More than half of the world's population is now living in cities andthe
worldwide trend of urbanisation is still continuing, in particular
in emerging economies. Cities open up chances for individuals from
rural communities to realise a better standard of living. However, a
higher standard of living generally goes alongside higher energy
consumption. In addition, an agglomeration of many people such as a
large megacity creates further energy demands like for example
mechanical cooling to alleviate urban heat island effects (Figure 1).
Creating sustainable cities is a far more complex
issue than
refurbishing existing or constructing new buildings according to high
environmental standards. Buildings only represent one aspect within the
urban environment that contributes to the city's carbon footprint. A
sustainable city concept needs to address further aspects such as
transport, population density, building density, resource flows (food,
materials, waste, energy and water), green spaces, spatial relations
(working, living, leisure & recreation) and basic climatic
conditions. Our new programme grant (Livable Cities) aims to address
these issues.
In addition, the structure of the majority of UK cities changes
relatively slowly with the basic urban layout already in place (Figure
2). This means that long term concepts are required if more sustainable
cities are to be achieved. The Sustainable Energy Research
Group's work also focusses on the role of buildings
within sustainable city concepts, looking at building
refurbishment, advanced
façade technologies and climate change impacts.
However, the group intends to expand its research into urban heat
island effects and possible mitigation strategies.
Starting in 2012, Liveable Cities is a five year £6.2m
research programme jointly between the Universities of Southampton,
Birmingham (lead), UCL and Lancaster. It has the ambitious aim of
transforming “the engineering of cities to deliver global and societal
wellbeing within the context of low carbon living and resource security
through developing realistic and radical engineering that demonstrates
the concept of an alternative future.” In concrete terms, this means
assessing where cities are today, where we need to get to by 2050 in
order to meet carbon reduction targets, how this might change under
different scenarios and what might happen to people’s wellbeing in the
process. Southampton’s role within the project will be in four main
areas:
-
Develop tools for modelling present and future city emissions under
different scenarios
- Test energy
efficiency and
low carbon solutions at the building and individual level, through
real-time monitoring
- Assess the
impact of the city-level and building-level solutions on wellbeing
- Test the extent
to
which policy makers and citizens find the solutions acceptable
The
research will be carried out by a team from Engineering and the
Environment’s Sustainable Energy Research Group,
working together with
researchers from Social Sciences. Find out more about this project
The Sustainable Energy Research Group involved in
research networks of UK and Chinese researchers on the development of
eco-cities and eco-regions in China and around the world (Figure 3).
These networks are funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council (EPSRC) and have been set up to enable the partners
to undertake visits and hold workshops to identify research prospects.
These activities form the basis for joint cross-cultural research
projects on creating sustainable cities and communities. The EPSRC
eco-networks span issues of:
- governance,
culture and space
- economics,
environment and regional context
- sustainable
infrastructure and behaviour adaptation
Members
of SERG are leading the framework co-ordination activities of the
research networks. More information on the research networks and their
aims can be found on the dedicated Eco-Networks
website.
