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The BUGS research project (1999-2007) at Sheffield was the first large-scale study to reveal the importance of domestic gardens for urban biodiversity. The evidence gathered showed, for the first time, that the extent of gardens, their unique features, and the biodiversity they support makes them a nationally important ecological resource, contributing enormously to conservation and human-nature interactions in urban environments. The results were reported in a series of 13 ISI-listed papers, a popular book and two articles in British Wildlife. The research has had impacts across many audiences and applications ranging from evidence for planning policy changes, through the science to support advisory and campaign groups, to informing public awareness of the merits of individual garden management practices. BUGS research has been a key catalyst in the increased recognition of the importance of gardens in supporting urban biodiversity.
Research on urban planning has influenced planning decisions and assisted the Scottish Government and Local Authorities to maximise economic, physical and social factors in city visioning, planning and design. The private sector has received advisory and design training in master-planning though advanced spatial modelling principles and user engagement techniques; local authority planners have also been trained. The research has contributed to a paradigm shift in city planning towards place-making and community design, not just in Scotland but internationally. This agenda is now established as mainstream in city planning, and Scotland is regarded as a reference to best practice as witnessed by the wide adoption of planning documents such as Designing Places, Designing Streets, and in recent large scale developments such as Tornagrain (around 4,000 new homes), Knockroon (around 750 new homes) and Chapelton (around 8,000 new homes), which have used Strathclyde's master-planning techniques.
A research programme in the Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield from 1993 to the present has developed radically new types of designed urban plant communities that support a rich native biodiversity, embody low carbon, and contribute to storm-water infiltration into soils, reducing urban flooding. These communities are simple to maintain, cost-effective, and highly attractive. This combination of factors has led to wide application in practice by government agencies, local authorities, and by the public in private gardens. We were invited to apply our approach in full at the London 2012 Olympic Park, the largest and most high profile Landscape Architecture project in the world in 2012, and this in itself has had great impact on international thought and practice.
Complex and adaptive socio-ecological systems (consisting of a `bio-geo-physical unit' and its associated social actors) are critically important to our well-being and economic prosperity. Urbanisation, in particular habitat fragmentation and loss, affects the services provided by ecosystems — which have been consistently undervalued in decision making. Socio-ecological systems research at the University of Salford, in partnership with communities, landowners, local authorities, governments, environment and planning agencies, voluntary sector organisations, and their service users, is focused on providing leadership in:
DPU's research by Davila, Allen et al into urban infrastructure has generated analytical tools used by policy-makers, practitioners and aid organisations to examine the distribution of and access to urban services. It has supported the development of training curricula used altogether by over 4,000 urban planners in cities of the Global South, and through partners in The Netherlands, India and Colombia. At the policy level, the research has informed local government actors in Colombia, and international bodies (e.g. UN-Habitat and the International Resource Panel) in planning, financing, monitoring and equitable delivery of infrastructure services. At the NGO level, new analytical approaches have been adopted by WaterAid in Mozambique, Nigeria, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a result of DPU research.
Key insights from LSE Cities' interdisciplinary research on the `compact and well-connected' city have been incorporated by central government in national planning policy and by the Mayor of London in the London Plan. This has led to urban land being developed more intensively, ensuring more sustainable and efficient use of space in English towns and cities. Research on green city policies has been adopted by the United Nations Environment Programme (2011) and is determining policy formulation in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Portland. Urban Age conferences and research have created an international network of urban policy-makers and scholars, and LSE Cities staff have had impact on the design of the Olympic Park in London and development plans for cities outside the UK.
This work has established the Alliance as a world leader in impactful research into equitable urban land development in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially Angola and Mozambique. For instance, in collaboration with the Angolan NGO, Development Workshop, its policy-influencing findings have been transferred into "real changes in [the] practice of land management" in five Angolan provinces, including the country's most populous. The research has underpinned training for stakeholders from over 40 municipalities in 15 provinces and the upscaling of pilot projects to city-wide programmes including the foundation of new companies (e.g. Navimbuando Ltd., the only firm of its kind in central Angola). To widen interest in the most recent research in Mozambique (described by [text removed for publication] a World Bank funded programme in Maputo as "a milestone in the field of informal settlement studies") a documentary was made, which has already been screened, or selected for screening, in 20 countries in Africa and Europe.
Communities have now become key measures of social need and welfare. Over the past 10 years Professor Mark Deakin's research has provided the means to turn around those communities previously deemed "unsustainable". This has been achieved by not only providing the means to tackle the inequalities of social exclusion and combat the culture of area-based deprivation, but by assembling the instruments (policy briefings, guidelines and decision support systems) that are needed for the value-adding and cost-saving measures of the urban regeneration programmes being promoted to succeed in meeting the welfare agenda which surrounds sustainable community development.
Simone's research has contributed to the building of a comprehensive knowledge base on changing residential patterns, investment history, local economies, and social power relations in fourteen districts of North and Central Jakarta. The richness of the knowledge he has generated and its influence on urban redevelopment and restructuring in Jakarta are a consequence of both his close collaboration with a number of institutional partners in Indonesia and their direct engagements with community residents, social action groups, architects, researchers and government decision makers. Through a variety of deliberative forums the results of his process oriented research and collaboration have been influential in a number of ways including the preparation of new housing legislation, the writing of a policy platform of a coalition of civic organizations and the consultative processes on a Spatial Plan for Jakarta. But perhaps most significantly the impact of his research is its contribution to identifying and giving voice to a range of possible future scenarios that are usually left out of policy deliberations and the collective imaginary of the city.
University of Manchester (UoM) research has made a key contribution to adaptation planning strategy for urban climate change, at a range of scales. Impact was achieved via the generation of data, and the creation and refinement of tools and frameworks that offer a distinct geographical perspective and a means of generating local evidence on urban climate risks, vulnerabilities and adaptation potential. Proof of principle was established within Greater Manchester, with extensive and ongoing use of research findings to support urban adaptation. Subsequently, the research has guided additional localities, and contributed to national policy formulation. More recently, a number of cities — including on mainland Europe and the African continent — have used the research within local adaptation planning, and related green infrastructure policy and practice.