Sustainable Cities Research at SED
By the middle of the 21st century three in four of us will live in cities. The new urban age is not just about cities, but about a new mode of organizing space and society that is shaping the world in which we live.
With extensive networks that stretch out beyond the academy into the work of policy making, reach out across continents, and transcend academic disciplines, SED is well positioned to make a significant contribution to understanding the future of cities.
A Key Centre for Urban Research
Many universities around the world have a critical mass of staff and students working on cities - and Manchester is no different.
cities@manchester is a Faculty of Humanities initiative that brings together cities work from across six schools. Within this framework, SED makes the single largest contribution.
Urban research in the School can be grouped in the following way:
- Theoretically, SED staff and researchers work on advancing Post-Colonial, Post-Marxist, and Post-Structural agendas as they relate to the studying of cities
- Methodologically, the School’s cities research is produced using a range of methods, such as discourse analysis, ethnography, GIS, participant observation, semi-structured interviews and videoing;
- Empirically, the School’s staff and students do research in countries in the six continents of the world, using this geographical variety to interrogate certain assumptions that pervade the academic and policy making literatures;
- Pragmatically,SED’s research on cities has a strong practitioner and policy making focus, aimed at influencing and shaping the agendas of local, regional, national, and international agencies.
A Multidisciplinary Approach
Our research on cities is of multidisciplinary nature and is delivered through a range of different institutes, research centres and disciplinary units.
Amongst these is the long-established Centre for Urban Policy Studies (CUPS), which conducts academically rigorous and policy-relevant research on area-based urban policy initiatives, city and regional development, spatial planning and housing, and the measurement of neighbourhood change.
Our Global Urban Research Centre (GURC) focuses on the other hand on urban globalisation, poverty, inequality and exclusion, with particular attention to urban planning and development in the global South.
The School's Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI) similarly undertakes research on poverty and destitution across the globe, and includes programmes focusing specifically on urban environments.
More generally, urban development and issues linked to urbanisation animate part of the research agendas of our Architecture, Geography, International Development, and Planning disciplinary units.
Sustainable Cities Research Projects at SED
Challenging Lock-in through Urban Energy Systems (CLUES)
Principal Investigator: Simon Guy
Funding Body: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Climate Change / Urban Change
Principal Investigator: Sebastian Carney
Funding Body: Ministry of Urban Development and Environment of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
Climate Change and Urban Poverty in Bangladesh
Principal Investigators: Manoj Roy, Caroline Moser, Alfredo Stein
Funding Body: Sustainable Consumption Institute
Climate Science in Urban Design: A Historical and Comparative Study of Applied Urban Climatology
Principal Investigator: Michael Hebbert
Funding Body: Economic and Social Research Council
Climate Proof Cities
Principal Investigators: John Handley, Jeremy Carter
Funding Body: Knowledge for Climate (Consortium)
Community and Institutional Responses to the Challenges Facing Poor Urban People in an Era of Global Warming in Bangladesh
Principal Investigators: David Hulme, Manoj Roy, Simon Guy
Funding Body: Economic and Social Research Council / UK Department for International Development
EcoCities
Principal Investigator: Simon Guy
Funding Body: Bruntwood and the Oglesby Trust
Euro-Chinese Urban and Regional Bi-Continental Research Scheme (ECURBS)
Principal Investigators: Mark Baker, Cecilia Wong
Funding Body: FP7 Marie Curie
Green & Blue Space Strategies for Climate Change Adaption in Urban Areas (GRaBS)
Principal Investigator: Jeremy Carter
Funding Body: Interreg 4C
Housing and Neighbourhood Monitor
Principal Investigator: Cecilia Wong
Funding Body: FP7 Marie Curie
Open Innovation for Future Internet-Enabled Services in “Smart” Cities
Principal Investigator: Richard Kingston
Funding Body: European Union - Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme
Peri-Urban Land Use Relationships (PLUREL)
Principal Investigator: Joe Ravetz
Funding Body: European Commission
The Politics of Construction: Urban Imaginations in Argentina
Principal Investigator: Leandro Minuchin
Funding Body: cities@manchester, The University of Manchester
SURegen - Integrated Decision Support System for Sustainable Urban Regeneration - A Digital Workbench for Regeneration Agents and Their Stakeholders
Principal Investigator: Joe Ravetz
Funding Body: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Understanding the Tipping Point of Urban Conflict
Principal Investigators: Caroline Moser, Dennis Rodgers
Funding Body: Economic and Social Research Council / UK Department for International Development
Urban Asset Accumulation and Poverty Reduction
Principal Investigators: Caroline Moser, Alfredo Stein
Funding Body: Ford Foundation
Urban Asset Planning in the Global South
Principal Investigators: Caroline Moser, Alfredo Stein
Funding Body: Ford Foundation
Sustainable Cities Expertise at SED
Mark Baker’s research focuses on regional and strategic planning, central-local relations and the plan-making process, and development plan and control procedures.
Tanja Bastia’s research interests include social relations, mobility and inequality through urban case studies, trafficking policy discourses and their implications for migrants’ rights, and migrants and the right to the city.
Yasminah Beebeejaun’s research interests include public participation in development and plan-making and its role in multicultural societies, group identity in the planning system, and issues of equality and social exclusion in the planning context.
Ralf Brand adopts a socio-technical approach to investigate co-evolutionary dynamics between social and material change in the context of sustainable architecture and urbanism, contested cities and the co-existence of different religions in specific spaces.
Sebastian Carney takes a whole energy systems perspective to low carbon transitions. His work is almost exclusively performed with policy makers and seeks to inform mitigation strategies, including in urban contexts.
Jeremy Carter’s research interests include climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban contexts, the impact of climate change and other environmental drivers in rural, peri-urban and urban environments, environmental planning and management, strategic appraisal procedures, stakeholder participation, and flood risk management.
Jonathan Darling’s research is concerned with how urban spaces are experienced by asylum seekers and with the role played by these space more generally in mediating and creating ideas of responsibility and generosity towards other people and other places.
Iain Deas researches urban policy evaluation, the measurement of urban socio-economic circumstances and patterns of deprivation, and regional policy and institutional change.
Isabelle Doucet’s research investigates how architecture and urban design engage with the world, focusing in particular on tensions between understanding and designing space, between human and material agency, between theory/concepts/ideas and implementation/materialisation, and between design, use and consumption of space.
James Evans adopts a political ecology approach to articulate the role science plays in transforming urban space under capitalist conditions, and investigates more generally how environmental governance is built into processes of urban regeneration.
Simon Guy’s research is aimed at critically understanding the co-evolution of design and development strategies and socio-economic processes that shape cities, through the application of an innovative socio-technical approach to the investigation of architecture, urban development, technological innovation and urban change.
Graham Haughton adopts a political economy perspective to explore various aspects of urban and regional policy, covering subjects such as sustainable urban development, urban regeneration, regional development, water conflicts and labour market governance.
Michael Hebbert’s research interests include climatic factors in urban design, railway station design, historic buildings, and the history of town planning.
Stephen Hincks researches the development and application of analytical tools and methods for urban policy purposes, and analyses housing and labour markets, spatial patterns and processes, and the practice of planning and urban regeneration.
Mark Jayne’s research interests focus on urban cultural geography, and in particular on the intersection of consumption, production, regulation, governance and policy in the urban context.
Maria Kaika’s research focuses on the politics and culture of architectural technology and design and on urban political ecology. Her collaborative projects include work on urbanism and culture and representations of nature and the city.
Andrew Karvonen’s research interests include urban political ecology, infrastructure, sustainable development, technical expertise, and the politics of design.
Aleksandra Kazmierczak’s research focuses on adaptation to climate change in urban environments, urban green spaces, spatial planning, social cohesion, environmental justice and urban regeneration.
Richard Kingston’s research interests and area of expertise are in the design, development and implementation of software systems for web-based public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS).
Sarah Lindley’s research interests are associated with human-environment interactions, including decision support for sustainable urban and regional development through the application of GIS-based spatial analysis and risk analysis.
Melanie Lombard’s research focuses on informal settlements, marginalisation, place-making in urban informal settlements in Mexico, Latin America, land tenure, and regularisation.
Leandro Minuchin’s research interests include the politics of construction, appearance and articulation in architectural and political theory, and urban politics and the production of urban infrastructure in Argentina.
Diana Mitlin researches civil society and development, grassroots organisations and community development, urban inequality and poverty, and state and civil society shelter policies.
Caroline Moser’s research interests focus on asset accumulation and poverty reduction in cities of the South, including household asset vulnerability and transnational migration, and asset adaptation to climate change.
Sarah Payne researches sustainable urban development policy, housing supply policy and delivery constraints, brownfield development policy and the role of tacit knowledge in urban regeneration. She also researches speculative housebuilding and state-market interactions in the context of urban development processes.
Joe Ravetz is a leading thinker on sustainable futures for urban and regional development and the methods needed to make the transition. His research includes environment-development studies, and futures and information systems.
Brian Robson’s research interests include competitiveness, governance and social exclusion in Manchester and Merseyside, deprivation in London wards, and the evaluation of urban regeneration companies.
Dennis Rodgers researches conflict and violence, urban poverty, inequality, urban development, the politics of planning, the social construction of development knowledge, and the fiction of development in Latin America and India.
Manoj Roy works on climate change and urban poverty in Bangladesh. His current research focuses on understanding how vulnerable urban communities in Bangladesh respond to climate change impacts.
Andreas Schulze-Baeing researches brownfield regeneration, commuting/migration flows and economic links, strategic spatial planning and urban design.
Magda Sibley’s main strands of research are heritage-led sustainable urban regeneration, courtyard buildings as sustainable urban matrix, and Hammams (commonly known as Turkish baths).
Alfredo Stein Heinemann is an urban development planning specialist, researching low-income housing, municipal and local development, and urban poverty reduction planning, policies and projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Erik Swyngedouw researches geographical political economies and transformations in capitalist space economies, and political-ecology - with particular emphasis on the governance, politics, and economics of water resources.
Kevin Ward’s research focuses on the changing geographies of the state, urban and regional governance, economic and social well-being, and the changing geographies of work and employment.
Cecilia Wong’s research focuses on the development of indicators for policy monitoring and evaluation in relation to housing, deprivation, local economic development, urban regeneration, spatial planning and regional development, both at national and international level (China in particular).
Albena Yaneva’s research interests include design cognition, architecture in the making, the pragmatist turn in architectural theory, the politics of design, non-representational theories in architecture, and controversy studies.