Environmental Planning and Management
Introduction
Research activity undertaken as part of this theme is pursued via the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology (CURE), originally established by Professor John Handley in 1999, and which now incorporates the research activities of the formerEnvironmental Impact Assessment Centre (EIAC). CURE is directed by Professor John Handley, who leads a senior management team in the Centre, comprising Joe Ravetz (who oversees research on urban and regional systems), Carys Jones (who coordinates the work on environmental assessment) and Sarah Lindley (Geography) who leads on spatial analysis and manages the Centre’s GIS/CAD Laboratory.
Staff within the environmental planning and management grouping have established a strong international reputation for innovative and inter-disciplinary environmental research. Much of the work under this theme is centred on the development of an improved understanding of the relationship between spatial planning and environmental systems and processes. In order to advance this interest, current research activity is currently structured around three broad research areas.
The first area of activity concerns the development of strategic responses to environmental change. Particular emphasis has been given to the assessment of environmental risk and the formulation of adaptation responses.
Recent work has explored the adaptive capacity of the urban environment to respond to climate change (for EPSRC with the TCPA, Universities of Cardiff, Oxford Brookes and Southampton), the impact of changing climate scenarios upon the visitor economy and the landscape (for DEFRA with Sustainability North West) and assessing institutional responses to flood risk and the role of mitigation measures (for EPSRC, DEFRA, Scottish Executive and the EA). A new EPSRC collaborative project is investigating intensification of the urban heat island and implications for spatial planning, and CURE is working with Newcastle University, UCL and the University of East Anglia in developing climate change research on the built environment through the EPSRC project Sustaining Knowledge for Climate Change.
The second research area focuses upon environmental assessment. Staff members have been at the forefront of international developments in environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) since the early 1980s. These areas of expertise remain central to the work of the discipline and recently completed projects include work for the ESRC/RTPI on the SEA of development plans.
Current activities within this sub-theme include a DTI project assessing the quality of offshore oil and gas assessment processes and procedures and work for the European Union on the use of sustainability indicators for regional development.
The final area of research activity as part of this theme is dedicated to an advanced understanding of the functioning of landscape systems with a view to informing urban and regional sustainability.
The scope of research under this theme accounts for a broad spectrum of landscape typologies and functions. For example, building on earlier work for the Countryside Agency which explored planning for sustainability in the countryside around the town, CURE researchers have recently revisited the debate about how growth can be accommodated in different forms of settlement patterns (for DCLG and the Planning Research Network).
Resource flow analysis, ecological footprinting and integrated assessment are interconnected themes in work on the nature of urban and regional systems (BiffAward, SEEDA, Environment Agency and WWF) with spatial expression through the EPSRC Regional Interactive Sustainability Atlas. Other current research agendas include the role of capacity building for integrated environmental management (IEM) with the main thrust of this work concentrating on the socio-economic dimension of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) and on the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive in the UK as well as the use of systems theory to inform novel approaches to community engagement.
Future research will address the potential for SEA to improve landscape functionality within both ICZM and river basin management.