The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the primary Government funding agency for research in the subject areas covered by this journal, supports a wide variety of research both under the umbrella of managed programmes, which cater for specific, topical UK needs, and in response to unsolicited bids from the academic community. The need for sustainable principles to be adopted when creating new, and regenerating existing, urban areas was recognised as an important topic in which research could make an impact, and accordingly a total of approximately £23 million was committed to research under the managed Sustainable Urban Environments (SUE) programme.The SUE programme currently funds a range of consortia projects under four clusters addressing different aspects of sustainable urban development.
urban and built environment
waste, water and land management
transport
metrics, knowledge management and decision making.
Although the projects have started at different times, such that some are more than one year into the research while others have only recently started, it was considered desirable that a forum be created for those engaged in the research to meet and share ideas. This was first raised in the plenary debate at an EPSRC conference covering its Infrastructure and Environment Programme in January 2004 and the idea was realised in the form of the ‘SUE: Vision into Action’ conference held in the Spring of 2005.
While it was considered helpful for the supervisors of such research to get together, it was suggested that the most productive interactions might prove to be between the research students, research assistants and research fellows (collectively termed RFs) working in each of the consortia. Accordingly a bid was submitted to EPSRC in the summer of 2004 for funding to support a conference for RFs hosted by the Universities of Birmingham and Central England, which are jointly researching urban sustainability issues using the major regeneration programme in Birminghama' Eastside as a case study. This served a dual purpose since the first phase of the Birmingham Eastside study, focusing on the barriers to and enablers of sustainable urban redevelopment, finished in September 2004 and thus the conference provided an ideal forum for dissemination of the findings of this study.
The primary drivers of the SUE programme are to
improve the quality of life of UK citizens
support the sustainable development of the UK economy and society
meet the needs of users of EPSRC-funded research.
In support of these drivers, it was proposed that the conference would engender lively discussion on quality of life issues in a real sustainable urban regeneration setting, the conference being held in two venues in the heart of Birmingham Eastside (The Old Library and Millennium Point), while also strengthening the connections between researchers working on urban sustainability and creating a multi-disciplinary ‘community of researchers’. The feedback from the conference suggested that this was indeed achieved.
The objectives of the conference were to
provide a forum for EPSRC-funded RFs in the SUE programme to present the aims, objectives and methodologies of each of the 16 consortia via conference presentations and posters
provide a forum for these RFs to present the outcomes of their individual research projects via conference presentations and papers included on the conference CD
provide a mechanism for greater cross-fertilisation of ideas on urban sustainability between the various disciplines represented in the SUE programme via both discussion and workshop sessions and direct engagement with the business community
encourage the preparation of papers for publication in academic journals
further the training and skills of the RFs generally by engaging them in peer review of the posters, presentations and written papers, and in the case of the Birmingham Eastside RFs by arranging a substantial conference.
This special issue, the first of two that are planned, has derived directly from this rather unusual, RF-centred conference and, importantly, from the perceived need to publish the substantial papers deriving from the SUE programme in a single journal rather than spreading them across different disciplines. Thirtytwo research papers were submitted to the conference and, following RF peer review and author amendment, around half were offered immediately to Engineering Sustainability. The first six appear herein, while a second special issue is planned for later in 2005 and further papers will appear in subsequent issues of the journal. Perhaps as a result of the consortia-building process entered into by EPSRC and the academic community when forming the SUE programme, many authors (24) and universities (nine) are represented. The papers cover a truly wide range of topics germane to the processes of sustainable urban development: building facades, utilities provision, movement of people and goods, waste processing, urban biodiversity and tools for assessment of sustainability. The diverse nature of this special issue and the fact that such a substantial document has been produced so soon after the SUE programme has started is a testament both to the success of the SUE initiative and the conference.
The first paper in this issue states the need for ‘robust and comprehensive methodologies for the assessment of sustainability in the urban context’. Many sustainability assessment tools have been identified and evaluated by the research team. This process is reported in the context not of creating a new tool, but of a framework that integrates the tools already in existence. The second paper concerns the barriers to creating a sustainable utility services infrastructure in urban redevelopment projects. While the Birmingham Eastside development provides the focus of the study, the paper deals with the subject generically and concludes with suggested enablers of sustainability to overcome the barriers. This is followed by a paper that raises the possibility of bespoke transport provision, for both people and goods, now that portable location and communication devices are widely available. This would fill the gap between the private car and traditional public transport options, perhaps providing the flexibility needed if the car is not to be relied upon so heavily in the future.
The fourth paper shifts the focus to buildings and new façade solutions that can respond to the needs of occupants, whether of new or refurbished buildings. The façade needs to balance daylight provision and shelter from the external environment with energy usage, essentially keeping those inside comfortable most efficiently. Switching from energy usage to energy supply, the fifth paper reviews the technologies by which energy can be recovered from waste by thermal processing. Urban societies produce waste faster than the natural environment can assimilate it, providing the context for thermal treatment processes. Quite apart from the technical challenges, there are non-technical barriers to the commercialisation of these technologies and these are also addressed. The final paper turns attention to the relationship between urban redevelopment and biodiversity. Highly-designed and heavily-managed parks and public open spaces, while apparently good for people, are not capable of supporting the diverse range of wildlife often found in urban areas, resulting in impoverished biological communities and reduced biological diversity. This paper makes a plea for strategic management of land at the area scale to encourage natural processes, such as succession, to operate and for engineering of the built environment to accommodate habitat structures.
The second special issue is to include an equally broad coverage of sustainability. Of particular interest are the two important topics of decision-support tools, and their role in the decisionmaking processes, and how to deal with pollution in the urban environment. The first is highly relevant to the current debate SUE programme has emphasised the need for sustainable thinking to be incorporated at the inception of projects if good intentions are not to remain just that. More widely, both this journal and the SUE programme are about developing sustainable thinking and introducing it into practice, which is precisely why they have been about sustainable engineering since the early research under the linked now and, it is hoped, will continue to have a close association.
