Engineering project aims to lower carbon footprint of UK cities
Researchers at four UK universities are embarking on a five year low carbon engineering project that could transform the way cities are built as well as the way we live in them.
The study, led by Birmingham University, will outline visions of an alternative urban future with drastically reduced CO2 emissions and develop radical engineering solutions to achieve them in a socially acceptable way. Research will closely link people's social aspirations and wellbeing with the engineering of cities.
Professor Chris Rogers of the University of Birmingham's School of Civil Engineering, said: "Engineering of our cities has traditionally been a 'top-down' exercise, mainly because it's so very difficult to create a 'bottom-up' approach: solutions are created and society must either learn to work and live with them or choose to resist them.
"Our research is novel in that we start by imagining the future that we want for our cities, for example, what does a city like Birmingham look like with an 80% carbon reduction? We then work backwards to find out what combinations of engineering solutions, behavioural changes and technological developments are needed to make these alternative futures possible, while at the same time ensuring that the planet can still provide us with the resources we need. The ambition of our research programme is necessary to deal with the global challenges that we face.'
By using focus groups, case studies and a city analysis methodology, the researchers will create a roadmap that aims to drive future engineering thinking for decades to come. The goal is for the findings to influence policy and be used by designers in the UK, with the potential to be applied anywhere in the world.
The study, which also involves researchers from Lancaster University, University College London and the University of Southampton, has been made possible by a £6million grant from the EPSRC.
