Seminar: Professor Tim Dixon, "Sustainable Urban Development to 2050: Complex Transitions in the Built Environment of Cities"

Past Event

Date
 26 October 2010, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Location
 Said Business School
Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HP

Speaker: Tim Dixon, Oxford Brookes University

Commentator: Javier Lezaun, James Martin Lecturer in Science and Technology Governance

Abstract:
The majority of the world’s population now live in cities. This poses great challenges, but also great opportunities in terms of tackling climate change, resource depletion and environmental degradation. Policy agendas have increasingly focused on how to develop and maintain ‘integrated sustainable urban development’, and a number of theoretical conceptualisations of urban transition have been formulated to help our thinking and understanding in both developed and developing countries. Drawing on examples around the world the paper aims to examine the key ‘critical success factors’ that need to be in place for cities to traverse a pathway to a more sustainable future in urban development terms by 2050. The paper explores how important the issues of ‘scale’ is in the context of complexity and fragmentation in the city’s built environment, identifies the lessons that can be learned for future sustainable urban development, and the further research which is needed to address future urban transitions to 2050.

About the speaker:
Professor Tim Dixon is Professor of Real Estate and Director of the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD) in the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University, UK. With more than 25 years’ experience of research, education and professional practice in the built environment he is a qualified fellow of the RICS and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, as well as on the editorial boards of five leading international real estate journals. He has worked on funded collaborative research projects with UK and overseas academics and practitioners and his personal research interests revolve around (1) the sustainability agenda and its impact on property development, investment and occupation; (2) the impact of ICT on commercial property and real estate markets. The research is based on a strong interdisciplinary approach which incorporates policy and practice impacts, and futures thinking, and currently includes the RICS 'Green Gauge' project and EPSRC RETROFIT 2050 programme. He is a member of the CORENET Sustainability Working Group and a member of the Steering Group for the ‘Future of Cities’ programme based in the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University. In 2009 he was awarded Honorary Fellow status of the Institute of Green Professionals.