Academic/industry innovations for sustainable building design and refurbishment

Development and efficient dissemination of innovations for sustainable building design and refurbishment are crucial for the competitiveness of companies operating in the construction sector which faces pressure to reduce levels of carbon emissions from existing and new buildings to zero. An overwhelming majority of companies operating in the construction sector in Scotland are small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) who do not have sufficient resources in the current economic downturn to undertake research in building design, products and processes that will make buildings more sustainable. A joint project of seven Scottish universities has been initiated to support collaboration with small to medium sized enterprises in developing and disseminating innovation for sustainable building design and refurbishment. The project concept and methods used for efficient dissemination of the project outputs to SMEs across Scotland are explained. An analysis of the outputs of completed feasibility studies and the provision of academic consultancy through the project indicates the range of problems tackled as well as trends in the development and use of innovations for a more sustainable built environment in Scotland

Application of ICT for urban regeneration, environmental protection and social equality in Scotland

The paper first examines how the concept of ‘smart cities’ is applied in Scotland through the use of sensors and ICT technologies to collect data and inform decision-making for the regeneration of rural and urban settlements, environmental protection and social equality to date, and goes on to consider the challenges that lie ahead. The case studies include the ‘Future City’ project in Glasgow and the outcomes of researcher engagement with a community group in the town of Linlithgow. Examples are given to demonstrate how the ‘smart city’ concept is applied in the regeneration of settlements by improving regional, national and international digital connectivity. These include the use of ICT and the Internet of Things (IoT) as they relate to the economy and employment, as well as projects for improving the efficiency of services and quality of life, to boost regeneration and resilience of neglected settlements. The paper also examines the level of development of smart monitoring strategies for environmental protection in Scotland. Finally, it presents actions for improving social equality by supporting digital access skills; informing on local food production and waste reduction; using new methods to provide health services; enabling easier access to education and information about employment opportunities; increasing the safety of urban areas; and sharing resources and skills through ‘collaborative commons’. The paper highlights the areas which currently require new research and development

From transition towns to smart cities : opportunities and challenges

The article highlights two successful approaches in engaging with political structures and communities to address global issues such as climate change, species extinction, global population growth, poverty, housing shortage, aging population, energy security, financial crisis and economic recession. While one approach focused on how to influence governments to make a transition to low carbon economy, the other one turned to communities and individuals with the aim to initiate social innovation which will lead to more sustainable living. The first one has influenced industrial innovation, the second social innovation. Both have the opportunity to achieve greater impacts with an increased availability of data required for social innovation, i.e. problem-solving and social change achieved through the activism of social groups, organisations, communities and individuals. As small towns might develop social innovations faster than big cities, and as these should be captured and shared, the article provided an example of the growing social innovation activities in a small Scottish town stimulated by both of the above approaches

Frameworks for citizens participation in planning : from conversational to smart tools

The paper concentrates on tools and technologies used for participatory processes in sustainable urban planning. Scotland’s Place Standard, BREEAM-Communities assessment tool and the Smart City technologies for co-production in urban planning and design are analysed through literature review. Aktivniy Grazhdanin, a citizen engagement portal, established to devolve decision-making on aspects of Moscow’s urban planning to citizens, provides a case study on the potential use of online tools to solicit citizens’ views on the city management and transformation. Tools were selected as they provide participatory frameworks for developing consensus among decision makers and stakeholders on planning strategy, but use different methods - Scotland’s Place Standard initiates a dialogue with interested groups; BREEAM-Communities includes a consultation with stakeholders at a later stage; and Aktivniy Grazhdanin attempts to solicit stakeholders’ views by using online tools. Comprehensive criticism in the research of Kitchin (2014) and Angelidou & Psaltoglou (2017) identified themes around ownership, governance and participation that informed the line of questioning in the case study. The research highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the analysed tools. It recommends how frameworks can be best shaped by such tools to achieve local ownership and provide structure for a more inclusive urban planning

Ecological frameworks as a strategy for social innovation in the built environment

The practice of social innovation, in which collaborative actions are developed as an integrated design approach to sustainable development is an increasingly popular strategy for building community resilience. Within that research context, we find novel approaches to planning in the built environment, informedby an ecology for cities. Emphasised by a trans-disciplinary approach in both analysis and urban design, collaboration among stakeholders can facilitate development resilient frameworks and strategies for sustainable development. Within a community ecosystem, feedback loops and multi-agency working inform approaches to socio-economic and environmental challenges. Hence a renewed interest among researchers in the ecology of an urban commons, with scholars from different disciplines coming together around the science of an ecology for cities. Part of a wider body of research, this study builds on a hypothesis that social innovation develops over phases of the network, framework and architecture –where knowledge transfer can inform more holistic understanding

Agile urban planning and phased housing construction for migrating populations

Various environmental, social and economic disruptions trigger the displacement of people and create the need for an agile provision of affordable housing. The responses of architects and urban planners to that need are pointing towards solutions based on the concepts of ephemeral urbanism and phased construction of housing, which rely on self-sufficiency in terms of building materials and, very often, construction. The paper presents examples of ephemeral urbanism and architectural design of affordable, phased housing applied in many developing countries facing a significant influx of people into cities due to radical changes in political, socio-economic or environmental contexts. They range from remediation interventions in illegally built settlements, to support for the development of affordable housing, which includes up-skilling of the population to self-build with locally available building materials. The discussion focuses on the need to include the concepts of agile urban planning and architectural design in the education of architects and urban planners as the means for an efficient provision of affordable housing in the context of global population growth and migrations from rural to urban areas. It also proposes that urban planning strategies of local authorities need to consider scenarios and develop models for responsive and rapid urban planning interventions when faced with potential multiple disruptions of the envisaged urban development. The paper concludes by outlining areas of potential future research that will inform the education of architects and urban planners, as well as architectural and urban planning practice

Synchrony-city : Sarajevo in five acts and few intervals

This paper focuses on Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, giving a general overview of its urban context through five historical periods, as part of a research study on its modernist architectural heritage. Designed to mimic the theatrical process which unfolds through acts and intervals, the paper combines literary, architectural, journalistic and historical sources, to sketch the key periods which characterise the city’s urban morphology. The sequence of acts and intervals points to the dramatic historic inter-change of continuities and ruptures, in which the ruptures have often been less studied and understood. This explains the frequent conceptualising of Sarajevo through East-West binary, which synthesises it either as a provincial capital from Ottoman and later Habsburg rule, a regional centre within two Yugoslav states and a capital city of a young state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This highlights the need to study the ruptures as clues to the flow of continuities, in which the care and after-care for built environment provide a field of evidence and possibilities for diverse perspectives of examination. Corroborated by secondary sources, the paper examines the accounts of urban heritage destruction in the 1990s war, as recorded by a writer, an architect and a journalist, and outlines a pattern of unbroken inter-relations between urban and architectural space (tangible) and sense and identity of place (intangible). This discourse is relevant to the current situation where the city of Sarajevo expands again, in the complexity of a post-conflict society. Challenged by the political divisions and the laissez - faire economy, the public mood and interest is under-represented and has many conflicting voices. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the accounts from the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, this conceptual paper contributes to the formulation of a cross-disciplinary discursive prism through which the fragments of the city and its periods come together or apart, adding, subtracting and changing layers of meaning of the physical space

Socially innovative frameworks for socioeconomic resilience in urban design

The paper concentrates on tools and technologies used for participatory processes in the context of sustainable urban planning and design. The paper aim is to explore and present how some recent tools and technologies are used to inform policies, strategies or overarching concepts for engaging stakeholders to work toward a common vision for change in their community. The capabilities of Scotland’s Place Standard tool, BREEAM-Communities assessment tool and the Smart City technologies that enable co-production in urban planning and design are analysed through literature review. The Akitivniy Grazhdanin, a citizen engagement portal was established to devolve decision-making on aspects of Moscow’s smart city programme to citizens, provides a case study on the potential use of Smart City technologies to solicit citizens’ views on the city management and transformation. The paper discusses the impact of those tools and technologies in terms of supporting place-based collaboration, citizen engagement and participation, and their value to providing for an open and iterative design process. The research highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the analysed tools and technologies. In conclusion the paper makes recommendations as to how frameworks can best be shaped by such tools in order to achieve local ownership, and provide structure to a more inclusive development and sustainable urban design. Finally, the paper gives a high-level indication as to the next stage of planned research

An ecocentric approach to defining a public park system

Purpose: This research aims at examining public parks as a complex, interrelated system in which a public park’s natural system and its man-made system can work together within an ecocentric approach. It will create a framework that can support the design and management of public parks. Design/methodology/approach: The article first introduces previous research and justifies the need for a new approach. It then uses conceptual analysis to examine the concepts that construct a park’s system through previous theoretical research. Finally, the public park system is constructed by synthesising its components and showing the interrelations between them. These components are defined based on previous theoretical and empirical research. Findings: A public park system is defined as consisting of a natural system and a man-made system with multiple components that interact to offer the overall experience in a park. The defined system can be a useful tool for decision-makers, managers and designers in the analysis and evaluation of existing and potential projects to achieve multifunctional parks that are better utilised and have a wider influence. Originality/value: The research offers an alternative approach for framing public parks that do not deal with their components in isolation from each other. This view of public parks brings together perspectives from different literature into one coherent framework that emphasises mutual dependencies and interactions in one integrated whole

Fragile republic : defragmenting the public space in Sarajevo's museums quadrant

The discourse on modernism has been linking the agency of architecture in public space to the processes of modernisation and, by implication, progress, along with a realisation that a ‘stand-alone’ approach to the history of architecture, focused on the selected buildings and their designers, is not enough. Independently, the work of sociologists and the critical theory investigations in the humanities have brought their focus closer to the studies of contemporary architecture, resonating with the internal demands for rejection of the reductionist approach, which had consigned architectural phenomena to the analysis of style. As a result, the architectural research has begun to resort to sociology and cultural studies, borrowing their methods of observation in order to build a better phenomenological understanding of own field and subject, and placing them within a synchronistic flux of cultural, political and social developments. This paper seeks to examine the concepts of the communicative action, as developed by Jürgen Habermas (1928-) and potentially apply them on the analysis of the urban micro-zone of Marijin Dvor in Sarajevo, following the transformations of this originally designated administrative and cultural heart of the socialist city, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Departing from Habermas’ notion of the structural differentiation of Lifeworld, the selected area is observed through its historic phases, characterised by convergence, divergence and conflict, with a view to developing a discursive template. Its model is conceived as a combination of the spatial urban pattern coupled with communicative acts, framed as synchronistic sequences of a specific and local narrative. It is suggested that such graphic modelling with a symbolical re-enactment of communicative acts in public space contributes to the interpretive potential and understanding of the behaviour patterns of different societal groups, which could have a role in reconciling of the conflicting and destructive trends in public sphere