations of
constant year-round indoor temperature, leading to higher
carbon emissions and global climate change, is down to wasteful
and ignorant consumers. Engineers claim to have the solutions,
or at least the capabilities to find the solutions to most of the
crises threatening the sustainability of the modern city (transport,
housing, energy, water, communications, public health), but are
driven by politics, economics and consumer expectations to
perpetuate unsustainable practices.
Engineers clearly have an important role to play in creating and
reconstructing sustainable cities. For this to occur, the profession,
including its academic constituents, must break through the lazy
identity crisis of unacknowledged heroics or powerless servitude.
At UCL, and elsewhere, new models of engineering research,
teaching and practice are emerging in response to the crises of
sustainable development and modern urban living. Central to
this programme is recognition that the gulf between science and
technology on the one hand and society and politics on the other,
which has characterised modern universities and professions, has
become a chasm from whence the greatest problems of our age
have erupted. Problems like climate change and the growing
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.13
Thames Barrier, London – Dr Sarah Bell (UCL Civil,
Environmental & Geomatic Engineering)
“The gulf between science and technology on the
one hand and society and politics on the other,
which has characterised modern universities and
professions, has become a chasm from whence the
greatest problems of our age have erupted”
numbers of urban poor cannot be resolved by clear dissection
into technical or social elements to be carried away and solved in
the caves of our independent disciplines.
For engineers this requires a new humility regarding the power of
technical knowledge, and new skills in negotiating the political
and social complexity of the modern city. Some of this
knowledge comes from reconsidering historical contributions of
engineers to the development of cities, to recognise the complex
interactions between politics and technology that have shaped the
urban infrastructure and technologies we take for granted today.
Dialogue with urban theorists from across the intellectual chasm
is opening new understandings of the importance of
infrastructure and technology in the cultural, political and
everyday life of the modern city, in turn informing more sensitive
engineering design and practice. Philosophers prompt robust
confrontation about the nature and role of ethics in engineering
decision-making, ranging from technical competence in checking
calculations to working with corrupt regimes. Political and social
scientists provide new frameworks for engineering expertise to be
incorporated and challenged in participatory democratic
processes, opening up engineering expertise to more informed
public debate. Lone women engineers at professional dinner
tables are pointing out that the time has passed for celebrating
their presence and starting to worry that it might not be a
coincidence that their talented sisters are still not signing up.
Active engineers are pushing the boundaries of conventional
professional practice to bring their technical skills and knowledge
to bear on the social and ecological problems that trouble their
social consciences.
Modern cities, sustainable or otherwise, would not be possible
without engineering skills, knowledge and experience. Technical
competence and innovation remain the bedrock of the
profession, including research. However, the challenge of
building sustainable cities requires fundamentally understanding
the nature of engineering at its relationship to other parts of the
university, politics and society. As the saying goes, sustainability is
not rocket science, it’s much harder.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.14
Profile / Dr Sarah Bell
Sarah’s research interests lie in the relationships
between engineering, technology and society as they
impact on sustainability, particularly in relation to
urban water systems. In 2007, Sarah received the
ExxonMobil Excellence in Teaching Award from the
Royal Academy of Engineering. She works in
collaboration with partners including Thames Water,
Waterwise, the London Sustainability Exchange,
Arup and WWF.
Her current research projects include:
ıı‘Emerging Sustainability’, with collaborators from
six universities investigating sustainability in different
social, technological and ecological systems
ıı‘Critical Infrastructures’, applying metaphors from
the biological sciences to improve infrastructure
management, particularly in times of crisis such
as floods or terrorist attack
ıı‘Bridging the Gaps: Sustainable Urban Spaces’,
bringing together researchers from different
departments at UCL to address the challenge
of climate change in cities
ıı‘Engineering, Culture and Water’, working with
students in the UK, Peru, Australia and Mexico
to investigate the interactions between society,
technology, engineering and water.
Contact
Dr Sarah Bell
MSc Programme Director
(Environmental Systems Engineering) and Lecturer
UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering
Co-Director (Water Initiative)
UCL Environment Institute
Steering Committee Member
UCL Urban Laboratory
Programme Team Member
Bridging the Gaps
+44 (0)20 7679 7874
s.bell@ucl.ac.uk
perspective
Tadj Oreszczyn
Our innate ability
to think of new
ways to use energy
Twenty-five years ago I became aware of the
possible energy crisis and, as an environmentally
responsible physicist, I decided to purse a career
in energy efficiency and renewable energy
rather than the then better paid normal career
in nuclear physics.
always easier and cheaper to model than measure. Buildings were
always complex to monitor, unlike many other products like
cars etc. Buildings are one-offs, occupants behaved strangely, and the
variations in climate from year to year made comparisons difficult.
The combination of convenience and the low cost of modelling
have given a false sense of reliance on modelling to predict real
energy use, “in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in
practice they are not.”
The problem by physics standards was simple; modelling energy flows
in the Newtonian range of buildings was far simpler than nuclear
physics. However the potential goals were even bigger, cheaper and
more environmentally benign than nuclear. Solar energy offered the
potential to produce in a year ten times more energy than our
combined fossil fuel and uranium reserves and, since only 20 to 30%
of the primary energy in the fossil fuels we burnt resulted in real
useful energy, there was lots of potential from energy efficiency.
Then, as now, there was interest in integrating solar energy in the
building design. However, active solar systems were then, as now,
expensive. In 1982 I can remember attending a conference on the
economics of solar energy where the papers tried to present economic
arguments demonstrating how solar was cost effective – usually by the
judicious use of appropriate discount or fuel inflation rates (ISES
1982). At the end of a conference somebody asked how many of the
delegates (energy researchers) had solar systems on their buildings.
The answer was less than 1%. If the researchers could not persuade
themselves it was cost effective then how were they going to persuade
anybody else?
As a physicist I set about modelling and testing the efficiency of
buildings. Computers and software developments meant that it was
The Forth Railway Bridge
Research in the UK then shifted more to the use of passive (“free”)
solar energy; this involved the direct capture of solar energy within
the building to offset the space heating energy consumption by the
use of larger than normal south facing windows. In the UK a passive
solar programme was funded which looked at both new build and
refurbishment, which had a larger potential market than new build
(DTI 1999). The domestic conservatory was one of the technologies
researched. Theoretical models showed that a conservatory could
reduce a dwellings energy consumption by 5% (1,000 kWh/year)
through capturing the sun’s energy (the greenhouse effect) and
transferring some of this energy into the dwelling through the fabric
and pre-heating some of the air entering that was needed to
adequately ventilate the dwelling. The conservatory was identified as
one of the main passive solar retrofit options in northern climates
(NBA Tectonics 1992).
In 1990 I supervised a masters student at the UCL Bartlett who
investigated how people used conservatories (Chu 1990). She found
that out of the 10 she visited 9 were heated. Heating a glass box is not
very energy efficient, and since 50,000 conservatories were being built
every year the potential energy use of conservatories was therefore
high. As a result of this study detailed energy use questions were
added to a self-completed postal questionnaire sent to 5,000
conservatory owners (Oreszczyn 1993). This contained over 100
questions about the construction, orientation and use of the
conservatory. Amazingly the reply rate was over 37%, very high for a
self-completed postal questionnaire, which probably said more about
the owners of conservatories than any of the answers they gave. Two
thirds stated they heated their conservatory directly, whereas a further
24% heated them indirectly through leaving the doors open between
the heated house and conservatory or had no doors separating the
conservatory from the house. This energy use was not controlled by
the Building Regulations as the assumption was that conservatories
were used as a buffer space in spring and autumn when they were
unheated, and the rest of the year they were uninhabited. Yet the
survey showed that the use of conservatories was radically different
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.15
Xscape, Milton Keynes
from this traditional use – 70% used all year around, two thirds
occupied the conservatory after dark often to watch TV when there is
little or no passive solar gain. Add a conservatory to a modern house
and if you heat the conservatory to the same standard as the house
you can almost double the space heating of the house. This is because
although the external area of a conservatory may be one tenth the
surface area of the house the heat loss through one square meter of
conservatory glazing (even if it is double glazed) is ten times greater
than through one square meter of a modern dwelling wall.
For the above reasons the government’s building regulations
department became very interested in how they could control energy
use in conservatories. Banning conservatories was not an option since
the questionnaire showed that occupants loved the spaces they created
– it was the second most used and liked room in the dwelling.
Interestingly occupants loved the environment created by
conservatories. However a building scientist analysing a conservatory
theoretically would say it has a very poor environment – poor
acoustics, high levels of glare and thermal discomfort from the cold
glazing. Since banning was not an option the challenge was then
how to make conservatories more energy efficient. Theoretically
double-glazing should reduce the fabric heat loss by almost half and
so this was the first mechanism examined for building control. The
responses from the questionnaire, however, showed that double glazed
conservatories used twice the energy that single glazed conservatories
did! This was completely contradictory to what the energy models
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.16
that are currently being used to design energy-efficient buildings
would have predicted. To identify why this was the case required
no more than a trip to the local garden centre (where most
conservatories are sold) and a discussion with the sale staff who,
for example, would ask:
“What type of conservatory were you looking for sir? Were you intending
to use it all year around? In which case we would recommend double
glazing ideally with a low emissivity coating.”
Old leaky single glazed conservatories require a very large heater to
maintain an air temperature of 20°C in the winter, which would blow
the fuses of the house and still not maintain comfortable conditions.
However, it is just possible to maintain comfort in a double glazed
conservatory, although with a significant energy penalty. Therefore,
the occupants were taking the energy efficient improvements to
enable them to change the use of the conservatory from a buffer
space, i.e. occasionally used, to instead use it like a conventional fully
habitable room. Whereas the theoretical computer models, although
accurately modelling the physics, were giving the incorrect answer
because they assume occupant behaviour is independent of changes to
the efficiency of a building. Interestingly, not only is heating
conservatories becoming popular, so is air-conditioning, with many
air-conditioning units marketed as ideal for conservatories and one
DIY store has given away free air-conditioning units with every
conservatory sold!
The example of the domestic conservatory, where energy efficiency
encourages energy use, could be seen as a rather odd case. I would
argue not – the non-domestic equivalent of the conservatory is the
atrium. Again, many in the UK were originally designed to be used as
passive un-conditioned spaces which reduced buildings energy
consumption by bringing daylight into the core of the building. Most
are, however, high energy consuming spaces, fully air conditioned and
often electrically lit. Glazed walkways also often become fully
conditioned. This should not be a surprise to us as previous
investigations into domestic energy use have shown that a significant
proportion of energy efficient improvements are taken as
improvements in comfort. Over the last 30 years the efficiency of the
domestic stock in England has improved by 30%, yet during that
period, despite warmer winters, primary energy use increased by
27%, mostly as a result of increased heating levels, stock and
appliance use (Shorrock & Utley 2003).
References
1. Chu, W. L. (1990). The Energy Duality of Conservatories. Dissertation
submitted in part fulfilment for an MSc in Environmental Design &
Engineering, UCL.
2. DEFRA (2004). Energy Efficiency: The Government’s Plan for Action.
Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Department
of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs by Command of Her Majesty,
April 2004.
3. DTI (1999). ‘In Business: Passive Solar Design – Promoting Take Up’.
New REVIEW 39, February 1999. http://www.dti.gov.uk/NewReview/
“Double glazed conservatories used twice the energy
that single glazed conservatories did! This was
completely contradictory to what the energy models
that are currently being used to design energy
efficient buildings would have predicted”
nr39/html/in_business.html.
4. ISES (1982). ‘Developing the market in solar energy thermal systems:
obstacles and incentives’. UK International Solar Energy Society
Conference UK ISES C31, London, 1982.
5. NBA Tectonics (1992). Evaluation of passive solar potential
multi-residential dwellings and retrofit measures. Report to the Energy
Technology Support Unit.
6. Oreszczyn, T. (1993). The Energy Duality of Conservatory Use,
It is possible to give a range of examples of our almost innate ability
to think of new uses of energy, often facilitated by improvements in
energy efficiency. While new low energy compact fluorescents lights
have become more popular, using one fifth of the energy, we have
increased the number of lamps in each room, often extending our
lighting to outside and around the garden. Not only is energy
efficiency possibly stimulating this growth in energy use but so may
the supply of renewable energy. Probably the greatest use of
photovoltaics (PV) in the UK is in non-mains connected garden
lighting, a completely new use of energy in the UK.
Not satisfied with heating indoors we are often heating the outdoors
with patio heaters – direct global warming! Of course when it gets
really hot outside, would it not be nice to go skiing? In Milton
Keynes, where I live, the newest and largest building in the city centre
is Xscape, which houses a 170 metre ski slope with 1,500 tonnes of
artificially generated snow. The slope is kept at a constant –2°C all
year around, even when it is 30°C outside. It is only possible to do
this because of energy efficient innovations. We have energy efficient
air-conditioning and have developed high performance insulation to
cover the building with. However, the building has resulted in
considerable additional energy use. I learnt to snowboard there, and
so compared the energy used to learn in Milton Keynes against flying
to the Alps. They were comparable; however, like most other people
who learnt at Milton Keynes all this has done is fuel my desire to go
to the Alps and ski on bigger runs, so now I both practice in Milton
Keynes and have ski holidays in the Alps! There are plans to build
many more new indoor ski resorts in the UK over the next few years.
In the UK one of the things we did to celebrate the millennium was
to light the Forth Railway Bridge. This is now claimed to be one of
the largest man made objects that can be seen from outer space at
night-time. Again we could do this because of the energy efficient
lighting technology we now have. However, it does use energy
equivalent to 100 dwellings – although on a minute by minute basis
it costs no more than using a mobile phone at peak rate. With energy
so cheap we will continue to find new ways of using it.
In the UK the government is being very proactive in tackling climate
change. It is committed to trying to reduce by its carbon emissions by
60% by 2050 (DEFRA 2004). This is a very ambitious target. Half of
this planned reduction in carbon emissions is due to be achieved by
energy efficiency, the other half coming from renewables. It is hard to
see how efficiency alone will achieve this as there is very little
evidence that efficiency, although good for many other reasons, can
deliver absolute reductions in primary energy consumption or carbon
emissions. As a scientist it has taken me over thirty years to appreciate
that the problem is bigger than physics and is one that requires a
socio-technical, multi-disciplinary approach.
Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Architecture: Solar
Energy in Architecture and Planning, Florence, Italy, 17–21 May.
7. Shorrock, L. D. and J. I. Utley (2003). Domestic energy fact file 2003.
Housing Centre, BRE, Garston, Watford, UK, WD25 9XX.
Profile / Professor Tadj Oreszczyn
From 1992–1999 Tadj was Director of the Energy
Design Advice Scheme (EDAS) Regional office based
at the UCL Bartlett School. EDAS was a DTI- and
DETR-funded initiative, which provided free energy
advice to building professionals during the design and
refurbishment of buildings. The scheme advised on
more than 1,200 building projects and identified more
than £17 million per year in energy savings.
His current research interests include energy
efficiency, indoor air quality, light and lighting,
building-related health problems and the internal
environment within historic buildings.
Previously, Tadj worked as a Senior Energy
Consultant for Energy Conscious Design and as a
Higher Scientific Officer for the National Institute for
Agricultural Engineering. His first degree was in
applied physics from Brunel University and his PhD
in solar energy was from the Open University.
Contact
Professor Tadj Oreszczyn
Professor of Engineering & the Environment and Head
UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies
Director
Environmental Design & Engineering
UCL Bartlett School
Academic Advisory Committee Member
UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage
+44 (0)20 7679 5906
t.oreszczyn@ucl.ac.uk
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.17
perspective
Adriana Allen
Sustainable cities
or sustainable
urbanisation?
Rapid urbanisation is arguably the most complex
and important socio-economic phenomenon of the
20th and 21st centuries. Generally understood as a
shift from a predominantly rural to a predominantly
urban society, it also represents major and
irreversible changes in production and consumption
and the way people interact with nature. It is
therefore somehow surprising that, within the
international debate, it is only recently that cities
and the urbanisation process started to be looked
at through a ‘sustainability’ lens.
The notion that cities play a key role in ‘sustainable development’
– whatever the definition adopted – only started to become
popularised and mainstreamed into policy making and planning
since the early 1990s. But as it often happens when a new perspective
rapidly gains momentum and widespread adherence, the apparent
consensus on the urgent need to promote sustainable cities has been
underlined by significant differences with regards to the questions of
what urban sustainability means, why and how to promote it and for
whose benefit. Furthermore, is it all just about the greening of the
built environment and urban form?
It is now widely acknowledged that the impact of urbanisation will
continue to bring about major global and local changes well into
the current century, as many countries in the developing world are
presently in, or about to enter, the high-growth and rapid-transition
phase of the urbanisation process. A total net addition of 2.2 billion
people to the 2000 world population is forecasted by 2030 and it is
expected that most of this additional population will be absorbed
by the cities and towns of low-income countries, likely to rise from
1.9 billion in 2000 to 3.9 billion in 2030. By contrast, very small
changes are predicted in the urban population of high-income
countries, expected to increase from 0.9 billion in 2000 to
1 billion in 2030 1.
Despite the fact that demographic forecastings should be taken with
caution due to the inconsistent definitions of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’
adopted by different nations across the world, they are powerful
in revealing the magnitude and scale of the urbanisation process.
However, a closer look not just at the scale but at the nature of
contemporary trends reveals that these do not simply imply that most
of the world population will be living in cities but that urbanisation
does and will continue to have a significant impact on the global
carrying capacity of the earth and to affect the way in which rural and
urban households and individuals straddle between the ‘urban’ and
the ‘rural’ 2. The latter is important because decisions about health,
fertility, migration, production, natural resources use and so on are
increasingly affected by the diffusion power of the urbanisation
process, not just spatially but through the global economy,
informational spill-overs and social networks 3.
Indeed, it is increasingly accepted that in many regions of the
developing world, including its largest countries, the boundaries
between urban and rural are getting blurred. Even if the focus has
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.18
shifted over time from a spatial definition (assuming a central urban
point surrounded by a de-densifying periphery) to a more functional
and relational focus on diverse flows between the rural and urban
sectors, recent developments both in theory and in real world
contexts – such as space–time compression and globalisation –
point to the need of a reassessment of the changing nature of the
rural-urban divide and of the contemporary urbanisation process 4.
The emerging landscapes in terms of human settlements challenge
conventional definitions and perceptions of the city and the
countryside with regards to their location, physical structure,
functional relation, institutional context and cultural outlook.
For instance, the concept of the ‘informational city’ 5 suggests that,
in the context of globalisation, information technology constitutes
the most strategic commodity, dividing wealth between and within
cities into the ‘information rich’ and the ‘information poor’. This has
often been understood as the general blurring of frontiers, not only
between the rural and the urban, but between the so-called First and
Third Worlds. However, it should not be assumed that urbanisation
runs always vis a vis an even integration of ‘all’ cities and ‘all’ urban
dwellers into the world economy, neither that this increasingly
urban-based world economy can be easily ‘tamed’ to redistribute
wealth and to reduce the ever expanding ‘ecological footprint’ that
supports it 6.
As global trade has vastly expanded throughout the 20th century,
cities have become less reliant upon their hinterland for sustenance
and are increasingly importing not only their consumer goods, but
also food, energy, water and building materials from distant sources.
At the same time, wastes produced in urban areas are increasingly
been exported to distant regions. This means that very often the
origin of food and energy and the destination of wastes is invisible to
urban dwellers, creating dependencies that might not be ecologically
or geopolitically stable, secure or indeed, sustainable 7. The problem
is that the limits imposed by the expansion of the urban ecological
footprint do not become evident until they are translated into local
impacts, such as higher food or energy prices, frequent floods or the
increment of environment-related diseases such as skin cancer.
A comparison of the urban ecological footprint of cities in developing
and developed countries reveals that, in overall terms, the former rely
more heavily on their own hinterlands than do cities in the developed
world, as the latter tend to draw on distant ‘elsewheres’ to satisfy their
Social
Sustainability
Economic
Sustainability
Political Sustainability
URBAN
SUSTAINABILITY
Political Sustainability
Ecological
Sustainability
Physical
Sustainability
Urban – regional ecological capacity
“The apparent consensus on the urgent
need to promote sustainable cities has been
underlined by significant differences with
regards to the questions of what urban
sustainability means, why and how to
promote it and for whose benefit”
The Five Dimensions of Urban Sustainability, from Allen, Adriana (2001) ‘Urban
Sustainability under Threat: The Restructuring of the Fishing Industry in Mar del
Plata, Argentina’, ‘Development in Practice’, vol. 11, Nos. 2&3, pp.152–173
demands in terms of food, energy and so on, thus increasingly
bypassing their hinterland and resulting in missed opportunities for
reciprocal rural–urban linkages within the same area and/or region.
However, the picture is not that simple. When taking a more
disaggregated look at the ecological footprint of different income
groups within fast growing cities in the developing world, significant
differences emerge between the wealthy and the poor, revealing a
consistent link between income and the demands individuals place
on the environment, as regards both their consumption of renewable
and non-renewable resources and their patterns of waste production.
This implies that the challenge of urban sustainability cannot be
addressed without an examination of wider relationships between
urban areas and their hinterlands or ‘bio-regions’, nor without
unpacking the inequality that unfortunately prevails in the
contemporary urbanisation process, where conditions of hyper
and sub-consumption coexist neck-to-neck 8.
Indeed, rapid urban change is likely to occur in the world’s poorest
countries, those least equipped with the means to invest in basic
urban infrastructure – water, sanitation, tenured housing – and least
able to provide vital economic opportunities for urban residents to
live in conditions above the poverty line. In this context, the urban
poor face great exposure to biological and physical threats and also
more restrictions in their access to protective services and
infrastructures. Thus, the contemporary process of urbanisation in
the developing world is characterised not just by a shift in the locus
of poverty – from rural to urban – but more significantly
compounded with the ‘urbanisation of poverty and social exclusion’
that derive from socio-economic, gender and ethnic inequalities.
The above discussion implies that the contemporary process of
urbanisation is underlined not simply by rural–urban migration and
a rural–urban poverty shift (at least in population percentages) but
by a significant transformation of the linkages between the global
and the local, the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, and
above all, the systemic conditions that threat the very possibility
of a sustainable future 9.
Since popularised by the Brundtland Report, sustainable development
has been described as the intersection between social, environmental
and economic goals. Sustainability has performed more of a balancing
act than promoting any real change of direction to development. The
most pressing problem with this model is that it offers relatively little
understanding of the inherent trade-offs found in the simultaneous
pursuit of these goals. Coupled with this, the picture it provides is
too abstract to appreciate how sustainable development unfolds at the
urban level, but also to acknowledge the political dimension of the
process. By definition, cities are not sustainable, urban dwellers and
economic activities inevitably depend on environmental resources and
services from outside their built-up area. So what does urban
sustainability mean and how can the effects of urbanisation and
urban development on sustainable development be appraised?
The answer to these questions requires a more encompassing vision
of the concept, one that adequately defines the goals and means of the
process. Quite rightly, the environmental, economic and social goals
still apply. However, in an increasingly urbanised world, the built
environment or ‘second nature’ needs to be recognised as a central
component to the liveability of the earth. Furthermore, the search
for more sustainable forms of urbanisation depends on political and
institutional decisions promoting the competition or cooperation
of different agents with one another. Thus, it could be argued that to
assess whether any given practice, policy or trend is moving towards
or against urban sustainability it is necessary to consider the
relationships among the five dimensions outlined below.
Economic sustainability is understood as the capacity and ability
of a practice to be able to put local/regional resources to productive
use for the long-term benefit of the community, without damaging or
depleting the natural resource base on which it depends and without
increasing the city’s ecological footprint. This implies taking into
consideration the full impact of the production cycle.
Social sustainability refers to the fairness, inclusiveness and cultural
adequacy of an intervention to promote equal rights over the natural,
physical and economic capital that supports the livelihoods and lives
of local communities, with particular emphasis on the poor and
traditionally marginalised groups. Cultural adequacy means, in this
context, the extent to which a practice respects cultural heritage and
cultural diversity.
Ecological sustainability pertains to the impact of urban production
and consumption on the integrity and health of the city region and
global carrying capacity. This demands the long term consideration
of the relation between the state and dynamics of environmental
resources and services and the demands exerted over them.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.19
The sustainability of the built environment concerns the capacity
of an intervention to enhance the liveability of buildings and urban
infrastructures for ‘all’ city dwellers without damaging or disrupting the
urban region environment. It also includes a concern for the efficiency
of the built environment to support the local economy.
Last, but not least, political sustainability is concerned with the quality
of governance systems guiding the relationship and actions of different
actors among the previous four dimensions. Thereby, it implies the
democratisation and participation of local civil society in all areas
of decision-making.
The diagram (page 3.19) shows in a simplified manner the relationship
between the five dimensions outlined above. The outer circle represents
the ecological capacity of any given urban region and acts as a relative
measure to assess whether changes or interventions in each of the five
dimensions are moving towards or against sustainability. The corners
of the square base or pyramid within the circle represent the economic,
social, ecological and built environment dimensions, whilst the political
dimension articulates them. If the four dimensions of the pyramid are
seen as pulling against each other, attempting individually to break out
of the circle itself, the political dimension can then be seen as the
regulating mechanism ensuring that they remain within the boundary
of sustainability.
This wider view of urban sustainability calls for re-embedding our
understanding of cities and their multiple and diverse impacts on
society and the environment within the contemporary process of
urbanisation. This is because cities cannot be expected to become
‘islands of reform’ in isolation from the wider global political economy
in which they are produced. Thus, the question of how to promote
sustainable cities and indeed sustainable urbanisation cannot be
dissociated from the uneven geographies of development 10 produced
by the globalisation process and the way this changes the relationships
between people, environment and places, both through time and space.
References
1. United Nations (2000) World Urbanisation Prospects 1999 Revision.
www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wup1999/WUP99CH3.pdf
2. Montgomery, Mark; Richard Stren; Barley Cohen and Holly E Reed (eds)
(2004) ‘Cities Transformed. Demographic Change and Its Implications in the
Developing World’, Earthscan, London.
3. Allen, Adriana; Pascale Hofmann and Hannah Griffiths (2007) ‘Report on Rural
– Urban Linkages for Poverty Reduction’. Elaborated for the State of the
World’s Cities Report 2008: ‘Creating Harmonious Cities’, UCL Development
Planning Unit, London.
4. Lynch, Kenneth (2005) ‘Rural-Urban Interaction in the Developing World’,
Routledge, London.
5. Castells, Manuel (1989) ‘The Informational City: Information Technology,
Economic Restructuring and the Urban-Regional Process’, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford.
6. Developed to measure the ecological impact of cities, ‘ecological foot-printing’
describes the area required to grow food and draw other natural resources and
environmental services consumed by a city, including the absorption of carbon
to compensate for its fossil fuel emissions.
7. Rees, W (1992) ‘Ecological footprints and carrying capacity: what urban
economics leaves out’, ‘Environment and Urbanization’, 4(2), 121–130.
8. McGrahanan, Gordon and David Satterthwaite (2000) ‘Environmental health or
ecological sustainability? Reconciling the brown and green agendas in urban
development’, in Cedric Pugh (ed) ‘Sustainable Cities in Developing Countries’,
Earthscan, London, 73–90.
9. Allen, Adriana and Nicholas You (2002) ‘Sustainable Urbanisation: Bridging the
Green and Brown Agendas’, UCL Development Planning Unit in collaboration
with DFID and UN-Habitat, London.
10. Potter, R; T Binns, J Elliott and D Smith (2004) ‘Geographies of Development’,
Pearson, Harlow. Second edition.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.20
Profile / Adriana Allen
Adriana has almost 20 years of experience of
teaching, research and consultancy in urban and
regional environmental planning and management
(EPM), institutional development and capacity
building for sustainable development. She has
done extensive work in participatory EPM, Local
Agenda 21, sustainability indicators and tools, and
decentralised cooperation in urban and regional
EPM. Her research interests focus on urban–rural
links, environmental governance, and urban and
regional political ecology studies.
Since her graduation as an urban planner, she
has worked for several national and international
organisations, including the Department for
International Development, the Food & Agriculture
Organisation, Plan Construction et Architecture du
Ministere de l’Equipement (France), IberoAmerican
Cooperation Institute (Spain), European
Commission and in-country including Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt,
India, Kenya, Mexico, Spain, Tanzania, Uruguay and
the Netherlands. She is a Visiting Professor at
various universities in Latin America and the beacon
coordinator for IV World Water Forum cross-cutting
perspective dealing with institutional development
and political processes.
Adriana’s recent research and consultancy
projects include:
ııMexico, India, Tanzania, Egypt and Venezuela –
water management governance in the
peri-urban interface
ııIndia – policy adviser on the implementation of
participatory action plans in peri-urban villages
of Hubli-Dharwad
ııconsultant on evaluation of three-year research
project by the International Institute for Environment
and Development, ‘Promoting sustainable
development in Africa: Making the links
between policy and action’.
Contact
Adriana Allen
Course Co-Director and Senior Lecturer
UCL MSc in Environment & Sustainable
Development
Research Programme Director
UCL Development Planning Unit
Steering Committee Member
UCL Urban Laboratory
+44 (0)20 7679 5805
a.allen@ucl.ac.uk
perspective
Caren Levy
Urbanisation without
social justice is not
sustainable
Currently in Mumbai, India, 56% of the urban
population live in informal settlements without
secure tenure, with poor access to water and
sanitation as well as other basic services. Despite
some variation, this situation of inequality is the
reality of large proportions of urban residents in the
mega cities and fast growing medium sized cities
of the global South. The scale of the poverty and
inequality that this represents has to be understood
against the backdrop of the scale of urbanisation,
“…arguably the most complex and important
socio-economic phenomenon of the 20th century”
(Allen and You, 2002:3). The impact of this trend
reached a key moment in 2008, when the world’s
urban population exceeded the global rural
population for the first time.
distribution justly arrived at…” in his landmark contribution in
the 1970s captures the essence. Addressing social justice is not only
concerned with changing patterns of inequality but also the
institutional structures that produce them. Similarly in her seminal
contribution in the early 1990s, Iris Marion Young also argues for
a notion of social justice that is wider than distribution. While
recognising the importance of the distribution of material goods,
particularly in the context of poverty, she also argues for an
institutional dimension, which incorporates a concern for political
processes and participation in the decision making which produce
and reproduce these material relations.
In the contemporary global context, a concern for material
inequalities so evidently captured in the challenge of the ‘brown’
agenda, and the political debates and decisions in the institutional
processes permeating both the ‘brown’ and ‘green’ agendas, need
to be taken a step further. The impact of neo-liberal thinking,
and its translation into structural adjustment policies, promoted
internationally by the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and ultimately in various forms by most multi- and
bi-lateral aid organisations, has changed the organisational
landscape in most countries.
The emergence of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
points to the international recognition that these kind of disparities
are not acceptable, whatever the debates about the formulation,
measurement and ultimate impact of the MDGs. Indeed, at least
in the terms of the UN Millennium Declaration, 2000, the origins
of the MDGs, and the human rights conventions of the UN, these
disparities reflect a denial of socio-economic and political rights.
As the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, 2008 is also a significant year for a rights-based
focus on these disparities.
In the sustainability debates, these disparities reflect the rights and
demands in environmental terms of the so-called ‘brown’ agenda.
To-date this agenda has been the focus of a range of practitioners,
activists and academics addressing the planning and governance
challenges of urban development. They include concerns for unequal
access to suitable land, poor access to services like water and
sanitation, waste disposal and the unequal incidence of pollution.
By contrast, the so-called ‘green’ agenda has primarily been the remit
of environmentalists and ecologists concerned with global warming,
bio-diversity and other long term issues affecting the ecological
sustainability of the earth and of future generations. The relationship
between the ‘brown’ agenda and the ‘green’ agenda finds its primary
expression in the global environmental impacts of the unequal
processes of consumption and production in different parts of the
world. The current challenges of climate change have linked these
agendas, often dramatically in images of flooding and high levels of
pollution in urban areas in countries like Bangladesh and Mexico.
La Paz, Bolivia
The inequalities reflected at the core of the ‘brown’ agenda and its
intersection with the ‘green’ agenda make social justice a key principle
in any notion of sustainable urbanisation. How can social justice be
defined and made operational in policy making and planning in the
context of sustainable urbanisation? David Harvey’s phrase “…a just
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.21
“Identifying the room for manoeuvre through the
powerful interests of the state, international agencies
and the private sector, while maintaining authentic
connection to the aspirations and needs of poor women,
men, girls and boys in all their diversity, remains the
foremost challenge of any progressive development
agenda, locally and internationally”
The delivery of material goods like housing, transportation, water
and sanitation, and other services, once the remit of the state, now
involves private sector and civil society actors in different roles and
relationships. This poses a range of challenges with which citizens and
governments alike are currently struggling.
These actors come into governance relations in cities on the basis of
very different operational principles. Despite the impact of structural
adjustment in the form of privatisation of ‘public’ services,
deregulation and the reduction of the state, most governments have
maintained, often in the face of fierce political debate, a redistributive
principle of operation. This is driven ultimately by the need to
maintain stability. A social justice prism leads us to question in whose
interests this redistribution takes place, but the redistributive principle
of state intervention, with all its imperfections, remains. Clearly the
private sector enters the governance arena pursuing profit
maximisation, while organised civil society operates on the principle
of mutuality or reciprocity. Building a consensus among these actors,
for example, around the delivery of water and sanitation for the urban
poor in cities of the global South, is an ongoing political challenge.
Not only are the principles of operation of these actors different, but
their relationship to the arena of governance is different, particularly
around notions of political accountability. Taking up the example of
water again, the privatisation of water provision has turned ‘citizens’
into ‘clients’, making ability to pay rather than need the basic criteria
for service provision. For poor urban residents of Dar Es Salaam,
Manila, La Paz and other cities of the global South, the recognition of
the rights of poor urban women and men is an ongoing struggle in
the first place. The shift to private sector provision of water has
often resulted in disconnection from formal water systems.
Recourse to accountable decision making structures for these urban
citizens is often tenuous or non-existent, made more complex by the
multi-national character of most water companies. For poor urban
citizens this has left despair, innovative but often ‘illegal’ alternatives,
and/or protest in different forms as the only possible response.
Reacting to the previous failure of the state to provide secure tenure,
housing and basic service, and the current exclusion of many residents
from private sector provision of services, organised civil society has
taken up the challenge in different ways. While some activist groups
have remained in the realm of protest and the demand for the
recognition of the rights of the poor, other civil society organisations
have taken on the delivery of material goods. The latter are built on
community processes but, given the challenge of the scale of urban
poverty, necessarily involve constructive engagement with the local
and/or central state. For example, in Mumbai, India, the Alliance is a
civil society coalition lobbying, negotiating and working with local
and national state structures to deliver housing, water and sanitation
to the poor. These are not always harmonious and easy relations, and
are constantly under review by civil society organisations that are
concerned with co-option and control by interests outside those of
the poor constituencies they represent. The blanket criticism of these
groups by authors like Davis (2007) as part of the ‘soft imperialism’ of
the World Bank and other leading organisations implementing the
neo-liberal agenda, needs closer scrutiny.
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.22
Identifying the room for manoeuvre through the powerful interests of
the state, international agencies and the private sector, while
maintaining authentic connection to the aspirations and needs of
poor women, men, girls and boys in all their diversity, remains the
foremost challenge of any progressive development agenda, locally
and internationally. The policy and planning challenges this creates
for promoting social justice in sustainable urbanisation are
formidable. Haughton (1999) also reminds us that in linking the
discussions of justice and sustainability, we are not only addressing
questions of equal access to decision making structures and their
expression in spatial and geographic distribution of material goods in
the current generation. We are also concerned with intergenerational
equality in these relations, so that, in the sentiments of Brundtland,
future generations are not compromised by the development
demands of the current generation.
Academia has an important role to play in this multiple and
formidable challenge. In the sciences, the social sciences and
the arts, the formation of a next generation that is more engaged
with sustainability in the everyday practices of their lives is crucial.
The interaction of academia with the ‘applied’ dimensions of these
challenges is similarly critical. In partnership with government and
civil society organisations, learning from innovatory experience,
advancing knowledge and its application in the interests of all,
is a key basis for the hope of a sustainable urbanisation which has
social justice at its core.
References
Allen, A. and You, N. (2002) ‘Sustainable Urbanisation:
Bridging the Green and Brown Agenda’, UN-HABITAT/DFID/DPU
Davis, M. (2007) ‘Planet of Slums’, London & New York: Verso
Harvey, D. (1973) ‘Social Justice and the City’, London: Edward Arnold
Haughton, G. (1999) ‘Environmental Justice and the Sustainable City’
in D.Satterthwaite (ed) ‘Sustainable Cities’, London: Earthscan
Young, I.M. (1990) ‘Justice and the Politics of Difference’,
Princeton: Princeton University Press
Profile Caren Levy
Caren is a development planner specialising in
planning methodology, gender policy and planning,
environmental policy, and training and organisational
development, and previously was a consultant
working in transport planning, environmental policy
and research into communities. She delivers training
and advisory services in gender policy and planning
both in London and abroad for international
organisations, including ODA, SIDA, NORAD, IMO,
EU and IBIS, and in-country, including Sri Lanka,
Egypt, Namibia, Mozambique, Peru and Brazil.
Contact
Caren Levy
Director
UCL Development Planning Unit
Course Co-Director
UCL MSc Urban Development Planning
+44 (0)20 7679 1111
c.levy@ucl.ac.uk
perspective
Michael Batty
How big can a city get ?
Cities usually begin to grow around some central
point which acts as a market for the exchange of
goods. The Roman agora is the classic example
and most cities still show a residual structure which
mirrors this historical pattern. Even the car-based
cities of the American South West such as Phoenix
have a core or city centre that reflects
the original source of settlement.
When cities expand through population growth, individuals attempt
to get as much space as possible around themselves while remaining
as close as possible to other people in the city. This tension between
the demand for space, which makes itself felt in lower densities, and
the need for proximity to others, which is both a social and economic
need, depends intrinsically on the wealth of the population and the
level of available technology. The medieval town was limited in size
by the how far one could walk to the rest of the town while the early
industrial city was constrained by daily commuting using the steam
train and tram.
The contemporary city of course is limited by how far one can
travel by car. Cities become bigger as people trade-off space for
time and diversify their work patterns through the working day
and week, while new technologies, which enable high buildings
to be constructed, expand city size in the vertical dimension.
The skyscraper only became possible after elevator technologies were
invented and with new construction technologies and materials,
the maximum height of a building has grown ever higher. Somewhat
serendipitously the architect Frank Lloyd Wright proposed a scheme
for a mile-high building, the Illinois Sky-City, in the 1950s, but only
now have technologies reached the point where anything approaching
this is possible. The Burj Tower which is under construction in Dubai
will be half a mile high when it is finished.
The debate about sustainability of cities is critically woven into this
question of size. Urban sprawl, the term now used for cities that grow
due to dependence on the car, allow populations to purchase land
for living at very low densities far away from city cores while still
remaining ‘connected’. Such suburbs are often assumed to be
unsustainable due to much higher energy use for transport and
for heating and cooling such low density structures. If people travel
less using less energy and live at higher densities, then it is argued,
by some, that cities will be more compact, hence more sustainable
in that their carbon footprints will be lower. In a world of
rising temperatures and sea levels, and of rapidly diminishing
non-renewable fuel sources, the idea of such compact cities appears
attractive. However this argument is never straightforward and might
even be flawed. Notwithstanding the fact that individuals want to
maximise their use of space – lower densities – while remaining
attached to the city which is only possible through sprawl, then the
amount of energy saved by moving to a more compact form is rather
uncertain. It might appear that using less fuel through travel would
reduce energy use, but the added congestion and heat posed by
crowding could well offset this gain. Moreover, high densities are not
Low density living:
urban sprawl in Phoenix, Arizona
“Our understanding of the way we use energy
in cities is so rudimentary that most of the
potential solutions to building more sustainable
cities remain at the level of speculation”
necessarily compatible with ecological stability in cities and it is not
clear that high buildings which are part of the drive for compactness
are more energy efficient than lower rise structures. In fact as a
building gets larger, it is more difficult to resource through natural
lighting and direct energy. The problem is that our measurement of
relevant energy use is extremely crude while the multiplier effects of
energy flow through the urban economy and population are almost
impossible to gauge. In short, our understanding of the way we use
energy in cities is so rudimentary that most of the potential solutions
to building more sustainable cities remain at the level of speculation.
There is little doubt that if we were to reduce travel and house people
in residential areas of higher density constructed of materials that
were more energy efficient and if people could be convinced to use
less energy, then cities would become more sustainable. We would
simply use less energy. But the possibilities of doing this are difficult.
Purchasing and using more space which means living at lower
densities is largely a function of income in that the greater disposable
wealth, the more likely that the individual would live at lower
densities. This is compounded by the fact that lower densities can
only be sustained by greater expenditures on travel which means more
fuel use and this too depends on higher incomes. The much greater
carbon footprint of the USA in per capita terms is largely due to two
things – greater real incomes and much more available space for living
than in Western Europe and other parts of the world. In fact, the rate
of change in per capita energy use in the USA is less than in other
parts of the world which is reflected in more stringent emissions
standards on car pollution and a greater tendency to domestic
recycling and related measures.
Moreover technological change could well lead to solutions to the
problem of movement in cities which could overturn arguments to
reduce conventional energy use by raising densities and pricing out
the car. The argument that resource conservation and use might be
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.23
High density living:
The half mile high Burj Tower in Dubai
affected by the invention of cleaner and more efficient technologies
that process energy more efficiently is an equally difficult one to
think through. Already there are quite dramatic increases in efficiency
which show every sign of outpacing price rises in non-renewable
fuels. The prospect too of substituting information for energy in
terms of patterns of travel and other forms of communication is also
changing the way people are interacting in cities with much clearer
divisions and specialisation of transactions that require face to face
versus more remote forms of contact. The prospect of very large
cities, where physical movement is not the predominant form of
interaction, still appears something of a semi-fiction and ideas about
the electronic cottage and the paper-less office have not come to pass,
at least not yet.
The question of course remains: how big can a city get? It appears
that as we get richer and as our technologies relating to movement
get more efficient and we are able to travel longer distances, cities can
get bigger, but they are still limited by the capacity to travel during
the working day. However if the working day itself is thrown into
question and we begin to organise ourselves more flexibly in terms
of the use of our time, then this will force up the limits on city size.
It is well known that by the end of this century the proportion of the
world’s population living in cities will have increased from 45% now
to some 80%. The world’s biggest city at any point in the last 100
years has grown inexorably: in 1900 it was London with 6.4 million;
in 1950 it was New York with 12.4 million; in 2000 it was Tokyo
with 34.1 million and the forecasts for the next 100 years show that
the cities of the developing world will overtake those of the
developed. New technologies will determine how big cities can grow
as well as how high they will grow in terms of skyscrapers. In 1900,
the highest building in the world was in Philadelphia some 167
metres in height; in 1950, it was 381 metres in New York City; and
in 2000, it was 452 metres in Kuala Lumpur. The trade-off between
space developed, energy used, and the amount of travel required to
enable effective and workable communications will determine both
the desirability and sustainability of cities. These questions of course
are changing as we get better methods of measurement and as we
understand the ways in which energy and information underpin the
functioning of the modern city. In tackling the problem of the
sustainable city, it is essential to measure the size of cities much more
effectively and to trace the pathways of energy demand and supply
in ways that enable us to get a much clearer view of how we can
trade-off space/density for communications. This is the challenge
that we urgently need to address, for only then we will get some
sense of how big our cities are, how big they can get, and more
importantly how big they should be.
Profile / Professor Michael Batty
Michael’s research is in the development of
computer-based technologies, specifically graphics-based
and mathematical models for cities, and he has worked
recently on applications of fractal geometry and cellular
automata to urban structure.
He was previously Director of the NSF National Center for
Geographic Information & Analysis in the State University
of New York at Buffalo (1990–1995) and was Professor
and Head of the Department of City & Regional Planning
in the University of Wales at Cardiff (1979–1990).
Michael has been a member of the Computer Board for
British Universities and Research Councils (1988–1990),
Chairman (1980–1982) and Vice-Chairman (1982–1984)
of the Economic & Social Research Council Environment
& Planning Committee, and a member of the Science
& Engineering Research Council Transport Committee
(1982–1985). He is currently Chairman of the
ESRC–JISC Census Advisory Committee and a
member of the Advisory Panel on Public Sector
Information (HMSO/Cabinet Office). He was
a member of the RAE 2008 Geography Panel.
He is the editor of the ‘Environment and Planning B’
and was awarded the CBE for services to geography
in the 2004 Birthday Honours List.
Contact
Professor Michael Batty
Bartlett Professor of Planning
UCL Bartlett School of Planning
Director
UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
+44 (0)20 7679 1781
m.batty@ucl.ac.uk
PERSPECTIVES SECTION 3.24
portfolio
SECTION 4
LOOKING AT
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
The Ponte Vecchio
Waseem Jerjes (UCL Eastman Dental Institute)
“The Ponte Vecchio is a famous medieval bridge
over the Arno River in Florence, noted for having
shops built along it. It is Europe’s oldest segmental
arch bridge. It is believed that it was built in
Roman times; it was originally made of wood.
After being destroyed by flood in 1333, it was
rebuilt in 1345, this time in stone”
PORTFOLIO SECTION 4.1
PORTFOLIO SECTION 4.2
Bus, Wall, Dump
Flock
Juan Rojas Routon (UCL Anthropology)
Ana Tam (UCL Institute of Archaeology)
“Part of my work tries to better understand how
people in rural Mexico form their understanding
of modernity. This photograph shows the
montage of visual languages that is part of
visiting the capital city. Behind the retaining
wall is one of the city’s largest waste dumps”
“In the courtyard outside the Omayyad Mosque
in Damascus, pigeons soar as passersby duck for
cover. The area is ideal for congregating – for
both people and birds – as it is situated between
the main souk (market) entrance, the Mosque,
and various food vendors”
Ruined statue at Sakakini Palace, Cairo’
Kinds of blue
Tannis Davidson (UCL Bartlett School)
Hang Kei Ho (UCL Geography)
“One of many ruined statues at the derelict
19th-century Sakakini Palace in Cairo, the
expression of this figure embodies the wider
civic sense of despair and condemnation for
the destruction and loss of Cairo’s belle époque
architectural heritage”
“I had arranged to meet a friend for a drink one
evening when the battery on my mobile died.
I headed to the nearest phone booth which
happened to be one of the newer telephone,
internet hi-tech communication portals that have
been popping up everywhere. It also happened to
be broken and plastered with flyers advertising
ladies of the night and their mobile numbers.
At this point three things struck me. Firstly the
way the oldest profession was keeping abreast of
developments in telecommunication technology.
Secondly, how the abundance of virtual and
digital opportunities for interaction in the
21st century still managed to converge into basic
human needs. And thirdly that my friend’s phone
number was on my mobile. It gave me something
to think about as I made my way home”
PORTFOLIO SECTION 4.3
Underground imagination
Professor Matthew Gandy (UCL Geography)
“Southwark Underground Station, which opened in
2000, is one of the most important examples of
recent public architecture in London. Designed
by the architects MacCormac Jamieson Prichard
(MJP), the station includes references to the classic
Underground designs of Charles Holden
(1875–1960), the imaginative flair of John Soane
(1753–1837), and even the 1816 stage set design
for ‘The Magic Flute’ by Karl Friedrich Schinkel”
Vanished luxury
Dr Deborah Colville
(UCL English Language & Literature)
“The Bloomsbury Project at UCL is researching
the radical and progressive establishments of
19th-century Bloomsbury, and in the process
documenting the history of its built environment.
This image, falling slightly outside our research
scope, nevertheless exemplifies the vagaries of
tracing London’s vanished
past, advertising as it does a forgotten luxuary
from the early 20th century, which once occupied
the basement of a nearby hotel.
But there is nothing left of the house once
occupied here by FD Maurice, founder of
the Working Men’s Colleges, which the
Bloomsbury Project is researching”
PORTFOLIO SECTION 4.4
pages
SECTION 5
WRITING ON
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
‘Cities Design and Evolution’
Dr Stephen Marshall
(UCL Bartlett School of Planning)
ISBN: 9780415423298
‘The Evolution of Designs –
Biological Analogy in Architecture
and the Applied Arts’
Professor Philip Steadman
(UCL Bartlett School
of Graduate Studies)
ISBN: 9780415447539
Why are modern cities often uglier and less fit for purpose than
traditionally evolved older ones? That question is posed and
answered by Dr Stephen Marshall, Senior Lecturer in Transport
Planning & Urban Design.
The subject is brought to life with an engaging narrative and an
adroit choice of reference material to bolster his case for a new
‘evolutionary’ perspective in urban planning.
Dr Marshall draws together the theories of biological evolution
by Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins with the planning
philosophies of Patrick Geddes and Le Corbusier and blends
them into a compelling case for changes in city structure and
architectural thought.
He has 19 years’ experience in the built environment field; his
research addresses the relationships between urban form and
structure, and urban design and planning. This experience
includes UK Research Council-funded investigations into
transport, urban form and urban structure, and EC research into
land use, transport, streets and urban design issues. He has
also undertaken research for UK and Scottish government level
projects in transport and planning fields, and detailed urban
design and street design studies for local authorities.
Philip Steadman, Professor of Urban & Built Forms Studies,
tells the history of the many analogies that have been made
between the evolution of organisms and the human
production of artefacts, especially buildings. He examines the
effects of these analogies on architectural and design theory
and considers how recent biological thinking has relevance
for design.
Professor Steadman says: “Architects and designers have
looked to biology for inspiration since the early 19th century.
They have sought not just to imitate the forms of plants and
animals, but to find methods in design analogous to the
processes of growth and evolution in nature. Biological ideas
are prominent in the writings of many modern architects, of
whom Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright are just the most
famous. Le Corbusier declared biology to be ‘the great new
word in architecture and planning’.”
This new revised edition of this classic work adds an
extended afterword covering recent developments such as the
introduction of computer methods in design in the 1980s and
1990s, which have made possible a new kind of ‘biomorphic’
architecture through ‘genetic algorithms’ and other
programming techniques.
PAGES SECTION 5.1
‘Cities in Modernity: Representations and
Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930’
Dr Richard Dennis (UCL Geography)
ISBN: 9780521468411
This book explores what made cities ‘modern’ in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. Drawing his evidence principally
from London, New York and Toronto – London often studied
as much as an imperial as a modern city, New York a more
obviously modern city in this period, and Toronto a comparative
baby in population terms but striving for metropolitan status
and intriguingly positioned politically and imaginatively
‘between’ Britain and America – Dr Richard Dennis focuses on
the relationship between, on the one hand, processes of
modernisation in government, technology and economy,
but especially innovations in the built environment and changes
in the spatial structure of cities and, on the other, modernity
as a social and cultural experience.
The first half of the book discusses new ways of seeing cities
in the 19th and early 20th centuries, looking at cities in
contemporary political and religious discourse, at the growth
of social survey and city mapping, and at the representation
of cities in art and literature. Later chapters look at changes to
and on city streets, at new forms of residential environment
– middle-class and working-class suburbs, apartments and
tenements in North American cities, flats and model dwellings
in London – and at new kinds of retail and business spaces.
One of Dr Dennis’s aims is to build bridges and make
connections between humanities and social science ways
of looking at cities, and between culture and economy.
The book begins by discussing some real bridges – Brooklyn
Bridge, Tower Bridge and the lesser known Bloor Street Viaduct
in Toronto – and ends by analysing new networks of connection
in intra-urban communications and infrastructure, including
sewers in London and the elevated railway in New York.
Integral to the book are illustrations reproducing contemporary
postcards and advertisements, highlighting the tension
between modernity, tradition and the picturesque, or aligning a
modern environment with style and cosmopolitanism, a variety
of specialised maps, from the ‘glove map’ intended for ladies
visiting the Great Exhibition, to fire insurance maps which
cartographically embody the connections between modernity
and risk, and an 1880s sewer map which plotted the time taken
for sewage to flow across London.
Dr Dennis also discusses and reproduces numerous works of
art and draws on his extensive research into the representation
of urban space in literature.
The book closes with a brief discussion of Harmsworth’s
Magazine’s 1902 article, ‘If London Were Like New York’,
speculating on the effects of an American invasion. There are
elevated trains on Tower Bridge, Holborn–Oxford Street has
become Broadway, and Mansion House is Tammany Hall.
PAGES SECTION 5.2
‘Powering Our Lives: Sustainable Energy Management
and the Built Environment’
Government Office for Science, London
Lead Expert Team Chair: Professor Yvonne Rydin
(UCL Bartlett School of Planning)
URN: 140-08-Fo/b
This government thinktank report outlines how human spaces
can be adjusted to provide a greener environment. The report is
the product of intensive work conducted from 2006–2008 by a
group of experts chaired by Yvonne Rydin, UCL Professor of
Planning, Environment & Public Policy.
The study looks at how the UK’s buildings and spaces will need
to evolve to help cut carbon emissions. It concludes that the UK
is stuck with using certain forms of energy, not because they
are better but because they have historically dominated other
options. The report proposes a number of behavioural and
regulatory changes which could help to overcome this inertia,
and which could be introduced over the next 50 years, including
the upgrading of buildings and spaces to provide greater
carbon neutrality, a move towards decentralised energy
systems, and improving human behaviour in the built
environment.
The principal aim of the project was to explore how the UK built
environment could evolve over time in order to secure
sustainable, low-carbon energy systems which meet the needs
of society, the requirements of the economy, and the
expectations of individuals. Achieving a transition in the built
environment to sustainable energy systems is likely to require
multiple changes in, for example, planning and building
regulation and social behaviour, as well as action from business,
government and consumers. It states: “Systematically exploring
possible futures, over the next five decades, with the aim of
making current policies robust and resilient to future change
needs to be a key part of the policymaking process.”
Among the authors of the report were Professor Rydin’s
colleagues Professor Michael Davies, Professor Robert Lowe,
Professor Tadj Oreszczyn, Professor Philip Steadman and
Dr Mark Barrett.
‘Jack the Ripper and the East End’
Alex Werner (Editor)
ISBN: 9780701182472
Two UCL academics contributed chapters to a book
accompanying an exhibition of the same name at the
Museum in Docklands.
The book aims to uncover the reality of East End life. Sections
look at slum housing, immigration, attitudes to women, poverty,
violence and crime. It examines how the brutal killings were
reported and how the police tried to identify the murderer.
A final section shows how Jack the Ripper has shaped our
vision of London, and influenced our popular culture.
Dr Laura Vaughan (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies),
Senior Lecturer in Urban & Suburban Settlement Patterns,
provides insight into how space-syntax analysis of historical
maps can shed light on the spatial, social and economic
structure of the East End in the 19th century. In ‘Mapping the
East End Labyrinth’, she presents analysis of the Booth maps of
poverty that suggests a strong relationship between the spatial
distribution of poverty and a relative lack of physical
accessibility. She also shows that there was a complex
relationship between urban form, poverty and immigrant status,
and shows that despite perceptions of immigrants living in a
‘ghetto’, separate from the existing population, there was likely
to have been considerable contact between the two populations.
Photo: © Laura Vaughan and Museum of London
The chapter uses some of the wide range of historical maps
owned by the Museum of London to illustrate how social
exclusion is the outcome of an emergent, complex spatial
process, demonstrating how spatial scientific research can
analyse this complexity and shed light on the contribution of
urban form to social change through time.
In his chapter ‘Common lodgings and ‘furnished rooms’:
housing in 1880s Whitechapel’, Dr Richard Dennis (UCL
Geography) shows how contemporary newspaper reports
on the Ripper murders and other crimes can be used to
reconstruct the everyday experience of public and private
space in the East End. Historical mapping also underlies
Dr Dennis’s work, serving as the basis for the reconstruction
of patterns of property ownership in East End slums.
‘Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction’ (2nd Edn)
Professor Mark Maslin (UCL Environment Institute)
ISBN: 9780199548248
The second edition of ‘Global Warming: A Very Short
Introduction’, by Professor Mark Maslin, is a fully updated version
of his 2004 original. Part of the OUP’s ‘Very Short Introductions’
series of books, it brings the reader up to date with the most
recent developments in the field, including the latest scientific
findings and current UK and US policy. It also examines local and
global solutions, including how global carbon trading could save
the world, and provides a new vision of what a future low-carbon
society might look like.
In his preface to the new edition, Professor Maslin states: “In my
opinion, global warming is good for humanity.” The two major
problems facing humanity in the 21st century – global poverty
and global warming – are interconnected. To alleviate global
poverty, he argues, poor countries must develop as quickly as
possible. Although such development will increase the amount of
energy used – and thus accelerate global warming – we must for
the first time in humanity’s history tackle the unequal distribution
of global wealth: “Global warming is making us face the forgotten
billions of people on the planet, and we must make the world a
fairer place.”
Professor Maslin unpicks the controversies surrounding the
global warming hypothesis, explains basic concepts, and
examines the evidence which underlies both accounts of past
developments and dramatic predictions by scientists, in order to
introduce the reader to the complexities of both the science and
the politics of climate change.
PAGES SECTION 5.3
‘The Grand Challenge
of Global Health 08/09’
‘Digital Geography: Geographic Visualisation
for Urban Environments’
UCL Institute for Global Health
Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith
(UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis)
www.ucl.ac.uk/global-health
ISBN: 9780955058110
This inaugural annual report reviewed UCL’s many activities in
the global-health sphere, many of which interact with work on
the Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities. Among these were:
ıı a preview of the Lancet–UCL Commission report on
managing the human-health effects of climate change
ıı the new cross-disciplinary UCL MSc in Global
Health & Development
ıı the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre’s new
global disaster risk reduction hub
This book describes the latest mapping technologies,
illustrating how the development of digital earth and
virtual worlds are creating a ‘neogeography’, in
which we can all share, interact with one another
and search for information. It addresses geographical
virtual urban environments, setting out examples,
tips and step-by-step processes, and forms a preview
to the forthcoming Digital Urban ‘recipe book’.
ıı the foundation of the UCL Urban Pathogen Research
Group to produce engineering solutions in urban health.
Low Carbon Buildings Directory
www.lowcarbonbuildingsdirectory.org
‘Dream Isle’
Professor cj Lim
(UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)
Of his solo exhibition ‘Dream Isle’, a vision for London, at the
Nanyodo Gallery, Tokyo, Professor Lim writes:
“This is London’s dream… In these dreams, the city is protagonist,
and this is how it sees itself. Causality and reason drift through the
gargantuan proscenium windows of Buckingham Palace and
across the roving kaleidoscope of the realm’s ancient mounds of
tea and baked sponge. The denizens of the Dream Isle comprise
puffed-up swans borne on palanquins and an anarchic monarchy
circled by MPs (appropriately dressed in shark costumes), while
a skein of magpies unfurls the British Museum, daily revealing
their hoard of sequestered treasure.
“Dreams, like cities, shape us and are shaped by us. … In both
London’s imaginings and reality, landmarks and events assume
shifting magnitude and significance, constructing distorted maps
of desire and experience. Narrative obeys no logic as London
searches for an ever-changing identity imprinted by its waking life.
Time, scale and relationships become fluid, and the city is forever
on the brink of the strangely familiar and the familiarly strange.”
PAGES SECTION 5.4
Initiated by Dr Dejan Mumovic (UCL Bartlett School of
Graduate Studies), with the support of UrbanBuzz, the
Low Carbon Buildings Directory is an online
educational tool designed to build a new alliance of
professional organisations, academics and
practitioners who are willing to share knowledge and
experience relating to the design and operational
performance of low-carbon buildings.
Audiovisual presentations on the site tackle one or
more aspects of the complex interaction between the
physical, environmental and sometimes social
processes that underpin sustainable building design
and engineering. Key outcomes are insights into
effective design techniques and engineering
technologies for low carbon buildings that can be used
by students, architects and building service engineers.
Since Summer 2008, users have provided valuable
reviews, feedback and suggestions to improve the
quality of the content and the functionality of the
course site. Several organisations and business have
also helped with the development and enhancements
of this educational tool.
‘Bartlett Designs: Speculating with Architecture’
Laura Allen, Professor Iain Borden, Nadia O’Hare and
Professor Neil Spiller (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture),
Editors
ISBN: 0956132308
The UCL Bartlett School of Architecture is one of the world’s
leading places at which to study and teach architecture.
Every year it attracts hundreds of students from around to
world to come and participate in its highly experimental and
rigorous range of architecture programmes. Its graduates have
won an extraordinary range of prizes on the international stage,
and are highly sought after by architectural practices globally.
This book is a collection of the very best of this student work
from the last decade. Through a detailed presentation of more
than 170 student projects, each succinctly explained by the
individual tutors concerned, the book shows how architectural
designs and ideas can creatively address some of the world’s
most pressing urban and social problems through buildings
and other forms of architectural invention. The projects on
show deal inventively with such important issues as cultural
identity, housing, climate change, health and public space, as
well as architectural concerns with the imagination of exciting
forms and aesthetic languages.
Complementing the student projects is a series of short and
provocative essays written by tutors at the school. Ranging
from landscape to buildings, from urbanism to interaction,
from making to advanced technology, these essays postulate
a series of manifestoes and agendas – and so both create a
conceptual framework around the incredible variety of student
work on display, and suggest some of the most current and
pertinent agendas for architecture today.
‘Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy:
From Unification to Fascism’
Dr Axel Körner (UCL History)
ISBN: 0415962919
This book discusses the controversial process of Italian
modernisation and nation-building between Unification and
Fascism. Analysing cultural policy on the municipal level, it
includes chapters on theatre and opera, the medieval revival,
the rediscovery of the Etruscan past and on the Italians’
changing relationship to the nation state and the monarchy.
The book takes the former Papal Legations and their capital,
Bologna, as a case study – a large region in the north of the
peninsula, which played a crucial role during the political and
diplomatic process of Unification. Conflicts between ancient
elites and the rising middle class, between the Moderate and
the Democratic traditions of the Risorgimento, and between
Catholicism and anti-clericalism demonstrate how throughout
the second half of the 19th century Italians negotiated national,
regional and municipal identities.
After a short experience of ‘municipal socialism’ during World
War One, Bologna was the first city in which the Fascist squads
replaced a democratic administration. Comparing Bologna to
examples of other Italian cities and the nation as a whole, the
book offers a new explanation of Italy’s road to Fascism and a
fresh approach to studying the relationship between culture,
politics and societal change during the European fin-de-siècle.
‘Investing in Geography: A GIS to Support
Inward Investment’
Patrick Weber and Dr Dave Chapman
(UCL Management Science & Innovation),
in ‘Computers, Environment & Urban Systems’
For the last 11 years Think London has acted as
London’s official inward-investment agency. Since
2004, UCL has collaborated with Think London to
provide spatial-analysis products of location-decision
factors, helping to improve services to inward investors
and promote London as an enterprising and creative
location. The main areas of investigation were the
disposition of essential resources such as labour,
facilities and business-support infrastructures
alongside more subjective factors relating to the
‘liveability’ of the city.
This paper explores the economic, social and cultural
differences between different areas of London
and attempts to develop a geographic framework
relevant to inward investment into London, based
on competitiveness frameworks and an alternative
geography of London defined by its multinodal
business landscape. It develops a characterisation
of these ‘town centres’ using geostatistical analysis
of industry sector and workforce patterns.
PAGES SECTION 5.5
‘The Complete UrbanBuzz’
‘A Handbook of Sustainable Building Engineering’
ISBN: 9780956132307
Dr Dejan Mumovic (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies),
Co-Editor
This book describes the £7.75 million,
two-year knowledge-exchange programme
called UrbanBuzz: Building Sustainable
Communities (see page 1.3). UCL used this
‘risk capital’ to unlock potential by funding
27 projects, most of which have delivered
new tools and processes grounded in the
evidence base for the benefit of those
interested or engaged in creating and
shaping the places in which we live.
It tells a story of risky ventures and triumph
over unreasonable logistics and deadlines.
It will become an essential reference for
practitioners in the professional, trade,
policy, academic and community sectors –
in particular where the acquisition of new
techniques and processes are key to
personal and professional development.
ISBN: 9781844075966
The combined challenges of health, comfort, climate change
and energy security cross the boundaries of traditional building
disciplines. This authoritative collection, focusing mostly on
energy and ventilation, provides the current and next generation
of building-engineering professionals with what they need to
work closely with many disciplines to meet these challenges.
The book covers: how to design, engineer and monitor a building in
a manner that minimises the emissions of greenhouse gases; how
to adapt the environment, fabric and services of existing and new
buildings to climate change; and how to improve the environment
in and around buildings to provide better health, comfort, security
and productivity. It provides crucial expertise on monitoring the
performance of buildings once they are occupied. The authors
explain the principles behind built-environment engineering,
and offer practical guidance through international case studies.
‘UrbanTick’
urbantick.blogspot.com
This blog by Fabian Neuhaus (UCL Centre for
Advanced Spatial Analysis) examines and creates
cycle studies, the science of everyday life. He writes:
“Its focus is the daily routine, with its habits and
rhythms as they occur in most citizens’ lives. It is the
power of the normal that brings stability and the
routine that ensures security. But it is the cycles’
dynamic of flow and continuation that prevents
life from freezing. Cycles therefore stand for stability
but are at the same time the engine of change.
My research asks: Do cycles participate in the
shaping of cities, especially on the level of the
urban form? And, how can cycles be used as a tool
in the urban-design process?”
One research project is UrbanDiary, in which
participants wear a GPS device – provided by
Garmin – to track their movements over a period
of two months, the results of which are then
visualised and analysed.
PAGES SECTION 5.6
participation
SECTION 6
ENGAGING IN
CITIES AND SUSTAINABILITY
Central to our vision for the Grand Challenge of Sustainable
Cities is our engagement with policymakers, practitioners,
business, NGOs, opinion formers, prospective students
and other academics.
UCL is London’s research and teaching powerhouse, and
there are countless opportunities for you to engage with and
inform our work on sustainable cities. Our activities include:
ıı events – including public lectures, symposia and
workshops, and exhibitions and events at our eight
museums and collections
ıı research – in numerous interdisciplinary groups as well as in
departments across seven academic faculties
ıı student engagement – for example through internships
and volunteering
ıı doctoral training – in 53 academic units and hundreds of
funded doctoral places in UCL’s Centres for Doctoral Training,
including: Energy Demand Reduction & the Built Environment;
Security Science; Virtual Environments, Imaging &
Visualisation; and Urban Sustainability & Resilience
ıı global citizenship – the ways in which we seek to prepare
our students to respond to the intellectual, social and
personal challenges that they will encounter throughout
their lives and careers
ıı hundreds of undergraduate and graduate (research and
taught) programmes – including those in: built environment;
heritage studies; engineering sciences; urban studies; crime
science; virtual environments; intercultural studies;
environmental design; project management for construction;
urban planning, design and management; and geoinformatics
ıı enterprise – including: UCL Advances, which stimulates the
culture of entrepreneurship and business interaction and
brings business and UCL together; UCL Business, which
maximises the commercial value of UCL’s intellectual property
assets and carries out commercial transactions; and UCL
Consultants, who help provide access to the wealth of
expertise at UCL and manage bespoke consultancy contracts
ıı the UCL Public Engagement Unit – encouraging two-way
communication between staff and external groups.
For further information about all of these activities,
as well as the opportunity to register your interest in
the UCL Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities,
please contact us (sustainable-cities@ucl.ac.uk)
or see:
www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities
PARTICIPATION SECTION 6.1
4,000 academic and research staff
12,000 undergraduate students
8,000 graduate students
£635 million annual income, of which research
grants and contracts total more than £210 million
The most-cited university in Europe
(ISI Web of Knowledge)
The best research university in London
(2008 Research Assessment Exercise )
The new UCL School for Energy & Resources
in Adelaide, Australia, our first overseas campus
20 Nobel Laureates among UCL staff
and alumni – so far
PARTICIPATION SECTION 6.2
London tower blocks
The Fish & Chips is open for business
Concrete poetry (Vitoria, Spain, August 2008)
Gesche Wuersel – For UrbanBuzz
Basak Demires Ozkul
Gabriele Oropallo (UCL Italian)
“I encountered this Fish & Chips store
while walking through the Langworthy
neighbourhood in Manchester. This area
is very close to Salford Quays which houses
many luxury apartments. However as
can be seen from the picture this area is a
remnant of Manchester’s industrial past.
These neighbourhoods are slowly disappearing
as these vacant buildings are being torn down”
‘View of Cairo from Said Halim Palace’
“I took this picture in Vitoria’s Plaza de Los Fueros,
designed by Basque artist Eduardo Chillida during
the nineteen-eighties. The essentiality of its design
hints at a timeless past, where the birth of an
idealized community is usually imagined.
Enigmatic geometry, pure surfaces, unshakable
stone brick walls: these features suggest a solid,
enduring construction, which is destined to last
beyond the lifespan of a single individual.
The square is appropriately also used to play
the national game, la pelota vasca”
Tannis Davidson (UCL Bartlett School)
“In the heart of downtown Cairo, the derelict
belle époque Said Halim Palace is now completely
surrounded by modern highrises. This view is
through the three-story grand staircase window
which would have originally looked out on the
expansive palace gardens”
Fruit and veg, Iran
Professor Roger Matthews
(UCL Institute of Archaeology)
“Fruit and veg in the market at Islamabad,
Zagros region of western Iran”
Unfinished flyover
Dr Charlotte Lemanski (UCL Geography)
“This unfinished fly-over is situated in Hyderabad,
India. Despite being surrounded by scaffolding
and signs saying ‘work in progress’, no work was
ever seen to be occurring. As I was in Hyderabad
to contribute towards research on urban
development, I found this daily vision a powerful
reminder of India’s amazing infrastructural
progress, yet continually unfinished business”
1997–2047
Hang Kei Ho (UCL Geography)
“In 1984, the former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping,
the former Chairman of China, signed the
Sino-British Joint Declaration. This declaration
states that after the handover on 1 July 1997,
Hong Kong would become a Special
Administrative Region where the social and
economic systems would remain unchanged for
50 years, until 2047. The ‘one country, two
systems’ rule has since become one of the most
discussed topics in Hong Kong. Ten years
onwards, it looks, and still feels like Hong Kong
hasn’t changed, the multinational corporations
are still indicating a physical, economical and
social presence in the background”
Habitat 67, Montréal
David Lovelock (studiospecial) Basak Demires
Ozkul
“This is the contradictory desire in our utopia.
We want to live in a small community with
which we can identify and yet we want all the
facilities of the city of millions of people.
We want to have very intense urban experiences
and yet we want the open space right next to us”
– Moshe Safdie, Architect Habitat 67
The Pleasures of Driving
Professor Iain Borden
(UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)
“The social role of the car has been the subject
of considerable enquiry, yet few studies focus
on the actual act of driving, still less on cultural
characteristics of this globally dispersed activity.
My article, ‘The Pleasures of Driving:
Experiencing Cities from the Automobile’,
explored how different kinds of driving, at
different speeds and on different kinds of
road, produce distinct encounters with cities
and architecture”
Urban agriculture
Gesche Wuersel – For UrbanBuzz
Urban agriculture is a concept supported by the
UrbanBuzz project Activating Blighted Urban
Niches for Daring Agricultural Networks of
Creativity & Endeavour (ABUNDANCE)