Athena Piterou

Sustainable energy projects and the community: Mapping single-building use of microgeneration technologies in London

Microgeneration technologies offer the potential for distributed energy supply and consumption resulting in reduced reliance on centralised generation. Adoption of microgeneration for use in community settings is usually understood as having a beneficial contribution to sustainable development. This is particularly relevant in urban environments which present specific challenges relating to the heterogeneity of building and land use. Small-scale installations in buildings also appear to offer technological flexibility at the ‘human’ level, necessary for local participation in shaping the direction of sustainable development. This paper reports on a project concerned with identifying on-site energy generation projects in Greater London. A database was compiled comprising renewable and energy efficient microgeneration installations in multi-occupancy buildings. The relationships between each project and its associated organisations are mapped as a social network, which illustrates the heterogeneity of technologies and actors involved, as well as the flows of funding and expertise. The structure of the resulting networks indicates a lack of participation by social or not-for-profit groups who are traditionally identified as community level actors. The findings indicate that large institutional actors on the supply side may become regarded as renewable energy experts. Hence, there is a need to consider how the concept of community level actors in urban microgeneration projects is applicable to local government and commercial organisations.

Is small really beautiful? A review of the concept of niches in innovation

ABSTRACT This article reviews the concept of innovation niches through three categories: strategic niche management (SNM), specialised markets and niches formed as a technology declines. In the literature, innovation niches generate interest from both innovation and marketing perspectives. This review focuses predominately on the former from which the niche types have been adopted and analysed. Mostly, contributions since 1980 have been included, representing the period of academic interest in innovative small firms, while both temporal and locational filters were applied to the study. It is noted that SNM has been proposed as a means to protect potentially useful innovations from full market competition, while specialist niches supply technologies to few customers in more stable environments. Incumbent technologies at the stage of decline may also retreat to niches where they can still remain competitive. Finally, it is suggested that further research on innovation niches would extend our understanding of technology dynamics.

Urban development projects: A case study of the Greater Port Harcourt city development project in Rivers State, Nigeria

Sustainable urban development is fundamental to future generations as it determines the longevity of a city. The strategy is about developing an urban area that fulfils the needs of the present generation, protect and preserve the environment for the future generations. Uncontrolled and unregulated urban developments in Nigeria are documented to be some of the major challenges that support unsustainable urban development. Thus, urban decay is stirred by overstretch on existing infrastructures as a result to unprecedented population growth, lack of maintenance due to institutional breakdowns, unauthorised/ unregulated construction works, and nonchalant behaviours on the part of the citizens. Sustainable urban development is a convoluted phenomenon that is dependent on several other intricate developmental strategies centric on land/water use, housing, transport, water management, waste management, sanitation, education, healthcare, and energy. These are major developmental aspects of an urban area that can drive sustainable development goals, hence, it is important to critically address the challenges that emanates as a result to the inefficiency around them. As a means to address the challenges of unsustainable urban development, this research is aimed at developing a sustainability framework for the ongoing urban development projects in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. To achieve the aforementioned aim, the objectives are to identify and examine the factors that are hindering the success of the project. The framework will be developed to cover major areas of stakeholders’ concern. Stakeholders opinions were obtained through the collection of qualitative www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) WIT Transactions on Ecology and The Environment, Vol 210,

From Print to Digital: Textual Technologies and Reading as a Sociotechnical Practice

It is assumed that digital technologies contribute to sustainable consumption and production through dematerialization. Hence, digital text is seen as a way to reduce the environmental implications of printing. This chapter focuses on printed text which is published (mainly in the form of books) rather than on home or office printing. It is argued that a transition of books towards digitization involves changes not only in the technologies of book production, but also in the practices of writing and reading, and will more generally affect the ways readers interact with texts in a variety of situations. The chapter analyses the sociotechnical system of the printed paper text (focusing on printed books) and the historical co-evolution of print technologies and reading practices. The implications of digitization for textual production and consumption are then considered. The societal function of the printed paper text can be broadly defined as the development, preservation and diffusion of (usually) textual information. Yet, the concept of function is too limited in describing the multiple ways readers engage with texts: the interaction between books and readers differs according to readers’ intentions and the context of the action.