UCL Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities

GCSC Theme: Olympic Legacy

Lead: Matthew Wood-Hill (UCL Development Planning Unit)

Main collaborators:

Gynna Millan (UCL Development Planning Unit)
Steph Patton (UCL Anthropology, Manager, MyStreet: Doc in a Day, Open City London)
Dr Michael Stewart (UCL Anthropology)

Additional collaborators: Etienne von Bertrab (UCL Development Planning Unit)
Prof Muki Haklay (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering)

Project: This project seeks to explore the potential of visual mapping methodologies (video and social media) to understand the impact of the London 2012 Olympics on open spaces in the city. The project therefore seeks to capture the ‘moment in time’ nature that the event provides to explore the specific questions ‘Whose Olympics? And whose London in 2012?'

The contentious use and ownership of open spaces in London is receiving increasing attention in the public eye. Since 2008 the Justice in the Green project has explored mapping techniques on the fringes of the Olympic site, revealing certain disconnects between legacy planners’ intentions and the aspirations of local residents and users of open spaces. Attention given to the Games has not focused explicitly on the changing importance of urban open spaces in enabling greater inclusion in the Olympic experience.

The project will operate through an online platform hosted by the established MyStreetFilms portal created by UCL Anthropology in association with Open City London. Our proposed platform, ‘MyOlympics’, will use this existing network to call for contributions from members of the public to visually map how open spaces in London are being transformed by the Olympics and related events, and how individuals are specifically experiencing these spaces during and immediately after the Games as the legacy begins to take shape. The anticipation in the build-up to the Olympics and the ‘feel good factor’ generated during the event ensures a high level of public and media interest. What happens in the period immediately after the event offers fertile grounds for continued research.

GCSC Theme: The Cultural City

Lead: Dr Richard Taws (UCL History of Art)

Main collaborator: Dr Jann Matlock (UCL French and SELCS)

Additional collaborator: Dr Barbara Penner (UCL Barlett School of Architecture)

Project: Our project will create a network of scholars in Europe and North America working on ruin, obsolescence, waste and demolition in modern cities. UCL Grand Challenges funding will support two focused interdisciplinary workshops and site visits designed to establish research connections and develop international dialogues. A website will accompany the workshops and a published collection of papers will disseminate this research to a wide public and generate international frameworks for future collaborations.

We begin with the premise that sustainable cities must contemplate their pasts as well as their futures. While researching the ephemeral aspects of cities might seem antithetical to an analysis of the sustainable city, we argue that the broken and the ruined, the ephemeral and the short-lived, the torn-down and the wasted, are crucial to policy as well as practices of sustainability. Ephemeral Cities will provide a historical and contextual investigation of buildings, objects, images and spaces that either fell by the wayside or were never meant to last. Investigating how ephemerality came to stand for the experience of urban life, we will ask how lessons from the past might help us meet the challenge presented by our own discarded objects in the cities of the future.

GCSC Theme: London

Lead: Dr Barbara Lipietz (UCL Development Planning Unit)

Main collaborator: Prof Mike Raco (UCL Bartlett School of Planning)

Additional collaborators: Prof Jennifer Robinson (UCL Geography); Prof Michael Edwards (UCL Bartlett School of Planning); Prof Susan Parnell (UCL Geography)

Project: This project aims to understand the processes shaping the possibilities for community voices to contribute to long-term strategic planning for sustainable urban development. It will consider how democratic modes of governance shape long-term strategic planning and city visioning in two different contexts, London and Johannesburg, through a systematic comparison of the recently published Revised London Plan (2011) and Johannesburg’s Growth and Development Strategy 2040 (2011) to explore:

• the democratic and participatory processes through which the strategies were produced. Do these reflect wider international definitions of a ‘good governance’ agenda and meet expectations of democratic urban governance?
• the extent to which the strategies reflect the interests of local stakeholders (including neighbourhood, community-based organisations and advocacy groups) and, specifically, whether the contents of the plans reflect local residents’ concerns for sustainable development, especially in post-financial crisis contexts.

The project will be among the first systematic academic interrogations of the revised London Plan, meeting UCL’s wider mission to ‘contribute to the vibrancy and development of London as a world-leading city’ and its commitment to supporting community inputs to making sustainable cities. It will pilot an initiative to develop comparative methods and interpretive frameworks in urban governance appropriate for an international approach to urban studies.

GCSC Theme: Sustainable Resources

Lead: Dr Fuzhan Nasiri (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies)

Main collaborator: Dr Sarah Bell (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering)

Project: Globally, reclaimed water is increasingly supplied for various uses due to aggravating water shortages caused by growing urban communities and climate change, more stringent wastewater effluent standards, and the expanding availability of high-performing and cost-effective water reclamation technologies. In the United Kingdom, however, there has not been a consistent and considerable pattern of urban water-reuse because historically there has been a sufficient supply of water. With highly increasing water demand in the South-East and more droughts due to climatic change, there is growing public and political consensus to establish water-reuse networks as part of a sustainable cities agenda. At present, the projects within the UK have focused on building and development-scale water re-use. However, greater opportunities exist, at a larger scale, with urban water reuse networks, to rebalance water use and demand, tap into unconventional water resources and improve the economic and environmental performance of urban water supply systems.

This project serves as a pilot study to investigate the feasibility, costs, and benefits of developing water reuse networks in urban areas with a particular emphasis on London. The aim of this pilot study is to develop a multi-university EPSRC research network and proposal by July 2012.

GCSC Theme: Sustainable Resources

Lead: Tse-Hui Teh (UCL Bartlett School of Planning)

Main collaborator: Dr Barbara Penner (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)

Additional collaborators: Dr Sarah Bell (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering); Virginia Gardiner, Loowatt

Project: Our proposed workshop responds to the peculiar silence about sanitation systems in relation to sustainability. Discussions around sustainable cities focus on issues like farming, recycling, and water conservation, all of which intersect with sanitation and resource recovery, but rarely address them. New Loos for London? holds that sanitation must be part of any meaningful strategy for sustainable cities.

Our project aims to explore the viability of dry sanitation in London. In an age of water, energy and fertilizer scarcity, dry sanitation requires fewer resources to transport and treat waste than waterborne systems and offers improved nutrient recovery. A two-day invited workshop brings together key figures from bodies that deal with waste and sewers, entrepreneurs and designers developing alternative systems, cultural commentators, and interested members of the community. It will allow a focused exchange of information and views about the main technological, social, logistical and political implications of such schemes.

New Loos for London? develops on Tse-Hui Teh’s PhD research about London which found that some environmentally aware citizens were already using “yellow mellow” toilet flushing techniques to conserve water. This project aims to build on their informal efforts by considering how to implement dry sanitation systems at a community level.

GCSC Theme: Sustainable Resources

Lead: Dr Murray Fraser (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)

Main collaborator: Dr Camillo Boano (UCL Development Planning Unit)

Additional collaborators: Nasser Golzari and Yara Sharif, Palestine Regeneration Team (PART)

Project: The project is to design an entirely new building type called the ‘Learning Room’, which is being conceived in this first instance as helping with reconstruction in the Gaza Strip. It is conceived as a prototype for a series of annexes to existing schools that can be applied in many countries if the prototype proves successful.

There are two key aims for the Learning Room: firstly, to provide a community centre where residents can meet together to discuss urban regeneration plans; secondly, to act as a knowledge base for innovative forms of sustainable construction that can help with rebuilding in conditions of chronic lack of building materials, energy, water etc. We are also currently writing a self-build manual to help Gazans create low-energy dwellings when rehousing, and the Learning Room will thus act as the location where this knowledge can be disseminated. Families rebuilding their houses will be able to study different forms of construction and low-cost passive energy-saving devices. It will act as a ‘community laboratory’ in some of the poorest and toughest places on earth.

A test site has been identified for a prototype Learning Room in a school in the Zaytouna neighbourhood of Gaza City, with that project being funded by UN-Habitat with support from the Palestinian Housing Council, Gaza University, Islamic Relief and other bodies.

Lead:

• Dr Charlotte Lemanski (Geography)

Main collaborator:

• Dr Colin Marx (Development Planning Unit)

The aim of this project was to run a small workshop where invited speakers would discuss the absent role of ‘The City’ (in a spatial sense) from popular analyses of urban poverty.

Although poverty is an inherently spatial concept, the way in which the space of the city is represented in analyses of urban poverty is surprisingly uni-dimensional, focusing almost exclusively on the physical distribution of poverty. Consequently, the aim of the workshop was to explore how approaching the ‘spaces of poverty’ from multiple perspectives could contribute towards more effective and just poverty reduction policies.

By bringing together scholars from different disciplines (e.g. geographers, planners, economists), as well as development policy experts (e.g. from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank), the workshop facilitated wide discussion regarding the role of urban space in the theory and practice of urban poverty.

Urban poverty is a key challenge for Sustainable Cities, especially as those cities with the fastest growing urbanisation rates are frequently also those with the highest rates of urban poverty.

• List of contributors to the workshop
  

Lead:

• Dr Robert Biel (Development Planning Unit)

Main collaborator:

• Dr Gemma Moore (UCL Public Engagement)

Additional Collaborators

• Dr Kaori O’Connor (Anthropology)
• Marina Chang (Development Planning Unit)

Agri-food systems in London exemplify unsustainability. This project aimed to conduct a pilot study into the current landscape of food and agriculture in London, and to use university-community engagement to build dynamic knowledge.

The project involved a large number of UCL staff and students, including the Food Junctions network (33 departments at UCL and 25 community groups). Multi-disciplinary expertise was provided by members of UCL with an interest in food and agriculture, including those involved in public health, medicine, anthropology, geography, archaeology, soil science, environment, public policy and economy.

Around 300 guests attended The Food Junctions Cookbook launch party, held in the North Cloisters at UCL on the 27^th October 2011.

Multi-sited ethnographical investigations produced a research report with a comprehensive, but critical, analysis of the current landscape of food and agriculture in London.

Lead:

• Dr Luiza Campos (Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering)

Main collaborator:

• Dr Saul Purton (Structural and Molecular Biology)

Additional Collaborators:

• Alessandro Marco Lizzul (Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering)
• Dr Frank Baganz (Biochemical Engineering)
• Dr Marcos Cruz (Bartlett School of Architecture)
• Paul Hellier (Mechanical Engineering)
• Richard Beckett    Bartlett School of Architecture

Algae has the potential to become a renewable source of biomass. This project investigated the feasibility of integrating algal production with common urban waste streams, such as carbon dioxide from exhaust gases and nutrients from wastewater.

Two working prototype PBRs (photobioreactors) have been built, a 10 litre and a 60 litre model. The larger photobioreactor, a development based on the original prototype, has been placed in the Darwin Building’s green house.Algal production can be integrated with many common waste streams, including diesel exhaust emissions, and wastewaters, providing environmental benefits to both air and water quality.

Biomass productivities within the reactor are high, but require considerable energy input. Work is ongoing to optimise the process and reduce costs.

• Visit the Algae@UCL group website
  

Lead Applicant:

• Dr Nick Shepley (English)

Main Collaborator:

• Prof Iain Borden (Bartlett School of Architecture)

Additional Collaborators:

• Dr Andrea Fredericksen (UCL Art Museum)

The major aims of the one-day festival and the exhibitions were to present specialist research material from many disciplines, and to do so in vibrant, accessible, and sustainable ways, suitable to a broad audience.

Inspired by the spirit of the oympics, the event allowed individuals from around the world to share their explorations of the city with an unusually broad audience (almost 500 people – academic and non-academic – from across the UK, Europe, and the US pre-registered for the day, and an extra 100 attended on the day).

The event and the exhibitions juxtaposed and interconnected research from The Bartlett, Birkbeck, Central St Martins; the Slade; CASA (UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis), UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Department of English, UCL City Centre, UCL Urban Laboratory, UCL Department of Geography and UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

The event identified areas of shared interest and was the starting point for a number of collaborative partnerships: with the charity First Story, the Man Booker Prize, UCL English Department’s City Centre, and UCL’s Urban Laboratory.

• Visit the One day in the City webpage

Stemming the Flow

Stemming the Flow: A New Direction for Climate Change Governance

A poster presentations from the Carbon Governance Project that considers the links between energy governance and climate change governance.

The presentation considers the tensions between the two regimes and argues that a more integrated approach is required to avoid conflicting agendas and to create synergies in policy making.

Lead:

• Dr Charlotte Lemanski (Geography)

Main collaborator:

• Dr Colin Marx (Development Planning Unit)

The aim of this project was to run a small workshop where invited speakers would discuss the absent role of ‘The City’ (in a spatial sense) from popular analyses of urban poverty.

Although poverty is an inherently spatial concept, the way in which the space of the city is represented in analyses of urban poverty is surprisingly uni-dimensional, focusing almost exclusively on the physical distribution of poverty. Consequently, the aim of the workshop was to explore how approaching the ‘spaces of poverty’ from multiple perspectives could contribute towards more effective and just poverty reduction policies.

By bringing together scholars from different disciplines (e.g. geographers, planners, economists), as well as development policy experts (e.g. from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank), the workshop facilitated wide discussion regarding the role of urban space in the theory and practice of urban poverty.

Urban poverty is a key challenge for Sustainable Cities, especially as those cities with the fastest growing urbanisation rates are frequently also those with the highest rates of urban poverty.

• List of contributors to the workshop
  

Lead:

• Dr Robert Biel (Development Planning Unit)

Main collaborator:

• Dr Gemma Moore (UCL Public Engagement)

Additional Collaborators

• Dr Kaori O’Connor (Anthropology)
• Marina Chang (Development Planning Unit)

Agri-food systems in London exemplify unsustainability. This project aimed to conduct a pilot study into the current landscape of food and agriculture in London, and to use university-community engagement to build dynamic knowledge.

The project involved a large number of UCL staff and students, including the Food Junctions network (33 departments at UCL and 25 community groups). Multi-disciplinary expertise was provided by members of UCL with an interest in food and agriculture, including those involved in public health, medicine, anthropology, geography, archaeology, soil science, environment, public policy and economy.

Around 300 guests attended The Food Junctions Cookbook launch party, held in the North Cloisters at UCL on the 27^th October 2011.

Multi-sited ethnographical investigations produced a research report with a comprehensive, but critical, analysis of the current landscape of food and agriculture in London.

Lead:

• Dr Luiza Campos (Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering)

Main collaborator:

• Dr Saul Purton (Structural and Molecular Biology)

Additional Collaborators:

• Alessandro Marco Lizzul (Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering)
• Dr Frank Baganz (Biochemical Engineering)
• Dr Marcos Cruz (Bartlett School of Architecture)
• Paul Hellier (Mechanical Engineering)
• Richard Beckett    Bartlett School of Architecture

Algae has the potential to become a renewable source of biomass. This project investigated the feasibility of integrating algal production with common urban waste streams, such as carbon dioxide from exhaust gases and nutrients from wastewater.

Two working prototype PBRs (photobioreactors) have been built, a 10 litre and a 60 litre model. The larger photobioreactor, a development based on the original prototype, has been placed in the Darwin Building’s green house.Algal production can be integrated with many common waste streams, including diesel exhaust emissions, and wastewaters, providing environmental benefits to both air and water quality.

Biomass productivities within the reactor are high, but require considerable energy input. Work is ongoing to optimise the process and reduce costs.

• Visit the Algae@UCL group website
  

Lead Applicant:

• Dr Nick Shepley (English)

Main Collaborator:

• Prof Iain Borden (Bartlett School of Architecture)

Additional Collaborators:

• Dr Andrea Fredericksen (UCL Art Museum)

The major aims of the one-day festival and the exhibitions were to present specialist research material from many disciplines, and to do so in vibrant, accessible, and sustainable ways, suitable to a broad audience.

Inspired by the spirit of the oympics, the event allowed individuals from around the world to share their explorations of the city with an unusually broad audience (almost 500 people – academic and non-academic – from across the UK, Europe, and the US pre-registered for the day, and an extra 100 attended on the day).

The event and the exhibitions juxtaposed and interconnected research from The Bartlett, Birkbeck, Central St Martins; the Slade; CASA (UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis), UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Department of English, UCL City Centre, UCL Urban Laboratory, UCL Department of Geography and UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

The event identified areas of shared interest and was the starting point for a number of collaborative partnerships: with the charity First Story, the Man Booker Prize, UCL English Department’s City Centre, and UCL’s Urban Laboratory.

• Visit the One day in the City webpage

UCL Grand Challenges Report 2008–2010 (pdf)

palette – The UCL Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities launch publication (pdf 9MB)

perspectives – academic viewpoints from palette
Complete set (pdf 1MB)

• Prof Yvonne Rydin: Learning to Change
• Prof Matthew Gandy: Less Speculation, More Imagination
• Prof Mark Maslin: Future Vision of a Sustainable Zero-Carbon World
• Prof Mark Tewdwr-Jones: Governing London: World city, local tensions
• Prof Iain Borden: Sustainability and Architectural Design
• Dr Sarah Bell: Engineers' Identity Crisis
• Prof Tadj Oreszczyn: Our Innate Ability to Think of New Ways to Use Energy
• Adriana Allen: Sustainable Cities or Sustainable Urbanisation?
• Caren Levy: Urbanisation without Social Justice is not Sustainable
• Prof Michael Batty: How Big Can a City Get?

UCL Transport Institute Town Meeting

4.30–6.00 p.m. Monday, 20 May 2013

Roberts G06 Sir Ambrose Fleming LT

A town hall meeting was held on Monday 20 May to discuss plans for UCLTI (UCL Transport Institute). The event featured talks from a range of speakers, including:

• Dr Nicola Christie Director, UCL Centre for Transport Studies (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering) 
• Professor Peter Jones Chair of Transport and Sustainable Development (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering)
• Professor Alan Penn Dean of The Bartlett, UCL Faculty of the Built Environment
• Deirdre O'Reilly Head of Social and Evaluation Research Department for Transport
• Andreas Markides Chair of the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation's Learned Society & Technical Board
• Dr Louise Atkins UCL Psychology
• Dr Jenny Mindell  UCL Epidemiology and Public Health

The town meeting was followed by a networking reception.

GCSC is working with Dr Nicola Christie to create a pan-UCL Transport Institute.

Find out how the UCLTI plans to harness expertise across UCL and show how our research addresses safety, culture, health, wellbeing, accessibility, economic growth, and security.

• Download the full prospectus for UCLTI
• Download flyer for the UCLTI Town Meeting 

Launch of Urban Pamphleteer

6.30 pm Friday, 26th April

Join Ben Campkin, Rebecca Ross and Guglielmo Rossi for the launch of Urban Pamphleteer issue #1, ‘Future & Smart Cities’. Each illustrated pamphlet in this series collates and presents expert voices, across disciplines, professions, and community groups, around one pressing contemporary urban challenge. The intention is to confront key contemporary urban questions from diverse perspectives, in a direct and accessible tone, drawing on the history of radical pamphleteering.

• Download a copy of the first copy of the pamphleteer

Small Grants Showcase and Reception

28th – 30th January 2013

The Grand Challenges held a showcase in the South Cloisters between the 28th and the 30th of January 2013. The event featured posters from the interdisciplinary collaborations that have been made possible with Small Grants funding.

• Visit the Small Grants Section for more information
• View the Small Grants Posters
  

Festival of Chinese Film and the Body

In the lead up to Chinese New Year 2013, the UCL China Centre for Health and Humanity will be showing four recent Chinese films. 

These will be related to the UCL Grand Challenges themes:  

Global Health, Intercultural Interaction, Sustainable Cities and Human Wellbeing. 

This event is curated by Patrizia Liberati, PhD candidate at Peking University.

The screenings will be presented by three film specialists: in Chinese film, the history of medicine in film, and film and intercultural interaction respectively. 

They will also feature a Q&A session with some of the directors in China. 

Admission is open and free of charge to all members of UCL and registered Friends of UCL CCHH.

The full programme is on the Festival webpage.

The Festival forms part of the new CCHH course Chinese Film and the Body.

Tuesday 15th January 2013

2.30, 30 May 2012

Shaping Cities for Heath: Complexity and the Planning of Urban Environments in the 21st Century

Lancet and UCL Commission

Denys Holland Lecture Theatre, UCL Faculty of Laws

More details about the UCL launch event for the UCL Lancet Commission's report

• Launch event blog
• Watch the panel presentation video
• Watch the Q&A video

Watch Professor Yvonne Rydin's summary of the Healthy Cities Commission

Visit the dedicated website for the UCL Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities

Read the UCL Lancet report "Shaping Cities for Health"

Visit the Lancet Commission's page for the report

Executive Suite, Front Engineering Building, University College London

19 March 2012

London’s demand for energy resources comes from three primary activities: heating buildings, transport and electricity. London has always imported most of its energy as coal, gas, oil and electricity. Renewing London’s energy infrastructure will be vital for maintaining our position as a ‘world city’ over the next 50 years as the centres of global economic activity shift eastwards. This event brought together sector specialists to debate the technological and policy challenges facing practitioners in the coming years to ensure that London has a forward looking energy strategy, that is resilient to major global shifts. Chair: Andy Deacon, Head of Local Delivery, Energy Saving Trust

Speakers:

1. Prof. Paul Ekins, Professor of Energy and Environment Policy, UCL Energy Institute
2. Peter North, Senior Manager – Programme Delivery (Sustainable Energy), GLA
3. Prof. Bob Lowe, Professor of Energy and Building Science, UCL Energy Institute
4. Bob Fiddik, Team Leader - Sustainable Development & Energy, LB Croydon

• London's Energy Future page on the Future of London
• London 2062 Project Site

Download presentations

• Energy in London, 2062—Prof. Paul Ekins (PowerPoint)
• London's Energy Future—Peter North (PowerPoint)
• London's role in the UK energy system of 2062?—Bob Lowe (Powerpoint)
• London needs to be more like Copenhagen—Bob Fiddik (PowerPoint)

4 April 2012

Executive Suite, Front Engineering Building, University College London

Chair: Will McKee (Chair, Mayoral Outer London Boundary Commission)

Speakers:

• Dr Ben Campkin (UCL Urban Lab and UCL Bartlett School of Architecture)
• Sofie Pelsmakers (UCL Energy Institute)
• David Lunts (Interim Executive Director for Housing, GLA)
• David Baptiste (Head of Housing Supply, LB Ealing)

The future continued growth of London will expose sharper housing differentials in the decades ahead. In 2031, London’s population is expected to be 10.1 million inhabitants which implies a need for about 1.6 million new houses and 1.5 million replacement houses. Numbers and space requirements are but two of the issues here; there will also be new demands and pressures caused by accessibility and the liveability of individual places. This event will bring together leading academics and practitioners to debate how we overcome the immediate financial and delivery challenges facing the housing sector to meet these larger long term challenges for London.

• London's Housing Challenge page on the Future of London
• London 2062 Project Site

Download Presentations

• London's Housing Challenge 2062—Will McKee
• London 2062 housing—Sofie Pelsmakers
• London 2062—David Baptiste

20th April 2012

Executive Suite, Front Engineering Building, University College London

Speakers:

• Mark Kleinman, Assistant Director for Economic and Business Policy, GLA
• Michael Edwards, The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL
• Jurgen Essletzbichler, Geography, UCL
• David Fell, Director Brook Lyndhurst

London’s position as a centre of global trade and finance is at once a source of resilience and vulnerability. London’s economy has shown itself to be diverse enough to absorb major shocks so far, but the future of the financial sector is highly significant to the future of London. The future of London’s finance sector depends on the recovery of the global economy and the development of the Asian economies, which may increasingly attract financial as well as manufacturing industries. Past investments in infrastructure and human capital provide a strong foundation for maintaining a position of global strength, though by no means secure it. This event will explore the key actions that need to be undertaken to maintain, grow and diversify London’s economic strength in the years ahead.

• Page for The Future of the London Economy on the Future of London website

Download Presentations

• London economy in 2062: Starting points, end point—Michael Edwards
• London 2062: The Future of the London Economy—Mark Kleinman
• London 2062: The Future of the London Economy—Jurgen Essletzbichler

23rd April 2012

Executive Suite, Front Engineering Building, University College London

Download mp4 version (compatible with most mobile devices)

Chair: Brian Collins (Chair of Engineering Policy, UCL Faculty of Engineering Science)

Speakers:

• Prof. Sir Peter Hall, UCL Bartlett School of Planning
• Dr Robin Hickman, UCL Bartlett School of Planning
• Richard Di Cani, Director of Transport Strategy and Planning, Transport for London
• Ian Lindsay, Director of Land and Property, Crossrail Ltdg

Alongside increases in population size and economic activity, demand has risen for all modes of transport across London. Congestion currently occurs on the radial routes into the city, on the orbital routes around the city, and at key points where long distance and short distance commuting traffic intersect in outer London. Air traffic and the use of London’s five airports have also increased. In 2003, the Department for Transport reported that air traffic had increased six fold between 1970 and 2002, to some 200 million passengers per annum. By 2020, the figures are projected to double again. This event will explore the range of potential, modal, technological, and policy responses to these trends to ensure that London develops a sustainable transport system in the years ahead.

• Page for The Future of London's Transport on the Future of London website
• London 2062 Project Site

Download presentations

• Crossrail and the Future of London Transport—Ian Lindsay (pdf)
• Pathways and Strategic Choices London 2062: Transport—Robin Hickman (pdf)
• London 20602–Transport for London—Richard de Cani (pdf)
• London 2602—Peter Hall (pdf)

6 p.m. 11 September 2012 

UCL Cruciform Lecture Theatre 1

Extra pressure on London's transport systems during the Olympics is forcing both the public and private sectors to try innovative ways to spread demand and use the road and rail networks more efficiently, from new delivery patterns to greater use of the web and twitter. This event will look at some of the successful innovations which ensured that the goods were delivered and that people got around during the Olympics, and that can be built upon to improve ways in which transport is delivered in London in the future.

Chaired by Prof Peter Jones (UCL Transport & Sustainable Development)

Presentations and Panel discussion:

• Dr Andy Chow (UCL Centre for Transport Studies)
• Dr Jon Reades (UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis)
• Michèle Dix (Managing Director, Planning, Transport for London)
• Natalie Chapman (Head of Policy, London, Freight Transport Association)

Followed by a drinks reception in the UCL South Cloisters   

Event video

The Ingredients of a Zero Carbon Zero Waste City: Evolving a ZEDquarter with examples from the ZEDfactory

UCL–Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities Symposium

The Global Carbon Project: Anticipating the evolution of CO₂ trends

Heritage and Climate Change: Protection at any cost?

• summary and presentations
  

Planet U(CL): Embedding Sustainability in Universities

Lessons and Guidelines Drawn for Other Divided Cities

Cities Methodologies

The Future of Urban Studies

Return of the Slum

Urban Water Poverty – workshop

• expert presentations
  

UCL Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities: Launch

• videos

Cinema & Climate Change

The Age of Stupid – screening and panel discussion

• UCL News
  

Invisible – screening and panel discussion

Growing a New Piece of City: Designing a legacy for 21st-century London – panel discussion

Just Enough: Sufficiency and the cultural imagination – one-day symposium

UCL Energy Institute Launch

• podcast

Climate Change: The biggest global-health threat of the 21st century
The UCL–Lancet Commission on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change

• film
• podcast
• BBC Today programme interview

City Visions – UCL Urban Laboratory Launch

• video

Disaster Risk Reduction for Natural Hazards: Putting Research into Practice – Disaster risk reduction conference held in November 2009

• Conference summary
• Special issue of Natural Hazards Review

A major new report published by Atkins in a unique partnership with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UCL Development Planning Unit (DPU) argues that Future Proofing Cities is about utilising and developing the capacities of cities to respond to the risks associated with climate change, resource scarcities and damage to ecosystems in away that catalyses inclusive urban development.

Adriana Allen, Vanesa Castan Broto, Caren Levy and Linda Westman from the DPU, were responsible for providing strategic guidance throughout the development of the project’s analytical framework and for the production of five in-depth case studies that provide a nuanced exploration of the combined challenges and opportunities for future proofing urban development in Bangkok, Maputo, Bangalore, Karachi and Nairobi.

• Download the report from futureproofingcities.com
• Listen to the press conference podcast
• Read a blog post about the discussion at the press conference
• Coverage in African Business Review
• Coverage on Phys.org
• Reuters article

THE HEURISTICS OF MAPPING URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE is a platform initiated in February 2012 by the DPU (Development Planning Unit). Through a heuristic process which involves an international network of researchers, activists, and organisations, the platform aims to apprehend how place-making practices by ordinary citizens reinforce, resist or transform the production or reproduction of injustices in cities.

For more information on this activity, please visit the DPU's page for The heuristics of mapping urban environmental change.

• Download the programme for Exploring the Political Agency of Mapping and Maps

Urban Constellations

Urban Constellations edited by Prof. Matthew Gandy (UCL, Geography) is an essay collection brings together a range of cutting-edge international scholarship on cities, urbanization and urban culture.  For more information and to purchase the book please visit the Jovis website.

• For more information and to purchase the book please visit the Jovis website.

Blog from Will McDowall (Research Associate, UCL Energy Institute) covering Jeremy Rifkin's lecture accompanying his book The Third Industrial Revolution.

Watch video here:

Urban Reflections: Narratives of Place, Planning and Change by Prof Mark Tewdwr-Jones (UCL Bartlett:Planning) looks at how places change, the role of planners in bringing about urban change, and the public's attitudes to that change.

• More information
• To buy a copy please visit the Policy Press website.