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Projects

Listed below are the projects that have so far been through the rigorous and stringent evaluating process, and have achieved funding from the UrbanBuzz programme. All public information that may be released on the projects will be detailed here, and may be examined through either the browsing facility below, or a direct search through the tab above right.

If you are working on one of the projects below, and have information which you would like to publish to your project's pages, please email the UrbanBuzz site manager by clicking here. If you would like to see the guidelines for project management, evaluation and reporting, click here. These Guidelines explain the process and procedure for projects awarded under the UrbanBuzz programme.


Current Projects

1 ABUNDANCE

Activating Blighted Urban Niches for Daring Agricultural Networks of Creativity and Endeavour

The project’s aim is to make a qualitative input into the ‘Transition Towns’ movement, by promoting a radical rethink of the possibilities for urban agriculture (UA) in an innercity context.

2 CARBONBUZZ

RIBA CARBONBUZZ

CarbonBuzz will raise the understanding of carbon emissions from buildings by providing an online communication tool for practices to monitor carbon emissions, compare and share outcomes and set realistic targets against nationwide trends. Through this online forum, practices will be invited to manage and track their project emissions from design to operation.

3 CD-G WORKSHOP

Collaborative design - gateway workshop

There is no established way to employ specific methods of designing with community participation in the Thames Gateway. Currently, applied architectural design methods open up knowledge transfer gaps between planners, designers and users because of their predetermined processes and outcomes.

4 CLOVIS

Closing the gap between Vision and Implementing Sustainable Communities

The CLOVIS project is based on two live regeneration programmes in Southwark and Bath. One seeks to establish a sustainable community through the redevelopment of the Aylesbury Estate, the other through the redevelopment of an area of the waterfront in a partly brownfield area of the city. Both projects are in the masterplanning stages.

5 DeiDemonstration

Deployable External Insulation Demonstration installation

This project ... Windows designed in new buildings are getting fewer and smaller – why? Buildings are being designed to lose less heat energy. Heat energy can go through windows 5-20 times faster than through well-insulated solid walls. At the moment the possibilities of using windows to flood spaces with light and provide warmth in cooler weather are being increasingly ignored.

6 EASY

Evidencing Adaptable Sustainability

The Centre for Geo-Information Studies (CGIS), Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), Thames Gateway London Partnerships (TGLP) and Terra Cognita propose to work in partnership with a range of organizations - Local Authorities, Primary Care Trusts, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRP), utility companies, the Learning Skills Council (LSC) and NGOs - to establish data sharing procedures and benchmarking; enhancing and sharing the understanding of cultural diversity and demographic change across the region. The micro-modelling of changing demographics and social infrastructure are invaluable tools in developing the evidence base for adopting social policy and service delivery in maintaining sustainability.

7 E-POD

Energy Performance of Dwellings and Other non-domestic Buildings - Closing the credibility gap

This project addresses the dual challenge of designing sustainable low energy housing while still providing thermal comfort under the warmer summer conditions produced by anthropogenic climate change. This is a key challenge for building designers in London and the South East.

8 ESP-SIM

Enabled Self Procurement Simulation

The ESP-sim project sets out to define and illustrate 'enabled self procurement' (ESP) as a viable model for UK housing. ESP is an alternative form of housing delivery where the future residents of a community become the developers of their own homes, assisted by an enabling developer and a progressive local authority.

9 FEfUR

Fresh Eyes for Urban Regeneration

The aim is to look at an emerging urban regeneration challenge (in this case the site of the former Royal Docks at Deptford in Lewisham, South London) but to ensure that those doing the looking are not from the academic disciplines that traditionally deal with urban regeneration. The aim is to see whether fresh perspectives emerge.

10 GBE

Gender and the Built Environment

Where gender is ignored we have little hope of constructing the kinds of urban spaces and buildings that will generate successful and sustainable communities. The new legislation on the public duty to promote gender equality comes into force this April. Many built environment and regeneration bodies have approached us to find out what this might mean for them.

11 ITS

Innovative Tools for Sustainability

Environmental and health inequalities are a real and substantive problem within London and the UK. This mini research project brought together planners, policy practitioners and community groups to focus on this issue.

12 i-VALUL

The Intangible Values of Layout

The importance of urban layout for sustainable communities both for new development and retrofit is beyond question (PPS1, PPS3, PPS12, By Design, Safer places). In order to promote policies to bring about sustainable community practices and the social change necessary to adopt such measures we need knowledge to enable stakeholders to predict the response to policy implementation.

13 LEVH

Low Energy Victorian House: Towards zero carbon dwellings

Existing dwellings are increasingly recognised as one of the key barriers to major reductions in CO2 emissions. Where this comes most sharply in focus is where dwellings have heritage value. The very heritage in bricks and mortar often has poor thermal performance. The aim of this project is to reduce CO2 emissions from a Victorian building in a conservation area in the London Borough of Camden by 90%.

14 LOWCARB4REAL

Developing low carbon housing; lessons from the field

The objective of this project is to execute a knowledge exchange programme for low carbon (energy efficient) new housing. It will draw on learning from the Stamford Brook Field Trial, which is an action research project funded by CLG and involving the National Trust, Redrow Homes, Bryant Homes, NHBC, CITB, Vent Axia, and the Concrete Block Association.

15 LSTS

London Students Towards Sustainability

The student population of London represents a huge resource of time, knowledge and skills, which largely has yet to be harnessed for sustainable development. We will create and facilitate a London-based network to engage, motivate and support students to contribute to sustainable development through their studies and their future careers.

16 MCSC

Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities

The project will develop an on-line interactive GIS-based map of East London and the Thames Gateway, highlighting development sites, environmental issues and projects, local issues and stakeholder groups. It will aim to include other UrbanBuzz work. The map will be open to any registerd users, who will be able to enter information on the map, add events and use it as a mode of communication.

17 METRICITY

Exploring New Measures of Urban Density

How we measure urban density has a direct effect on how city districts are designed and how inclusive of community needs they can be. This project proposes new measures for urban density that allows architects, urban planners and developers as well as the community and users, to have a collaborative involvement in the process.

18 MOBILISING KNOWLEDGE

Mobilising Knowledge

In the next decade demographic and urban changes will have profound effects on all UK residents. Older people are an increasingly large percentage of the population but are often disconnected from the development process. They are often disadvantaged in their interactions with the urban environment and their valuable knowledge and experiences remain untapped by planners.

19 REBOPSE

Reducing Barriers to Opportunities for People Socially Excluded

Using on-line and real world networking technology the project will break down barriers between haves and have-nots to provide sustainable job creation. It will utilise existing active databases of 20,000 socially unemployed people and several thousand small businesses across London and the S.E and build on the weak ties theory of Granovetter (1973) which indicates that, paradoxically, unemployed people are helped to employment more by unrelated groups than those employment-based.

20 RETILE COMBEEP

Real-time learning for Community-based Environmental Projects

This project will strengthen urban regeneration processes and procedures through real-time learning. It will involve the collaboration between academics and practitioners acting together to connect the 'know how' to the 'how to' for community-based environmental regeneration projects.

21 SCREAM

Media screens as a medium for communication

The project aims at influencing developments related to the sustainable implementation of urban media screens by looking at issues from a multitude of perspectives. Knowledge transfer will be achieved through debate, exchange and knowledge share.

22 SEDUC

Socio-Environmental Disorder and Urban Configuration

Partners of project SEDUC jointly propose knowledge transfer in the area of anti-social behaviour (ASB), disorder in the urban environment and the physical configuration of urban areas. Sustainable communities are safe, perceived as safe (low levels of fear) and are attractive (low levels of disorder).

23 SSSP

Smart Solution for Spatial Planning

The project aims to transfer knowledge to policy makers and professionals in local government and other entities. We will be taking existing geographical and social data (GIS and Social Infrastructure Modelling) in the Thames Gateway and demonstrate through pilot projects the way in which computational generation and analysis tools can help explore local urban and social trends and offer local solutions to the creation of sustainable communities.

24 SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION POLICIES

Implementation of emerging government and other urban sustainability policies

To set up seminar-based discussions of how best DTI, and Public Sector Construction Clients' Forum (PS CCF) and associated governmental initiatives for the construction industry should best be effected for the development of sustainable communities.

25 SUSTAINABLE TRAINING

Sustainable Design Training Programme

This project will provide a "creative workshop" style training programme for local planning authorities on securing sustainable design standards and to use the experience gained to develop guidance on the implementation of sustainable design in planning. The project will also simultaneously test-run the feasibility of using a Sustainable Design Review Panel in the planning determinati ...

26 THE ROOTSCAPE PROJECT: LEYS REMIX

The Rootscape Project: Leys Remix

This project will develop the capacity of children and young people from within Oxford’s Blackbird Leys area, to articulate their everyday experience of living on a large peripheral mixed tenure housing estate. The aim is to enable them to develop employment skills, with particular reference to providing a consultancy service to promote child/youth-friendly urban design and to enhance their capacity to engage in further and higher education.

27 TOWARDS ZERO CARBON SCHOOLS

Towards Zero Carbon Schools

This project has been designed to support the £45 billion project to rebuild or upgrade all 3,500 secondary schools in England and Wales before 2020, which has come under fierce attack from a powerful cross-party group of MPs for failing to set an example on sustainable construction.

28 VIBAT LONDON

Looking Over the Horizon: Transport and Global Warming - Visioning and Backcasting for Transport in London

The issues relating to climate change have risen dramatically to the top of the national political agenda, and the importance of transport in contributing to reduced levels of CO2 is clearly evident. The building of sustainable communities consistent with reducing climate change impacts and minimising carbon dioxide emissions poses serious difficulties for practitioners.


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