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This paper discusses the approach, challenges and outcomes of delivering a water-sensitive urban design, incorporating comprehensive sustainable drainage systems (SuDS), for a major eco-town in Oxfordshire, UK. The 406 ha North West Bicester development is the UK's first eco-town, involving 6000 new homes and associated social, commercial and environmental infrastructure. A key challenge was to deliver the government's ambitious criteria for eco-towns while working in a large multi-disciplinary setting with the public and other stakeholders. The key aims of the project are to respond to climate change, create enjoyable and liveable cities, promote healthy lifestyles, design multi-functional and interconnected green infrastructure, reduce flood risk and maximise multiple benefits. Common barriers to the uptake of SuDS include limited evidence in quantification of economic benefits along with maintenance concerns. This paper demonstrates that the initial 17·5 ha of the exemplar site, comprising 393 homes, will deliver natural capital benefits of £307 550 per year from the proposed SuDS, thus highlighting economic benefits and easing maintenance concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of green infrastructure (GI) depends on the sharing of good practice and research between disciplines and sectors. This paper presents findings from a study to examine how GI research is shared with non-academic audiences. GI has been an active research area in recent years, with a wealth of evidence coming from the academic community. This has been mirrored by a body of grey literature aimed at different disciplines and sectors. But it is important to understand which evidence is being used in this grey literature and what the gaps are either in research or in its translation. In this study, 25 pieces of grey literature were reviewed to identify what research is represented; presented as the benefits or ecosystem services provided by different types of GI. This review was presented to around 70 academics, policy makers and practitioners working in GI through two workshops. Attendees were asked questions in order to further understanding of how research is translated and used, and the mechanisms by which it can be more effectively shared. The paper provides insights into how those working in GI can work collaboratively to ensure research findings are relevant and usable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the UK and globally. While it can be argued that good progress is being made in thinking about the needs of future cities, meeting these needs and aspirations in practice poses major challenges of understanding and measurement (what is meant by these terms and how can progress towards their achievement be measured?), complexity (cities are complex systems of systems with many interacting parts) and resilience (will interventions made today be relevant and effective in the future?). The Liveable Cities research programme created a systematic decision-making method for improving urban sustainability and liveability: the Liveable Cities Method (LCM). The LCM prioritises four criteria – individual and societal well-being, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions as a proxy for environmental harm – in an interconnected framework and assesses the need for, and the resilience of, interventions designed to move cities towards improved sustainability and liveability. This paper illustrates the LCM through an example intervention made to the city of Birmingham, UK, and highlights how addressing sustainability and liveability in this way offers unique opportunities for the UK civil engineering profession to lead thinking among urban professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water introduces both opportunities and risks to urban areas. Society is faced with the challenge of finding solutions to complex and interrelated problems such as living safely in densely populated deltas, planning ahead for climate change, finding alternatives to fossil fuels, and urban redevelopment. We need to make sure that all this is achieved in a sustainable way. This paper elaborates on the need to transition towards water-sensitive cities, drawing on the experience of urban water management and water-sensitive urban design in the Netherlands and the UK. This transition involves strengthening the integration of water in spatial planning and design processes, requiring any spatial intervention or new development to be evaluated on opportunities for sustainability and innovation. Design tools or building blocks are suggested that enable the transition to a city in which the awareness of water, energy, nature and living environment are connected, in which developments always take place in a resilient and climate-proof way, and where water can be a focus for enjoyment and vitality. The paper concludes with recommendations on how the UK can build on its own experience and learn from the Netherlands to achieve more water-sensitive urban design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing the SUE-MoT (metrics, models and toolkits for whole-life sustainable urban development) series, this paper highlights some of the barriers that need to be addressed if the vision for holistic assessment is to be realised. The complexities of sustainability assessment raised in this paper will be further discussed in detail in the SUE-MoT series of papers that will be published in forthcoming issues of this journal. This paper highlights the priorities to address when assessment tools are presented to decision makers of urban development projects. This discussion is limited to the issues, values and solutions in the UK context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the social dimension (or 'social sustainability') has gained increased recognition as a fundamental component of sustainable development. This paper explores the notion of social sustainability and its main assessment methods, together with the pioneering social sustainability framework devised by the City of Vancouver, Canada. The paper illustrates how there is no consensus on the definition of social sustainability because this concept is currently being approached from diverging study perspectives and discipline-specific criteria, making a generalised definition difficult to achieve. In addition, traditional 'hard' social sustainability themes such as employment and poverty alleviation are increasingly being complemented or replaced by emerging 'soft' and less measurable concepts such as happiness, social mixing and sense of place. Within this context, the paper looks at how Vancouver's local authorities have approached urban social sustainability and discusses the importance of the selection of sustainability principles, objectives, themes, assessment techniques and indicators from a social perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability checklists are designed to provide practical tools (including indicators) that help with planning and measuring sustainability within new developments and redevelopment schemes. Unfortunately, a checklist - due to its very nature - tends to consider elements of sustainability in isolation, narrowing it to a set of individual tick boxes. Successful planning strategies for sustainable utility infrastructure require a more holistic approach that considers elements of water, energy and infrastructure in tandem rather than isolation, therefore suggesting that a checklist approach may not be wholly appropriate. By critically examining the 2007 version of the sustainability checklist for south-east England with respect to 12 questions that relate to sustainable utility infrastructure alone (five for energy, four for water and three for infrastructure provision) this argument is explored further. The thorough examination provided in this paper serves to analyse the framing of the questions used in the checklist and test the validity of the aims and scoring method used (including weightings). This paper also examines whether these questions can jointly form a successful holistic strategy for infrastructure, not least in terms of the ability to ensure that supply meets demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of an integrated data repository for urban sustainability analysis is presented; it aims to enhance quantitative analysis of urban sustainability on real statistical data with relevant geographic references. The method is complementary to qualitative and quantitative analyses of sample data, which are the main approaches adopted in conventional urban sustainability analysis. The paper highlights the background and importance of using statistical data for urban planning and analysis. Selected statistics sources and various geospatial objects relevant to the geo-references of the statistical data are reviewed. The conceptual model of the integrated data repository is described and the logical integration of statistics from different sources is illustrated. The detailed geospatial conceptual model shows the geospatial classes, main attributes and relationships between these geospatial classes. The paper details the procedure of setting up a server-based database to host both geospatial and non-geospatial data, and uses PostGIS query to interrogate geospatial information in the database, including how to convert the database tables from other formats. A geographic information system (GIS) is introduced as a user-side tool to reveal geospatial and non-geospatial data. Case studies of application of the database for urban sustainability analysis are described. Data maps generated for these case studies can assist planning and design professionals in analysing some urban sustainability issues. Potential applications in various sustainability analyses, barriers and future improvements are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a four-year research programme conducted in Sri Lanka (part of a larger programme also conducted in India and Kenya) this paper addresses the issue of building and planning regulations and how such regulations affect people's livelihoods. This paper begins by reviewing the urban housing programmes undertaken in Sri Lanka over the past 30 years with special reference to urban upgrading projects and their respective planning and building regulations. The authors have analysed four cases from Colombo Municipality and two cases from a secondary town, Moratuwa Municipality in Colombo Municipal Authority, in order to assess the impacts of such urban upgrading programmes on the livelihoods of the poor; some conclusions and recommendations have been drawn. Guidance notes (based on a literature review, historical analysis and case studies) are presented towards the end of the paper for the use of local government staff as well as others acting as partners in the improvement of livelihoods in urban areas. Land reforms and land management are key components of any sustainable urban upgrading programme. The authors conclude that regulatory frameworks which take into account existing patterns (with the exception of unsafe practices) of livelihoods and socio-economic aspirations will enhance the potential for sustainable livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, inner city regeneration will be a major challenge in the future. Most cities lack effective planning and management tools for the complicated problems in the inner city. This paper focuses on the planning practice for the inner city regeneration of Baise. This is an area with vibrant micro economic activities in residential buildings with insufficient infrastructure and poor living conditions. Within the framework of a Sino-German cooperation project, the planning team developed a comprehensive regeneration plan for the inner city. The overall concept aims at a sustainable and process-oriented regeneration. The plan emphasises strategies such as integrating the improvement of residents' living conditions with the conservation of the inner city historical image, improving public space and infrastructure, introducing public participation as well as adopting area-specific regeneration solutions. Baise is a case study for a change of the existing urban planning system to a more sustainable inner city regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex adaptive systems are central to many persistent problems locally and globally. In cases where the effects of a policy play out slowly and propagate through interdependencies with other systems, the broader view and understanding gained from complex adaptive system analyses allow us to recognise the causal relationships involved and solve persistent system-level issues. This is particularly true with the risks due to climate change, economic crises, energy disruptions and food insecurity. Climate change and the challenge of addressing the resulting global risks provides a common set of problems on which to build a global community of practice that utilises earth systems' engineering approaches and sustainability goals to understand and resolve problems in complex adaptive systems of systems. Structural adaptation under environmental stress, simple rules for entity interactions and condition-dependent behaviours are key attributes of complex systems. These attributes provide the means for creating models that behave the way the real system does and for the same reasons, improving understanding and designing effective solutions. This paper presents general concepts for infrastructure adaptation and examples of successful applications of an expanded engineering process for complex systems of systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban regeneration is increasingly a 'universal issue' and a crucial factor in the new trends of urban planning. It is no longer only an area for study and research, but it has become part of new urban and housing policies. Urban regeneration involves complex decisions as a consequence of the multiple dimensions of the problems such as special technical requirements, safety concerns, and socio-economic, environmental, aesthetic and political impacts, among others. This multi-dimensional nature of urban regeneration projects and the large capital investments required justify the development and use of state-of-the-art decision support methodologies to assist decision makers. This research focuses on the development of a multi-criteria approach for the evaluation of building conservation status in urban regeneration projects. This paper presents a web-based spatial decision support system (SDSS) to help decision makers in analysis of problems and in the definition of strategies and priorities of intervention. An example of an application to a real-world context is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making cities more sustainable is a top priority - for national governments, for cities and for the people who live, work and visit urban areas. The past decade has seen a concerted UK effort to develop, apply and assess sustainability solutions for the present and near future; however, little has been done to test urban regeneration solutions beyond that. This paper describes a methodology that has developed future scenarios for the year 2050 against which to test the robustness of current engineering solutions, thereby providing unique insights into the potential impacts of present urban planning and design decisions, and thus financial investments. If a proposed solution delivers a positive legacy, regardless of the future against which it is tested, then it can be adopted with confidence. When there are very different outcomes depending on the future, the solution can either be modified to create an improved outcome regardless of the future or implemented in the knowledge of the likely impacts if the future develops in different ways. The urban futures methodology has been applied to the Lancaster Luneside East regeneration site, for which contextual information is described along with a justification for its use as a case study to trial the methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physical structure of a city frequently defines how people interact with each other and their environment. This paper examines the use of personas as a user-centred design tool for the re-engineering of a city to promote sustainable behaviour and social inclusion of its citizens (the Eight Eyes of Dublin Project). The research was carried out through the adoption of personas and collaboration with design partners to identify barriers to sustainability, and resulted in recommendations for the future development of Dublin city, Ireland. These recommendations are then compared with the draft Dublin development plan 2011-17 to determine the effectiveness of personas as a design tool for identifying key issues for sustainability in the built environment. The results suggest that personas may be an appropriate tool for universal design and may act as a good diagnostic tool in the early stages of the re-engineering of urban areas towards sustainability. It is concluded that personas may work most effectively when used in combination with other user-centred design tools, such as participatory design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally regarded as a technical process to determine the performance of buildings against sustainability criteria, calls are now emerging for sustainability assessment to be better integrated with the subjectively-based decisions taken across a project lifecycle, to support stakeholder engagement and to promote a culture of learning about sustainability in practice. In order for sustainability assessment fully to realise this wider role, it is necessary to recognise the significance played by knowledge and its flow between stakeholders in the promotion of a common understanding of the actions required to deliver a sustainable urban environment. This paper presents the findings of a knowledge mapping exercise focused on understanding the nature of this flow during application of sustainability assessment within a university campus building project. Knowledge exists in a variety of types and forms; the key sources drawn upon by a key decision-maker were identified and classified. The mapping exercise stressed the significance of supporting the flow of not only explicit sources of knowledge, but also implicit sources such as expert and tacit knowledge. Ensuring that pathways are dynamic and facilitated through effective management to deliver continued engagement between key decision-makers, the rest of the team and wider stakeholders was highlighted as essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK spatial planning guidance now recognises the importance of engaging stakeholders in appraisal processes at an early stage in the plan-making process. Regional planning authorities are required to consult with a wide range of stakeholders on the development of planning policy and the sustainability appraisal of that policy. However, there is no clear indication as to how they might go about this process, other than to confront the various stakeholders with a sustainability appraisal report. Participation in sustainability appraisal therefore still relies on reaction to a technical appraisal of an existing plan - and in this situation stakeholders might lack the incentive to participate. More thoughtful ways need to be devised to involve people in the sustainability debate so that spatial policy more accurately reflects their knowledge and aspirations. The focus of this paper is to investigate ways in which sustainability appraisal of spatial plans can be made more accessible and transparent within the context of wider governance mechanisms. Of particular interest is the public examination of a regional spatial strategy. A number of questions arise as to how engagement with stakeholders can be achieved and their knowledge elicited in a proactive manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban design and sustainability are critical issues in creating better urban environments. The UK government is endorsing sustainability through its sustainable communities agenda and is urging the public, private and third sectors to emphasise high quality design in their urban development projects. However, with little guidance as to how to design sustainable urban development projects, decision-makers may end up wasting time, money and resources in projects that are unsustainable for themselves, the community and beyond. One option for decision-makers is loosely to follow a generic process for urban design that demonstrates, by way of a series of stages and activities, when to make decisions and to consider sustainability, what tools are needed to make decisions and who should be making decisions. To further the understanding of the use of a process in sustainable urban design decision-making, a baseline model was first created that amalgamates stages and activities from relevant processes found in a variety of disciplines and professions. A case study was then conducted, showing the process for the urban design and development of Brewhouse Yard, Clerkenwell, London. Through analysis of interviews, archival material and site analysis, three distinct periods of the process were discerned. These periods are discussed by way of process stages, decisions, tools and sustainability. The paper then compares this process with the baseline process to understand how the former can help improve the latter as a tool for assisting decision-makers in creating more sustainable urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-criteria analysis is often used in planning for evaluating alternative development options against a set of evaluation criteria. In the context of sustainable development, the definition of these criteria is quite controversial because of the complex and fuzzy nature of this emerging topic. Decision making for sustainable (re)development at urban planning level requires an understanding of the multiple issues implied in the problem. The multi-modal framework can help decision makers handle the multiplicity of issues embodied in the concept of urban sustainability by guiding the selection of appropriate criteria for evaluating alternative solutions. This paper applies this framework to an Italian urban (re)development decision-making process by using the analytic network process, a most advanced network version of the analytic hierarchy process. This is the first mathematical theory that makes it possible systematically to deal with all kinds of dependencies and feedback. It requires a network structure to represent the decision problem, as well as pairwise comparison with established relations within the structure. The multimodal framework is used to structure the case study problem towards a more sustainable solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese urban life is improving rapidly in line with the country's economic growth. However, public services are not able to meet the needs of the improving urban life due to insufficient urban infrastructure. How to provide good public services is a question that needs to be considered further, as well as how to continue sustainable urban development in China. This paper examines the current state of urban development and investment conditions in China. The characteristics of urban infrastructure construction and the associated problems are also investigated. Considering the conditions of urban development in China and similar experiences worldwide, the utilisation of underground space for urban infrastructure construction is suggested as the main direction for sustainable development. Underground utilities, utility tunnels and stormwater systems are recommended for rationalising urban infrastructure construction and city flood prevention, as well as for providing new water resources. In addition, general strategies are proposed for sustainable urban development. If underground space is effectively utilised and general strategies implemented, public services can be improved rapidly and sustainable urban development can be realised for all cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]