The third DC2 seminar of the autumn series featured two speakers exploring approaches to ‘smartening’ urban planning and policy.
Franziska Sielker, Lecturer in Planning and Housing at the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, presented ‘A new era for city planning? Innovations and barriers to digitalisation for spatial planning in the UK’ featuring research completed for the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) ‘Future cities in the making’. Presenting an overview of the interrelated barriers local authorities face in making use of digital techniques for planning based on three case studies – the two English local authorities of Bristol and Cambridge, and the devolved nation of Scotland – Franziska reflected on the six categories barriers fell into including: organisational; technological; data-related; human resource; financial and legal. She said: “We discovered that the barriers to information modelling will also stymie attempts at other forms of digitalisation in local government. Therefore, overcoming these barriers will unlock the path not just to information modelling for planning, but to a more transformative use of digital tools in general.”
Problems highlighted include fragmented governance structures, over regulation which makes it easier not to do anything differently or at all, poor-quality and inaccessible data, a lack of standard tools and data storage, and inter-operable software systems. Looking ahead to strategies to develop multi-level policy responses, Franziska said: “There are no easy solutions but what is needed is leadership and collaboration. Our research uncovered appetite in the planning community for a robust information modelling tool and identified the barriers that must be overcome to enable not just information modelling in planning, but digitalisation in general. Future research is needed to develop a prioritised road map for addressing barriers to information modelling in planning.”
André Neto-Bradley, a PhD student at the Future Infrastructure and Built Environment (FIBE) CDT in the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, presented ‘Targeting interventions for clean energy transitions in urban Indian households’ exploring the role of socio-cultural and economic drivers of clean energy transitions in urban households in India and the use of data-driven approaches to target relevant policy interventions.
André spoke about the need for transition from solid to green fuels citing the 1.2 million deaths a year in India as a result of air pollution. Researching the types of fuels used in Indian households, André executed a survey in the fast-growing city Bangalore with focus on 420 low-income households to determine the non-income drivers to energy choice, including size of household, regularity of income and type of stove used. Characterising households and lifestyle beyond income can help to identify barriers and solutions to the transition to clean energy and better inform policy.
André said: “We need to start thinking how and why people are using energy not just how much money they have. There are factors beyond income which can help us explain people’s energy use and practices.”
The presentation also explored how unsupervised machine learning methods could be used by policy makers and urban planners to tailor and target clean energy policies in rapidly growing cities.
The presentations were followed by a lively question and answer session. Dr Timea Nochta, CSIC Research Associate and lead for the DC2 seminar series, said: “The presentations demonstrated that understanding how digital tools and techniques can be implemented and operationalised to design better urban policies and interventions – either focusing on spatial planning or social-environmental agenda – is a promising research field. Such research is crucial to be able to leverage the benefits that digital tools may offer to urban (and rural) communities.”
•The next session of the DC2 seminar series is going to take place on 26 February 2020, with presentations from Dr Gediminas Lesutis (Department of Geography, Cambridge) and Carolina Toczycka (University of Edinburgh).