Introduction
This project investigates various aspects of sustainability, and how elements of
sustainability can reasonably be incorporated in the development and regeneration
of today's urban Environment.
Glasgow City Council are planning to develop and regenerate an area just on the
outskirts of the city known as "Oatlands", and they wish to incorporate some degree
of sustainability into the development.
We undertook an initial study and overview of the concept of sustainability, and of
factors relating to urban regeneration in Glasgow and then we
investigated the proposed development area.
From this we produced an initial submission to the council of many wide-ranging ideas and
recommendations for the development. From these initial investigations we made some
observations, and felt that
infrastrucure is a key factor in giving any community a start on the path to
sustainability. Certain infrastructural elements were identified and looked into further.
We are proposing that these elements be included in the initial development of the area.
These proposals are explained in this website with some background, some associated
benefits and an estimation of cost.
In
the initial stages of this work, our purpose was to examine the integration of
energy conscious building design with energy and environmental management for a
sustainable future. We intended to focus on a typical mixed industrial,
commercial and residential urban locality where the opportunities for sharing
the wastes of one sector with another to the mutual benefit of the whole
community might be investigated.
Our
emphasis was to be on the urban or cityscape since quite a lot of
work on sustainability has until now concentrated on rural environments.
We
set about with our aim being to submit ideas and recommendations to the City
Council of how they might incorporate a degree of sustainability into the
district of Oatlands during its redevelopment.
In
comparison with many other Cities in the World with populations now exceeding 10
and 20 million people, the scale of Glasgow as a City might suggest that
attempts at or progression towards a sustainable community would be somewhat
easier to achieve.
We had in the Oatlands regeneration plan, a blank
canvas, a
post-industrial brown field site a history
of iron making industry nearby, evidence of 18th and 19th century coal mining and clay pits, a small measure of existing housing stock in need of refurbishment, some polluted land in need of decontamination and reclamation,some local industry and commercial operations on the site perimeter, a relatively flat site with limited shading, a nearby park, an excellent riverside location with ready access to the city centre. In short it provided an excellent opportunity to revitalise a community whilst adopting the very principles embodied in Agenda 21.
Through reading, interviewing and listening, we identified a wide range of environmental, transport, energy, financial and social inclusion issues which impact on a sustainable community
and we fulfilled our undertaking to prepare an outline report for Council staff.
As we focussed more on the energy issues of our subject it was clear that the people in a community have to begin thinking for themselves, about using their cars less, thinking more about their own energy use and about the waste they generate. However it is clear that this will not happen if people do not enjoy a comfortable way of life, in decent, warm homes and with fairly paid jobs.
Where people are lacking in these basics they become socially excluded.
One of the main energy issues is the notion of
affordable warmth. It should be possible using the partnerships, to combine energy resources and by careful design and use of heat pumps, co-generation and district heating to create a good match between energy demand and supply to the benefit of the whole community.
Having focussed our attention on energy issues, we formed the very firm belief that the key to sustainability was the over-riding importance of infrastructure. We have this very clear vision of an infrastructure in communities such as Oatlands consisting of a Heat Energy distribution, a local electrical distribution and an IT distribution network laid into and around the district by which the variety of opportunities which are found to exist within a particular district can be fully exploited.