Joe Ravetz

The University of Manchester · School of Environment and Development

This chapter demonstrates the principlesPrinciple of a synergistic ScienceScience-3.0, with a live example of visualVisualthinkingThinking in actionAction. The case study is the COVID-19 pandemicCOVID‐19 pandemic, which raises urgent questions on new modes of scientificScientificknowledgeKnowledge and inquiry in controversial situations. In this ca...

Purpose This paper aims to review the challenges of urban foresight via an analytical method: apply this to the city demonstrations on the UK Foresight Future of Cities: and explore the implications for ways forward. Design/methodology/approach The methodology is based on the principles of co-evolutionary complex systems, a newly developed toolkit...

Social Science is increasingly called on to address “grand challenges”, “wicked problems”, “societal dilemmas” and similar problematiques. Examples include climate change, the war on drugs and urban poverty. It is now widely agreed that the disciplinary structure of academic science, with its journals, curricula, peer communities, etc., is not well...

An important driving force behind urban expansion is the growth of the urban population. But for Europe, this is not a sufficient explanation. The major trend is that European cities have become much less compact. Since the mid-1950s European cities have expanded on average by 78%, whereas the population has grown by only 33%. In the PLUREL project...

Port cities as hubs for trade and exchange show the extremes of rapid growth and catastrophic decline: they show the complex and interconnected problems of change in urban systems, and the challenge of maintaining local 'sustainable wealth' and prosperity. This suggests a transition from a material-focused (mono-valent) local economic development t...

The peri-urban (sometimes also called the urban fringe) may be the dominant urban form and spatial planning challenge of the twenty-first century. In older industrial or post-industrial countries the peri-urban is a zone of social and economic change and spatial restructuring, while in newer industrializing countries, and most of the developing wor...

Port cities are on the front-line of a changing global urban system. There are problems from restructuring of trade, logistics and ship-building, creating economic dependency, social exclusion and cultural destruction. Meanwhile, there exists new opportunities in heritage tourism, cultural industries and ecological restoration, but these opportunit...

Some of the most populous parts of England are neither urban nor rural, but somewhere in between: a new kind of peri-urban landscape emerging in the fringes and hinterlands of cities and city-regions. Such peri-urban areas reflect both a more networked, mobile, globalised society, and also one which increasingly values local character and quality o...

The compact city has become a leading concept in the planning of peri-urban areas. The compact city concept is often advocated as “sustainable” because of claims that include lower emissions and conservation of the countryside. The literature shows, however, that there are certain trade-offs in striving for compaction, especially between environmen...

This report (‘Policy Alerts’) represents the first collective effort to translate Wild Cards and Weak Signals (WIWE) research into well-structured policy briefs. It highlights the key elements of the iKnow WI-WE approach and offers practical recommendations for further research on a wide range of issues. Researching “surprises” (i.e. Wild Cards) an...

Researching “surprises” (i.e. Wild Cards) and “seeds of change” (i.e. Weak Signals) is an extremely challenging endeavour but a fascinating and rewarding one. During the project the general reception of the innovation, foresight and horizon scanning communities was extremely encouraging and this is reflected in the high levels of participation, whi...

The peri-urban – the space around urban areas which merges into the rural landscape – is growing across Europe. The peri-urban is a zone of innovation, knowledge based and globalized enterprise. It is also the place which attracts new types of housing, transport infrastructure and multifunctional agriculture, with a diverse range of recreation site...

The UK building stock has seen major changes in the last 50 years, in its form, fabric and function. The context is the expansion of the building stock and built infrastructure, which takes place in most areas at 1-2% per year, with the implication that up to 75% of the dwellings of the year 2050 already exist now. This is a major challenge. The en...

This article, focusing on the flow of bulk construction minerals, establishes a mass balance framework for the North West of England, a region that imports more aggregate material than any other in the United Kingdom. The problems associated with construction minerals are of a different nature than most other resource flow issues: Depletion of reso...

'Sustainable construction' is a topical agenda, with a great diversity of metrics, targets, performance measures and benchmarks. This paper explores a range of metrics and benchmarks that are based on understanding of the whole construction supply chain, together with its impacts on the global climate and resource base. It draws on new evidence fro...

We are faced with a whole series of problems that are harming the biosphere and human life in alarming ways that may soon become irreversible... Ultimately these problems must be seen as just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of perception. It derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large social inst...

This paper explores on going research into the Intelligent City as part of a wider EU 6 th Framework Information Society Technology funded research and development project. Intelligent Cities (IntelCities) aims to pool advanced knowledge and experience of electronic government, planning systems and citizen participation from across Europe. IntelCit...

The European Union has made the development of a vibrant knowledge-based economy a key policy objective. and increasingly national and local governments worldwide are seeking to harness information and communication technologies to provide government services more effectively and for the benefit of their citizenry. The paper reports on the first ph...

Although industrial economies depend on natural resources to fulfil fundamental societal needs and to improve quality of life, increasing exploitation of these resources is exerting increasing pressure on our planet's ecological integrity. This paper, focusing on construction minerals, establishes a mass balance framework for the chosen case study...

Research was undertaken within the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental RTDI Programme during the six-month period from March to August 2001 by a partnership formed by the Centre for Environmental Research (CER), University of Limerick, and the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology (CURE), University of Manchester. This project...

Part I: Context - Introduction * The State of the City-Region * Trends and Prospects * City-Region 2020 * Part II: Key Sectors - The Built Environment * Travel and Transport * Land and Ecology * Water and Pollution * Energy and Climate * Economy and Work * Part III: Putting it Together - Lifestyle and Community * Regeneration * Funding the City-Reg...

This paper looks at a very topical challenge: how to appraise the sustainability of a city, a region, a policy, or programme. As the theme of sustainability is intrinsically multidisciplinary and multisectoral, this suggests that effective appraisals should likewise be based on a holistic or integrated assessment (IA) approach. This paper outlines...

Citizen or community participation is a guiding principle for environmental decision-making, but in practice it is often compromised and contradictory. Two themes in participation can be defined. One is in the ''product'' or outcome of decision-making, and aims for more effective and appropriate evaluations and decisions. The other is participation...

This illustrated commentary looks at two very different types of integrated assessment models in context. On one hand the current generation of integrated climate models has achieved a significant role in environmental policy. On the other, integrated models for urban and regional systems have declined in their relevance for the policy process. How...