1
Introduction
Tim Dixon1, Malcolm Eames2, Miriam Hunt3 and Simon Lannon2
1 School of the Built Environment, University of Reading, Chancellor’s Building, Chancellor’s Way, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6DF
2 Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, Bute Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3NB, UK
3 School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3NN, UK
Overview
Today, a key challenge for policy and decision makers globally is how best to develop the knowledge and capacity to use resources more sustainably. Governments in the UK and across the world are therefore introducing increasingly challenging targets to reduce the impact we have on our environment, looking to issues such as the use of renewable energies, waste reduction and limits to carbon emissions. However, in what is an increasingly urbanised world, ‘piecemeal’ change cannot equip cities, as major foci of global population, to rise to the challenges of climate change. What is needed is a new approach, based on futures thinking, which embeds the ideas of ecological and social resilience into the very fabric of the built environment of cities.
Set in this wider context, the ambition of ‘retrofitting’ existing cities has therefore gained increasing prominence within research and policy agendas in recent years as Sir David King notes in the foreword to this book (see also Dixon et al., 2014, and Hodson and Marvin, 2016). Whilst cities are seen as the source of many environmental and resource depletion problems, they are also recognised as centres of major population which offer not only huge potential opportunities in ‘scaling up’ technological responses to climate change, but also to act as ‘hubs’ of innovative social practice and learning. However, city level action requires a change in thinking, and rapid intensification of mitigation and adaptation responses, not only in response to climate change, but also to the allied threat of environmental degradation. What is required at city level therefore is a much more co‐ordinated, planned and strategic approach so that cities can transition to a sustainable future over the next 30–40 years.
The notion of urban or city‐wide ‘retrofitting’ is anchored in the literal meaning of ‘adding (a component or accessory) to something that did not have it when manufactured’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The term has also often been used interchangeably in the built environment with terms such as ‘refurbishment’ or ‘conversion’ (Dixon et al., 2014). However, at a city‐scale, retrofit means something more comprehensive. For example, ‘sustainable urban retrofitting’ can be seen as the directed alteration of the fabric, forms or systems that comprise the built environment to improve water, energy and waste efficiencies (Eames, 2011).
However, research on retrofitting in the built environment has traditionally focused on either individual buildings (or building components), or neighbourhood or district level, rather than the urban, or city‐wide, scale. A recent programme of research which did focus on ‘urban retrofitting’, was the EPSRC Retrofit programme (2010–2014). This was a major programme of research which recognised, in a critical sense, that when any scaled up thinking does occur, there is often a tendency to think of this kind of large‐scale transformative change in terms of ‘what’ is needed and ‘how’ it can be delivered, without considering how to address the two together (Eames et al., 2013; Dixon et al., 2014: Hodson and Marvin, 2016). By bringing together an inter‐disciplinary team from across the UK, and linking the public and private sectors, the research sought to take a holistic approach that would overcome this dichotomy. It therefore considered not only the innovative knowledge and technical tools available, but how to implement them in cities by 2050.
The EPSRC Retrofit 2050 research was based on the premise that cities are not a ‘blank page’. To bring about the sort of systematic change that is needed, we need to consider cities as they exist today: a complex mix of homes and workplace, and the product of centuries of evolution. By taking this approach, the project considered the ways in which cities can become ‘locked’ into patterns of resource use that are no longer viable, and seek to change them while respecting their social, environmental and economic sustainability.
Through case studies, modelling and international comparison, the EPSRC Retrofit 2050 project aimed to advance and explore both theoretical and practical understandings of the systems innovation and transition that will underpin a shift towards sustainability in the built environment between 2020 and 2050. The research, which was led by Cardiff University in partnership with University of Reading, Cambridge University, Salford University, Durham University and Oxford Brookes University, was structured around four interlocking Technical Work Packages: (i) Urban Transitions Analysis; (ii) Urban Foresight 2020–2050; (iii) Urban Options: Modelling, Visualisation and Pathway Analysis; and (iv) Synthesis, Comparison and Knowledge Exchange. Commercial collaborators included Tata Colours, Arup and BRE Wales. Regional collaborators included Cardiff, Neath Port Talbot and Manchester Councils, the Welsh Government, Environment Agency (Wales) and Manchester City Council. Stakeholder engagement was therefore a key element in the programme (Opoku et al., 2014).
The geographical focus of the EPSRC Retrofit 2050 project was on two of the UK’s major city‐regions: Cardiff/South East Wales area; and Greater Manchester. Both have long industrial histories, both have suffered decline in recent decades and both are seeking to overcome this decline, regenerating themselves into modern, vibrant cities. The project therefore aimed to investigate ways of making this transition environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. Many of these themes are explored in Dixon and Eames (2013), Eames et al. (2013), Dixon et al. (2014) and the EPSRC Retrofit 2050 programme outputs (see www.retrofit2050.org.uk). Thinking about the future of cities, or the ‘Tomorrow’s World’ of cities, is therefore at the heart of this work. This imagines a ‘possibility space’ for alternative futures, free from the current disconnection between short term planning horizons, and long term environmental change.
The EPSRC Retrofit 2050 programme of research also drew on, and synthesised, findings and expertise from UK and international contexts. This came to fruition through an international conference on the 12th and 13th of February 2014, held at the Wales Millennium Centre Cardiff Bay. Marking the end of a 4‐year programme of work funded under the EPSRC’s Sustainable Urban Environments portfolio, this conference showcased work emerging from the project alongside contributions from invited experts in the UK and internationally.
A core aim of this book is therefore to highlight and explore some of the innovative and diverse ways of imagining and re‐imagining urban retrofit perspectives, set in the context of ‘futures‐based’ thinking. To do this, the book draws on UK and international expertise and experience. The book therefore explores how to determine the best way to plan and co‐ordinate a more sustainable urban future by 2050 through urban retrofitting approaches to both residential and commercial property; how cities need to ‘govern’ for urban retrofit; and specifically, how future urban transitions and pathways can be managed, modelled and navigated.
This book therefore brings together a number of papers from this conference, supplemented by other specially commissioned chapters, to explore three main themes in urban retrofit:
- Governance and dynamics of urban retrofit. This focuses on the issues involved in the development of wider metropolitan frameworks for retrofitting activities. This includes the development of frameworks for private sector investment; the development of partnerships with market or non‐market interests; and the relationships with existing local community, third sector and low income household retrofit activities. Key questions include: What partners are included (and excluded) in such frameworks? How are local priorities balanced with market criteria? What capacity and capability is being created? Specific issues which are explored include: people, practices and the ‘performance gaps’ between desired and actual outcomes; disruptive and sustaining technologies and how these are employed at city level; financial and institutional innovation at city level; and, transforming the commercial property regime and engaging with the business sector at city level.
- Modelling urban transitions and pathways. This sheds light on tools and principles for guiding policy makers and practitioners from simple ‘what if’ questions, based on a single modelling technique, to more interlinked tools that capture not only the measurable changes but also the spatial and temporal nature of modelled urban transitions.
- Steering and navigating sustainable urban transitions. This focuses on the development and implementation of policy approaches, governance‐oriented tools, and broader institutional frameworks for steering and navigating sustainable urban transitions. Issues to be addressed here include: complexity and uncertainty; participation and inclusion; integrating appraisal, learning and evaluation; and the challenges and opportunities for reflexive governance.
