Posted 25 April 2014 - 12:00am
An international scientific committee of 10 leading sustainability experts from various disciplines in low-carbon and resilience research and urban design will punch above its weight in promoting, overseeing and guiding transformational research and future city planning for the Australian Visions and Pathways 2040 Project said its leader Prof Chris Ryan today.
Funded by the CRC for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) the Project’s primary objective is to engage with key built environment stakeholders and the community to provide clear pathways towards designing new buildings, precincts and cities that are sustainable across the board – delivering benefits such as lower fossil fuel energy use and pollution and resilience to changing climate and extreme weather events. This is no easy task and all the complex components that make up a city have to be analysed in a holistic manner.
Professor Ryan, who is also Director of the Victorian Eco-innovation Lab (VEIL) at the University of Melbourne, said the scientific committee consists of people top in their field, many of whom he has worked with for some time.
“The committee, which has members from Europe, the United States and China, will provide an expert overview of our research and engagement work to ensure it is of the highest standard. It will also position the project internationally providing global exposure and input,” he said.
Professor Ryan says the work is critical: “When we look at systems that support a city they are all interconnected and although there are many projects looking at different components in this complex web, the elements need to be viewed as a whole, to see how they can viably work together to deliver futures suited to a low-carbon economy. This is essential to maintain our future liveability and to position ourselves to take advantage of a massive global market for new innovative initiatives for low-carbon resilient cities,”
“There is a wealth of research and knowledge available to us but we need to pull it together to find cohesive design and creative solutions that work sustainably not just for Australia but for other parts of the globe where needs and resources vary,” he said.
Professor Deo Prasad, AO, CEO for the CRCLCL said the project held key importance in creating a vision for a sustainable urban future.
“Ultimately the project team and the stakeholders’ jobs are to dream about what a low carbon living city may look like in 2040 then work out how these dreams can become a reality. They need to have visions during this process which may also flag disruptive innovations that, like the steam engine, could completely change the way we live. It is an extremely exciting project with many possibilities,” said Professor Prasad, “Once we have glimpses of the vision, then it allows us to better understand the transitions and roadmaps in getting there. This then, better enables an understanding of the requirements such as capacity building, research, planning and policy.”
The Visions and Pathways 2040 Project is young and so far has only six months of research and held just one workshop in Melbourne where 70 participants were involved, being encouraged to create visions of the future that have been cohesively documented and visualised as ‘glimpses’ of the future. The outcomes of the Melbourne workshop will not be revealed until after a similar Sydney workshop is held at the end of May. Then results of both workshops will be analysed and reported by researchers and by the project partners. Work in other Australian cities will then follow suit.
The project is funded to March 2017 with a view to an extension once the project’s progress has been determined.
The Visions and Pathways 2040 Project has a host of leading project partners: Aurecon, AECOM, HASSELL, Brookfield Multiplex, City of Melbourne, City of Melbourne, City of Sydney, Sydney Water, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), The University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and Swinburne University of Technology.
