Urban Development: Design, Technology and Networks
Introduction
Research within this theme embraces issues relating to urban design, new urbanism, ecological design and sustainable cities.
Associated with the Manchester Centre for Architectural Research (MARC) and involving inter-disciplinary links with colleagues in Architecture including Professor Simon Guy , the aim is to critically understand the co-evolution of design and development strategies and socio-economic processes shaping buildings, neighbourhoods, public spaces and cities.
This orientation to design and development is complemented by research, overseen by Professor Michael Hebbert, into design policy and practice including work on various aspects of the ‘new urbanism’ as well as more specific projects such as reflective work on the practice of design review and thematic studies of tall buildings. Taken together with associated work on, for example, the ‘co-evolution’ of technological innovation and behavioural change and designing-out terrorism and the everyday resilience of cities, work within this theme is developing new agendas around a socio-technical analysis of buildings and cities.
Research under this theme is increasing our understanding of the path dependency of environmental innovation, identifying how alternative logics of ecological design have their roots in competing interpretations of the environmental problem, through, for example, addressing the role of nature in the city and the planning and management of urban greenspace (also associated also with the activities of the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology).