Liz Varga from Cranfield University, UK, spoke on A scale perspective on the ‘urban nexus’: the integration of different scales of infrastructure system at the Nexus Network Urban Nexus workshop on 12 May 2016.
Infrastructure systems have unique design characteristics that often lead to inertia and constrained future innovation. Is there potential for new forms of integration that can bring together different scales and define better pathways supporting sustainable innovation?
Examples of innovations raising scaling and scale integration challenges are: energy system innovation using renewable energy sources; food system innovations into protein alternatives; and conservation innovation in water systems.
The issue of scale and scale integration is an emerging area of research highlighted by the movement toward sustainability; it requires more elaboration and research.
You can see an outline of Liz’s talk in the pdf here UrbanscaleintegrationLizVarga12May2016
The Nexus Network Urban Nexus workshop was held on 12 and 13 May 2016 at the University of Sussex. Around 60 people were involved and took stock of what kind of plural understandings of ‘urban nexuses’ are emerging, produced by (partnerships between) activists, communities, think tanks, corporations, and multilateral organizations, natural scientists, humanities scholars and social scientists.
The full programme of the event is available on the Urban Nexus workshop page.
Image credit, with many thanks to Nathan Oxley at the STEPS centre.
