Professor Douglas Crawford-Brown

 

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Logistics:

This seminar meets once each week (six times per term) during the 2010-2011 academic year. It is open to all post-graduates, as well as selected undergraduates with permission of the instructor. First seats are allocated to students in Land Economy, students associated with the Centre for Sustainable Development, or members of the professional community in Cambridge. Attendees are invited to attend any or all seminar sessions. As it is not a formal course, there are no required readings, examinations, papers, etc. It is instead a venue for a directed discussion of the issues described below.

Each seminar session lasts 1 hour, with 40 minutes of presentation and 20 minutes of discussion.

 
They are held Thursdays at 1 PM in Michaelmas Term and Tuesdays at 1 PM in Lent Term (Easter TBA) beginning 4 November. The location is Mill Lane Lecture Room 7. In Easter Term, the seminars are at 4 PM on Tuesdays, in the 4CMR Conference Room.

 

 

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Purpose:

The seminar explores the intellectual foundations of, and the practical execution of, creating sustainable communities in the UK, EU and US, as well as the challenges for the developing world. It is designed specifically for attendees who want to translate academic ideas, theories and methodologies into on-the-ground projects in sustainability of buildings, infrastructure and organisations. It draws on recent experience of moving sustainable, low-carbon projects forward in collaboration with government, developers, asset managers, businesses, local authorities, etc. It examines both strategies of sustainability and reduction of climate change risk in the design, construction, occupancy and demolition phases of a project, and how government policies and market forces impede or enhance progress. The primary issue explored is how to mesh academic and policy analyses with the realities of decisions by specific actors in the built environment.

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Weekly Topics (they will be presented in this order, one Topic per week). The narrated Power Point files containing the lectures themselves can be downloaded. Several have been broken into parts (A, B, etc) because the file size of a narrated file is otherwise too large. Download a narrated file, open in Power Point, show as Slide Show with your speaker activated at close to full volume. Watch each slide as long as you wish and then use the right arrow on your keyboard to advance to the next slide (otherwise, the slide will advance automatically after a few seconds). The narration will follow the slides as you move through them.

Topic 1 (4 November): How do we build sustainable communities when the world has stopped using the word “sustainability”? Download PPT Part A; Download PPT Part B

Topic 2 (11 November): Specifying the Metrics and Units of sustainability. Download PPT Part A; Download PPT Part B

Topic 3 (18 November): Quantifying the environmental impact of communities in regard to Metrics of sustainability. Download PPT

Topic 4a (25 November): Creating carbon footprints for organisations, communities and nations. Download PPT

Topic 4b (18 January): Continuing with creating carbon footprints. Download PPT

 

Topic 5 (1 February): The roles, responsibilities and resources of public and private sector actors in creating sustainable communities. Download PPT Part A; Download PPT Part B

Topic 6 (8 February): Sustainability of buildings, assessed through BREEAM, LEED, Code for Sustainable Homes, etc. Download PPT

Topic 7 (26 April): Sustainability of transport, in relation to both mode choice and the spatial relations of community design. Download PPT Part A; Download PPT Part B 

Topic 8 (1 March): Sustainable energy systems for communities (guest speaker, Sarah Cary of British Land). Download PPT

Topic 9 (3 May): Sustainability and ecosystem natural services. Download PPT Part A; Download PPT Part B

Topic 10 (10 May): Sustainability, human health risk and the precautionary principle. Download PPT Part A; Download PPT Part B

Topic 11 (24 May): Climate change adaptation: creating resilient communities. Download Part A; Download Part B; Download Part C
 

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To join:

Interested atendees should contact Dr. Crawford-Brown at djc77@cam.ac.uk or on (0)1223 760550. 
 

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The Instructor:

Professor Crawford-Brown is Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research within the Department of Land Economy. He is also Emeritus Professor in Environmental Sciences and Policy and Director Emeritus of the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina in the US, and Director of the Summer Programme in International Energy Policy and Environmental Assessment in Cambridge. He has served on the USEPA’s Science Advisory Board; on the US Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change; on the European Commission’s Panel of Scientific Experts on Risk; and currently advises OFWAT, the Environment Agency, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Highways Agency, British Land and utilities in the UK on creating climate change and sustainability strategies. He has advised governments and businesses on climate change, sustainability and environmental protection in the US, UK, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Thailand, Abu Dhabi, Mexico and France. He currently is engaged in bringing forward sustainable communities in the UK and Abu Dhabi through his role as principal advisor on Sustainability and Climate Change to several UK consultancies.

 

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The attachments below are Word documents containing the central points to be taken away, as well as some of the EXCEL models used in class. The Powerpoint presentations for the course are obtained through the Download links in the Topics list above.