Richard Coles

Elucidating Sustainability Sequencing, Tensions, and Trade-Offs in Development Decision Making

The development process at the site or building scale is a multiobjective process requiring the cooperation of many professions and other stakeholders. The addition of multiple sustainability objectives, often seemingly unrelated (economic versus environmental versus social) in a rapidly changing global urban context, further constrains and complicates the process. The MODESTT mapping approach was developed to elucidate the interdependencies, tensions, and trade-offs between different sustainability objectives for a given development, and to make explicit the points at which a single design decision may ‘lock-in’ or ‘lock-out’ various possible outcomes. In this article, we review and analyse existing models of the development process, illustrate the decisions and activities inherent in delivering a single element of a development (illustrated in this paper with the example of a roof); then apply the MODESTT analysis to three sustainability objectives. The analysis makes explicit the critical importance of sequencing of actions and decisions, and interdependencies between specific objectives that lead to tensions and trade-offs between the multiple sustainability objectives. We conclude by making recommendations for the generic application of the MODESTT approach to improve sustainability throughout the site development process. Regardless of the tools that are available in the UK or elsewhere for the development process and for sustainability proxies, it is the timing and sequencing of decisions (when data are collected or the tools are applied) that are important in delivering effective solutions.

Urban landscapes - everyday environmental encounters, their meaning and importance for the individual

Work investigates the everyday experience of urban landscapes to explore the individual meanings associated with landscape encounters aiming to provide greater clarity regarding the role/functioning of everyday environmental elements within the urban scene. In particular, it explores the concept and formation of ‘loops’, i.e. the reflexive cycles of sensory input and construction of meaning associated with engagement in the landscape, how they are specific to individual experience and the subsequent positive, meaningful outcomes. Ideas are developed through the presentation of two researched case studies involving the collection of qualitative data which involve - residents’ perceptions of street trees in a residential environment in SW England and - user experience of the central canal-scape of Birmingham, UK. It considers how users react to these landscapes, how their use supports individuals in terms of their personal identities and their requirements to engender a highly positive interaction. The study uses data derived from a variety of methodologies, including survey questionnaires, interviews, walking-and-talking methods, as well as self-narrated walking to present a range of information. The findings suggest that a shift change is required in the ways that we evaluate users’ experiences of the environment to consider impact in the specific context of individual identities, to embrace methodologies which are capable of revealing their deep meaning and importance of these elements to the individual. Ideas are summarised to help explain the formation of perception loops that are associated with high levels of interaction/synergy between the environment and the individual.

Urban resilience: two diverging interpretations

This paper uses two diverging interpretations of resilience to review and assess current UK policies and guidelines for urban resilience, a term generally associated with the strength of key systems and cities and their capability to maintain functionality in the face of external shocks. Both developed in scientific studies, the first interpretation (engineering resilience) is based on a mechanistic model of systems that can recover their original state aftershocks, and the second (ecological resilience) is based on an evolutionary model enabling adaptation to disturbances. Through a literature review, practical applications to planning are discussed for each model in terms of long-term efficacy. The contribution of this paper to an understanding of urban resilience is therefore twofold. First, an identification of the long-term consequences on the built environment of the policies associated with each model is provided, with the mechanical model ultimately hindering, and the ecological model favouring, adaptation. Second, some approaches to generate effective responses to environmental and societal change are identified, together with enabling tools. Ultimately, this paper emphasizes that the idea of a resilient city is fit for this age characterized by uncertainty, although it requires the recognition within planning practice that urban adaptation cannot be attained with current methodologies, and that much can be learned from theories on the resilience of ecosystems.

The self-narrated walk. A user-led method to research people’s experiences in urban landscapes

Abstract Walking interviews and mobile ways of engaging participants in research have recently begun to emerge as methods to collect data that tries to understand people’s relationships with places. This work explores the self-narrated walk as a method to research people’s encounters and interactions with the landscape and their associated meanings and values. We address the method by explaining and examining how it has been designed, implemented and experienced by participants who engaged in a set of environmental immersive encounters in urban green landscapes. The findings show that this approach offers the user perspective, and facilitates in situ, mobile and in-the-moment, detailed, complex personal descriptions, and meanings into the mechanisms behind physical and emotional person–place interactions. Additionally, they suggest that the method is excellent to empower participants, to stimulate engagement with places and to capture simultaneously different data-sets. Finally, we discuss potential implications for landscape research and for the design process.