Sustainable Urban Systems to Transfer Achievable Implementation Network (SUSTAIN) - a podcast by UCL

The main aim of SUSTAIN is to develop collaborative research proposals to investigate how to improve the development of sustainable cities. This will be achieved by convening a series of 4 workshops; water, energy, synergy and transport, each consisting of two meetings and each pair developing one (or more) collaborative proposals.

In August 2005, Arup- one of the world’s most respected global design consultatncies - was contracted to design and masterplan the world’s first sustainable city, Dongtan, in Shanghai, China. Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) contracted Arup to work with them on two further eco-cities. SUSTAIN is part of a wider drive to pull together a critical mass of expertise and research to build and design the cities of the future and Arup will play a pivotal role in the network’s development, engaging the participants in the growth of Dongtan. Arup approached EPSRC with a view to sponsoring collaborative research and following a series of initial discussions, EPSRC invited a number of UK universities to work with them to develop research networks involving researchers in the UK and China.The cultural, structural and political differences between the academic bodies of China and other western countries has been the focus of much research over time. The work of SUSTAIN will be concerned with identifying similarities and areas of shared concern. The aim of the network is to put in place a structure that will allow a flow of knowledge and information between the parallel researchers involved in the workshops. The objective to focus this work will be a set of fully-developed research proposals.

By drawing together not only academics, but also representatives from funding bodies in China and the UK, the workshops will draw on a vast knowledge-base of expertise in identifying subjects, strategies, funding sources and issues.The SUSTAIN Network will design these research project proposals from which a very large number of people will benefit: communities wishing to develop sustainable cities from new or through regeneration or redevelopment; researchers, developers and consultants who will be able to be more familiar with the holistic systems approaches needed to develop sustainable solutions governments who will be able to understand what policy actions they need to put in place in order for a successful sustainable programme to be implemented and of course the people who will be able to live in sustainable environments in the future.

As well as the most visible aim of the project - developing substantive project proposals - a more long-reaching and intricate aim of the workshops will be to encourage a better understanding of the differences and similarities between the researchers to lay strong foundations for feasible and productive collaborations. This understanding will be of benefit to other researchers in each country who wish to enter into collaborative research with researchers in the other.However, the main beneficiaries of the SUSTAIN project itself will be, in addition to the network team, the local people with whom the team will connect during its public activities in each location.

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