Sustainable, Liveable, and Resilient Cities
Evidence continues to show the need to rethink urban wellbeing more holistically and relationally to create Sustainable, Liveable, and Resilient Cities in the present and for the future. Research themes of the group focus on how to live better in today’s cities amid polycrises, exploring the strategies, practices, and knowledge that can help us protect and improve the well-being and relational kinship for (more-than-human) inhabitants of cities.
We are also particularly interested in centring the experiences of those growing up and living ‘at the margins’, such as children and young people in the urban peripheries as well as multi-generational contexts of knowledge generation. There is also an increasing need to integrate lived experiences into participatory public policies for a healthy and sustainable urban development based on diverse forms of knowing, beings, and everyday practices, and relational epistemologies. We also focus on the emotional aspects of policy-making (i.e., in the context of climate change adaptation or disaster risk) to devise policies and educational strategies that consider emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical wellbeing in cities.
Finally, the research group aims to rethink the present and future of Sustainable, Liveable and Resilient Cities from decolonial perspectives and traditional wisdom around urban human-nature relations in the context of individual and planetary healing.
Current projects, collaborations and research include:
- Thinking the future creatively from traditional knowledge: participatory pedagogies for urban wellbeing and intergenerational agency, in collaboration with the University of Sao Paulo, UBBI-USP seed fund. 09/2024-07/2025.
- Effects and mechanisms of traffic restriction schemes outside schools in Great Britain: a natural experimental study. NIHR funded (School for Public Health Research), led by the University of Cambridge. 2024-2025.
- Wellbeing and Ecosocial Crisis: Youth Perceptions on Mental Health and Climate Change, including the Universities of Murcia, Birmingham and Nantes. EUniWell Seed Fund. 10/2023-11/2024.
- WM Adapt: Maximising Adaptation to Climate Change in the West Midland & beyond
Theme members are continuously scoping new research. Although these are proprietary to protect the ideas through the competitive bid process. The Sustainable, Liveable and Resilient Cities theme meetings take place monthly. Meetings are hybrid, informal and conversational, covering a mix of topics within the broad theme of urban wellbeing. Agendas are attendee-driven and all attendees are welcome to suggest discussion items including:
- Presenting your own work
- Suggesting guest speakers
- Piloting new ideas
- Piloting innovative methodologies (in-person events for walking methodologies)
- Highlighting and organising events
- Highlighting and responding to funding opportunities
- Exploring research ideas
- Recommending and collaborating on papers
Meetings are open to everyone, including doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and businesses. Attendance is flexible. If you’d like to join the mailing list and receive notifications of meetings, or simply find out more about the theme, please email Dr Susanne Boerner at s.borner@bham.ac.uk
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Theme leads
Dr Susanne Börner (Assistant Professor in Human Geography)
Dr Joanne Leach (Research Fellow - Department of Civil Engineering)