Transition UGent: a bottom-up initiative towards a more sustainable university

The vibrant think-tank ‘Transition UGent’ engaged over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the Sustainability Policy of Ghent University (Belgium). Founded in 2012, this bottom-up initiative succeeded to place sustainability high on the policy agenda of our university. Through discussions within 9 working groups and using the transition management method, Transition UGent developed system analyses, sustainability visions and transition paths on 9 fields of Ghent University: mobility, energy, food, waste, nature and green, water, art, education and research. At the moment, many visions and ideas find their way into concrete actions and policies. In our presentation we focused on the broad participative process, on the most remarkable structural results (e.g. a formal and ambitious Sustainability Vision and a student-led Sustainability Office) and on recent actions and experiments (e.g. a sustainability assessment on food supply in student restaurants, artistic COP21 activities, ambitious mobility plans, food leftovers projects, an education network on sustainability controversies, a transdisciplinary platform on Sustainable Cities). We concluded with some recommendations and reflections on this transition approach, on the important role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and student involvement, on lock-ins and bottlenecks, and on convincing skeptical leaders

Integrated Transport System Toward Sustainable Travel Behavior for Work Commuting Travel From Bekasi to Jakarta

Due to the inadequacy of public transport and high critical level of congestion in Jakarta Metropolitan Area, implementing sustainable transport for urban future transport improvement is necessary. Critical transport situation in Jakarta Metropolitan Area has pointed the importance of implementation integrated transport system to increase people accessibility. This study is conducted to identify strategic issues in integrated transport system at operational and policy levels toward sustainable mobility, transport equity, and door to door service. According to research aim, explanatory case study is used to build an understanding the current situation. The results indicate that integrated transport system is not fully implemented yet and it found a lot of missing links and barriers in integrated transport system attributes. Moreover, transportation planning at national to local levels is not synchronous which have impacted to the implementation of integrated transport

How to monitor sustainable mobility in cities? Literature review in the frame of creating a set of sustainable mobility indicators

The role of sustainable mobility and its impact on society and the environment is evident and recognized worldwide. Nevertheless, although there is a growing number of measures and projects that deal with sustainable mobility issues, it is not so easy to compare their results and, so far, there is no globally applicable set of tools and indicators that ensure holistic evaluation and facilitate replicability of the best practices. In this paper, based on the extensive literature review, we give a systematic overview of relevant and scientifically sound indicators that cover different aspects of sustainable mobility that are applicable in different social and economic contexts around the world. Overall, 22 sustainable mobility indicators have been selected and an overview of the applied measures described across the literature review has been presented

PRIMUS/Informed Cities: Making research work for local sustainability

The final report of a three year European Commission FP7 project

SASICE: Safety and sustainability in civil engineering

The performance of the built environment and the construction sector are of major importance in Europe’s long term goals of sustainable development in a changing climate. At the same time, the quality of life of all European citizens needs to be improved and the safety of the built environment with respect to man-made and natural hazards, such as flooding and earthquakes, needs to be ensured. Education has a central role to play in the transformation of a construction sector required to meet increasing demands with regard to safety and sustainability. In this work, the SASICE project is presented. The aim of this project is to promote the integration of safety and sustainability in civil engineering education. The project is organised in the context of the Lifelong Learning Programme, funded by the European Community. The coordinator organisation is the University of Bologna. Nine partner universities from different countries are involved in this transnational project. The universities participating to the project constitute a network of high level competences in the civil engineering area, with several opportunities to improve lifelong learning adopting different media: joint curricula, teaching modules and professor and student exchanges. As a response to the challenge regarding new educational methods in sustainable engineering, teaching modules are developed in 4 thematic areas: (1) Safety in construction, (2) Risk induced by Natural Hazards Assessment, (3) Sustainability in construction, and (4) Sustainability at the territorial level. The development of the teaching modules is based on an extensive analysis of the need for highly qualified education on Safety and Sustainability involving all relevant stakeholders (European and national authorities, companies, research institutes, professional organizations, and universities).The main target is enabling students to introduce these advanced topics in their study plans and curricula and reach, at the end of their studies, a specific skill and expertise in safety and sustainability in Civil Engineering. With our natural resources fading away and our infrastructure in dire need of repair, new trends and challenges in civil engineering education in the concept of “Sustainable Development” are needed to be adressed.<br/

The Global University: The Role of Senior Managers

Contributors address the role of senior managers in relation to internationalisation, globalisation, and sustainable development and share how these often overlapping challenges can be addressed. Consideration has been given to a range of potentially competing demands including the relationship between what Paul Luker describes as the 'core mission and values of HE' and what Caruana and Hanstock describe as 'marketisation discourse'. The Global University: The Role of Senior Manager is written by higher education institution senior managers, for HEI senior managers. Supported by HEFCE Leadership, Governance and Management Funding, 'The Global University: the role of senior managers' is a companion publication to 'The Global University: the role of the curriculum'. Many of the contributors are regarded as critical champions of internationalisation in the UK as well as thoughtful strategists in the process of affecting sustainable university-wide change. To provide further food for thought, in addition to the UK contributions, a case study on university-wide approaches to the development of global citizens at the University of British Columbia and a perspective on the barriers affecting the process of internationalisation in Latin American Universities have also been included. Contributors address key concepts from a variety of perspectives and what will quickly become apparent is that the terms are not always translated in quite the same way (a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing) but in spite of this, collectively, considerable insight for moving the agenda forward is provided. At the very least, the publication will serve to inspire debate on what should constitute the vision, mission and values of a global university, within the context of global society. Given the global footprint of universities and the ability of our graduates to influence change in global society, the publication maintains that universities cannot ignore their corporate and social responsibilities: senior managers have a critical role to play as leaders of this agenda and of change that results in positive benefits for a wider stakeholder group

Sustainable Green Infrastructure Planning in Greece: Proposal for an Urban Greenway Network in the Greater Athens Metropolitan Area

Athens, the capital of Greece, epitomizes the opportunities and constraints of modern urbanization, sustainable mobility, green infrastructure, greenway planning, and the associated quality of contemporary Greek civic life. Though the country’s economy has been suffering tremendously for the past consecutive eight years with harsh austerity measures holding back any developmental commotion, signs of recovery and appropriate funding are lately emerging. Physically, Athens has overcome its natural containing barriers, the Pikilo and Hemmitos Mountains on east and west borders, the southern waterfront expanding over to the Thriasio and Mesogeia Fields and the island of Aegina respectively. Culturally, contemporary Athens is thriving, living up to her own historical heritage and legacy. Socially, the latest abrupt surge of immigrant and refugees influx has altered both demographical ratios and civic life in the congested downtown and CBD of the city as well as the dispersed residential neighborhoods within a chaotic urban fabric. Economically, foreign and local investors have shown a keen interest in large scale projects (e.g. the former Hellinikon International Airport) but national debts to both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have led to governmental hesitation and procrastination of any developmental plans, halting in turn the investors’ much anticipated and crucial momentum. Lastly, clashing stakeholders’ interests within the broader green infrastructure and targeted greenway planning process, provide the fertile basis for a wide spectrum of alternative development scenarios. One of the most discussed and highest-profile projects in Greece today is Hellinikon, an ambitious plan for converting the former Athens airport into an enormous park. The site of Hellinikon lies 8 km southwest of the center of Athens being approximately 1,500 acres and boasting a 3.5 km waterfront, including a marina. Exploiting the Hellinikon site as the main organizing impetus, this paper presents a proposal for an Urban Greenway Network in the Greater Athens Metropolitan Area (GAMA) as a response to prudent city planning, attempting to address the vision, the strategic issues, the governmental and private synergies, the planning criteria, the physical design and standards of greenway planning required for its implementation at the city scale and beyond. At the background, ecological, social, and economic issues weave the sustainability concerns and processes of green infrastructure planning

The role of cities in cohesion policy 2014-2020

Urban regions are an important factor in regional development. During the 2007-2013 programming period, the main input provided by cities and urban areas was at project level. For the 2014-2020 programming period, Cohesion policy enhances the role of urban areas. Nevertheless, in practice the role of cities still seems similar in scale. As the programming phase is almost completed, there is now limited scope for further influence on the design of the new programmes. The next opportunity to involve cities will be as part of partnerships during the programming perio

Birmingham’s Eastside story: making steps towards sustainability?

Sustainability has come to play a dominant discursive role in the UK planning system, particularly relating to urban regeneration. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role that sustainability plays in a major regeneration programme, known as Eastside, currently underway in Birmingham, the UK. That this £6 billion redevelopment is now widely talked about by such key players as Birmingham City Council and the Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands, as having a central sustainability agenda points to the growing importance of the ideal of sustainability in planning and regeneration agendas. In this paper, we investigate in detail how and why sustainability has become part of the planning discourse for Eastside and critically evaluate what impact, if any, this is having on public policy decision-making