Designing Resilient Cities: a Guide to Good Practice

Designing Resilient Cities: a Guide to Good Practice

Making sure that urban development remains sustainable – whatever the future brings.

In the considerable discussion over the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ in the National Planning Framework proposals and what exactly is
‘sustainable development’ there has been little discussion about how to ensure that the decisions we make today remain sustainable – whatever the future brings.

Given that the majority of our population live in urban areas, we have to do whatever we can to make sure that the decisions we take today do not lead to a negative future legacy.

A group of universities are developing an innovative approach to help planners, councillors and communities make decisions that are more likely to remain
sustainable over the longer term with a toolkit of scenarios against which the impact and robustness of today’s decisions can be judged.

A solution that remains robust and resilient after being tested against four possible future scenarios is more likely to remain sustainable over the longer
term. Any that fail the test can be examined to see how they might be improved.

The changes outlined in the Localism Act make it even more important that future sustainability is considered upfront. It will be important to give support to
communities when they are drawing up a neighbourhood plan as they will be able to use neighbourhood planning to grant full or outline planning permission in areas where they most want to see new homes and businesses provided it is in line with national planning policy, legal requirements, the strategic vision
set by the local authority and approved by a local referendum. The highly visual methodology developed by Urban Futures should help community members
produce more robust and resilient plans.

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A practitioner guide is to be published with BRE. The Guide titled Designing Resilient Cities: A Guide to Good Practice will be launched on the 18th April 2012 at an early evening event in London (3.00 – 5.30pm).

Early registration is now open.

For more details contact the organiser: Joanne Leach, Urban Futures Project Manager
on Email: j.leach@bham.ac.uk<mailto:j.leach@bham.ac.uk>
or email: joanne@joanneleach.co.uk<mailto:joanne@joanneleach.co.uk>.

Tel: 0121 414 3544; Mob: 07785 792 187.

Web: http://www.urban-futures.org

The Urban Futures team is a research project funded by EPSRC led by the University of Birmingham, and includes the Universities of Exeter, Lancaster, Birmingham City and Coventry.