GCRO to attend Workshop at the Sustainability Institute
Between 30 March and 1 April 2011, five members of the GCRO team will be attending a workshop on Sustainable Urban Transitions and Governance at the Sustainability Institute in Stellenbosch. The workshop, structured as a comparative dialogue, will bring together a network of leading research centres including the African Centre for Cities in Cape Town, the Sustainability Institute, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Maseno University in Kenya and the Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures in Manchester. The global infrastructure planning and design firm ARUP will also be part of the discussions.
The workshop aims to develop new frameworks for thinking about sustainable city development, anchored on the concepts of 'metabolic flows' and 'infrastructure transitions'. It is increasingly clear that it is no longer possible to grow economies while assuming unlimited resources. So researchers have concluded that it is vital to determine cities’ ability to reduce their socio-economic material and energy inputs, as well as their waste outputs. The starting point for this determination is the study of ‘urban metabolism’. This involves analysing the throughput of ‘material flows’ - tracking the use of materials such as water, power, motor fuels and food in economic activities and daily life - as well assessing the efficiency of the hardware or infrastructure that conducts flows of these materials into, around and out of the city. Such metabolic flow analyses cast light on the intervention points for cities to both reduce overall demand for resources and to 'transition' to more sustainable supply and distribution infrastructures.
GCRO is pleased to be a key partner in a workshop that aims to push the boundary of knowledge on how to effect infrastructure-led urban transitions. The workshop will lay a basis for one of the key sustainability projects defined in our draft 3-year strategic research plan, and we look forward to the intellectual and policy outcomes that will follow from the engagement.