Sustainability
The second societal challenge is led by the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering but the broad nature of sustainability and its impact on all of us means that APL has a significant role to play in many of the themes identified.
Sustainability is a broad concept that requires inputs from many traditional disciplines. Encompassing terrestrial and marine settings, there is a commitment to explore sustainability as it plays out in a range of sectors.
Energy
Many APL researchers are focused on exploring how good planning and design can produce places that are pleasurable to live in but lessen our energy demands and move toward a carbon neutral ideal.
Designing out CO2: Northern Architecture, the regional architecture centre, organises an annual festival of architecture with a different theme each year. In 2010 the theme was 'Designing out Co2' and the School contributed to the Festival with an event around Transition Towns, organised by Georgia Giannopoulou. Click below for the presentations.
A Social Experiment - Transition Jesmond
Transition Towns and Sustainable Living - Transition Tynedale
Grow Your Own House - Henry Amos
Reduce Co2: Build Local Resilience - Georgia Giannopoulou
New Tricks for Old Bricks - Devereux Architects
Working to a carbon neutral city: A project of Carlos Calderon seeks to establish and implement a long-term strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (measured as carbon) in Newcastle upon Tyne. It provides an interface between civic action and academia, coupling practical and pragmatic carbon reduction with technical insight and rigor. The project will deliver a comprehensive carbon footprint of the city. Integrated roadmap ‘plans’ will then be developed to reduce carbon emissions across all public, commercial, industrial, transport and domestic sectors. The project will strengthen and build upon existing partnerships, between Newcastle University, the Council, the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), CarbonNeutral Newcastle (CNN) and Newcastle Science City.
Low-energy Housing in Seahouses, Northumberland: Martin Beattie's work with North Sunderland and Seahouses Development Trust
This project was concerned with low energy rural housing, set on the edge of Seahouses, Northumberland, on a site owned by North Sunderland and Seahouses Development Trust (NSSDT). Seahouses lies on the Northumberland coast amidst miles of unspoiled beaches and countryside, and is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It’s population during the summer months triples, supported by a range of holiday accommodation, restaurants and shops. Approximately 40% of the dwellings in Seahouses are holiday lets or second homes. Many young people take private rented accommodation in winter, and move out in the summer when the tourists arrive. Working with NSSDT students were asked to design housing for young people and local families either for an affordable rent or for sale. Design proposals were developed, giving careful consideration to energy efficiency, building materials and wider issues concerning sustainability. The site, a former limestone quarry, is on the edge of Seahouses, surrounded on one side by a large 1950s council estate, and on the other by rural Northumberland. At present the site houses a sports and community centre, bowling green, tennis court and disused nursery building. Students were asked to integrate the community centre in to their housing master plan. NSSDT used the student work to test out possibilities for how they might develop the site for real in the future.
Transport
Transport is increasingly under the spotlight in efforts to make cities more sustainable. Local authorities and government agencies are critical players in such processes, even where transport systems are extensively privatized. But how should they go about developing policies for a more sustainable future?
Geoff Vigar's research addresses these issues by focusing on government transport strategies and the practices used to derive such plans. Geoff’s current work includes developing pilot work looking at media representations of planning and transport issues with postgraduate planning students and participating in the 'Globalisation, climate change and urban governance' project run by the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development.
Food
Managing the food needs of whole cities in the face of manifest vulnerabilities and inequalities is a matter of escalating concern, as urban living becomes the global norm. Understanding the discursive and material practices involved in securing food for cities (the ways this is discussed, communicated and enacted, as well as the tangible and intangible meanings and effects) is critical given the increasing vulnerabilities and threats posed by the global food system, its ongoing state of crisis and the rapidly rising rates of urbanisation throughout the world.
Jane Midgeley is conducting interdisciplinary research into food studies in relation to inequalities and security. One component of this concerns the impacts on households and communities of physical and economic access (insecurity) to food and how this is addressed by public policy and local organisations. Another component of Jane’s research concerns the functioning of the food related policy process and wider food governance issues given the cross-cutting and multi-level policy environment found in the UK and beyond.
Justice
Simin Davoudi, Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, is Justice and Governance Theme Leader in Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability.
Simin’s research interests include European territorial development, environmental governance and institutional relationships (particularly in relation to strategic waste management and climate change) and she is involved in a number of major research projects involving European partners.
Products and Processes
Simin Davoudi‘s research on waste management has been cited as a case study in the ESRC Strategic Plan 2009-2014 'Delivering Impact Through Social Science'. It says: "How Britain disposes of its waste has become an urgent issue. Research led by Professor Simin Davoudi has been instrumental in shaping government policy on waste management by investigating how policy and political pressures are influencing current processes across England. The findings have been central to new government guidance on waste policy. Both the Department of Communities and Local Government and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have responded by strengthening the role of regions in developing waste planning policy."
Health and Environment
Tim Townshend’s work on sustainable neighbourhoods has developed into linking health and built environment. He is currently undertaking ground breaking trans-disciplinary research on obesogenic environments. This work is the subject of a major new edited volume, Obesogenic Environments: Complexities, Perceptions and Objective Measures with contributions from authors in USA, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands and UK. He is currently undertaking an 18 month project funded by JRF which is investigating the influence of location-based factors in youth drinking behaviours and further is developing work on allotments which will be the subject of an application to the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Tim is also a co-founding member of the North East Obesogenic Environment Network (NEOeN) www.neoen.org.uk which has been established to initiate integrated working partnerships within research, practice and the wider community. The Network has been cited as an example of good practice in the University's own Engagement Strategy.