Productive Synergies in the City

The chapter focuses on the development of sustainable growing infrastructure in the city at two scales. Firstly the development of a large-scale city wide fuel productive landscape through the development of algae arrays in Liverpool and their connection through urban agriculture systems to develop a closed-cycle food and energy system where waste is food and secondly a hyper-localised neighbourhood food production system in Salford UK that utilises a closed cycle aquaponic system to re-invigorate an urban food desert.

The author develops a three-part model for the implementation of urban agriculture based on hardware (the technological system), software (the biological components) and interface (the links to food and other social networks). The conclusion being that it is possible to develop urban agriculture in cities if their implementation is seen as a process, rather than a static design. Also that as the benefits of such systems are wider than purely the physical outputs of the system in terms of energy and food, and thus we should re-evaluate the purely economic model of appraisal to include these.

Citizenship and (Un)Sustainability: A Green Republican Perspective

This chapter explores some of the connections (causal and other) between the decline in active citizenship, the displacement of citizenship by consumer identities and interests, and the shift to a transactional mode of democratic politics and how and in what ways these are connected with “actually existing unsustainability.” It proposes an account of “green republican citizenship” as an appropriate theory and practice of establishing a link between the practices of democracy and the processes of democratization in the transition from unsustainability. The chapter begins from the (not uncontroversial) position that debt-based consumer capitalism (and especially its more recent neoliberal incarnation) is incompatible with a version of democratic politics and associated norms and practices of green citizenship required for a transition from unsustainable development. It outlines an explicitly “green republican” conception of citizenship as an appropriate way to integrate democratic citizenship and creation of a more sustainable political and socio-ecological order.

Factors affecting the successful implementation and sustainability of the Liverpool Care Pathway for dying patients – a realist evaluation

Objectives: The Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient (LCP) was designed to improve end-of-life care in generalist health care settings. Controversy has led to its withdrawal in some jurisdictions. The main objective of this research was to identify the influences that facilitated or hindered successful LCP implementation.

Method: An organisational case study using realist evaluation in one health and social care trust in Northern Ireland. Two rounds of semi-structured interviews were conducted with two policy makers and twenty two participants with experience and/or involvement in management of the LCP during 2011 and 2012.

Results: Key resource inputs included facilitation with a view to maintaining LCP ‘visibility’, reducing anxiety among nurses and increasing their confidence regarding the delivery of end-of-life care; and nurse and medical education designed to increase professional self-efficacy and reduce misuse and misunderstanding of the LCP. Key enabling contexts were consistent senior management support; ongoing education and training tailored to the needs of each professional group; and an organisational cultural change in the hospital setting that encompassed end-of-life care.

Conclusion: There is a need to appreciate the organizationally complex nature of intervening to improve end-of-life care. Successful implementation of evidence-based interventions for end-of-life care requires commitment to planning, training and ongoing review that takes account of different perspectives, institutional hierarchies and relationships and the educational needs of professional disciplines. There is a need also to recognise that medical consultants require particular support in their role as gatekeepers and as a lead communication channel with patients and their relatives.

Infrastructure and the Architectures of Modernity in Ireland 1916-2016

At the formation of the new Republic of Ireland, the construction of new infrastructures was seen as an essential element in the building of the new nation, just as the adoption of international style modernism in architecture was perceived as a way to escape the colonial past. Accordingly, infrastructure became the physical manifestation, the concrete identity of these objectives and architecture formed an integral part of this narrative. Moving between scales and from artefact to context, Infrastructure and the Architectures of Modernity in Ireland 1916-2016 provides critical insights and narratives on what is a complex and hitherto overlooked landscape, one which is often as much international as it is Irish. In doing so, it explores the interaction between the universalising and globalising tendencies of modernisation on one hand and the textures of local architectures on the other.

The book shows how the nature of technology and infrastructure is inherently cosmopolitan. Beginning with the building of the heroic Shannon hydro-electric facility at Ardnacrusha by the German firm of Siemens-Schuckert in the first decade of independence, Ireland became a point of varying types of intersection between imported international expertise and local need. Meanwhile, at the other end of the century, by the year 2000, Ireland had become one of the most globalized countries in the world, site of the European headquarters of multinationals such as Google and Microsoft. Climatically and economically expedient to the storing and harvesting of data, Ireland has subsequently become a repository of digital information farmed in large, single-storey sheds absorbed into anonymous suburbs. In 2013, it became the preferred site for Intel to design and develop its new microprocessor chip: the Galileo. The story of the decades in between, of shifts made manifest in architecture and infrastructure from the policies of economic protectionism, to the opening up of the country to direct foreign investment and the embracing of the EU, is one of the influx of technologies and cultural references into a small country on the edges of Europe as Ireland became both a launch-pad and testing ground for a series of aspects of designed modernity.

IRIDE:Interdisciplinary research infrastructure based on dual electron linacs and lasers

This paper describes the scientific aims and potentials as well as the preliminary technical design of IRIDE, an innovative tool for multi-disciplinary investigations in a wide field of scientific, technological and industrial applications. IRIDE will be a high intensity "particles factory", based on a combination of high duty cycle radio-frequency superconducting electron linacs and of high energy lasers. Conceived to provide unique research possibilities for particle physics, for condensed matter physics, chemistry and material science, for structural biology and industrial applications, IRIDE will open completely new research possibilities and advance our knowledge in many branches of science and technology. IRIDE is also supposed to be realized in subsequent stages of development depending on the assigned priorities. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

Predictive Maintenance for Improved Sustainability - An Ion Beam Etch Endpoint Detection System Use Case

In modern semiconductor manufacturing facilities maintenance strategies are increasingly shifting from traditional preventive maintenance (PM) based approaches to more efficient and sustainable predictive maintenance (PdM) approaches. This paper describes the development of such an online PdM module for the endpoint detection system of an ion beam etch tool in semiconductor manufacturing. The developed system uses optical emission spectroscopy (OES) data from the endpoint detection system to estimate the RUL of lenses, a key detector component that degrades over time. Simulation studies for historical data for the use case demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed PdM solution and the potential for improved sustainability that it affords.

Challenges of a Developmental Idea towards Sustainability

This paper attempts to situate and deconstruct the meanings associated with the term development in the context of the developing world. The arguments made highlights the deeply contested and fragmented terrain of development. The paper provides a historical overview of the changing nature of discourses on development, how the imageries of development have shifted since the postwar period. It deploys diverse meanings associated with development as a concept and as a theory. Thus development without dignity means little for those living in the margins of the society. At the same time the language of development has undergone revolutions and convulsions and the role of buzzwords and catch phrases have only helped to prolong misery in a neoliberal world. Development has become a 'one size fits all' concept shorn of cultural and regional specificities. It has been decontextualised and dehumanised to relate to targets
resulting in greater dissonance than resolution of aim and outcomes. The way forward is a better appreciation of the cultural capacity of the social groups for whom development is critical for survival. The conclusion highlights the endemic contradictions inherent in the meaning and delivery of development as a goal, especially when we seek to achieve resilient and sustainable development.

Keywords: Development, Neoliberalism, growth, participation, empowerment,
efficiency, market, state, societies, entitlements and capabilities, stakeholder, rights, structural adjustments, globalisation, self-help, doing development, freedom and
unfreedom.

Session organiser/chair: Architecture, Infrastructure and the Making of Modern Ireland

‘A free Ireland would drain the bogs, would harness the rivers, would plant the wastes, would nationalise the railways and the waterways, would improve agriculture, would protect fisheries, would foster industries, would promote commerce, and beautify the cities …’ (Padraig Pearse, ‘From a Hermitage’, 1913)

Somewhat unusually in his often romantic writings Padraig Pearse – poet, pedagogue and revolutionary – chose to describe the future of an independent Ireland in terms of infrastructure and technological processes. Terence Brown’s locating of this excerpt at the beginning his seminal work Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922-2002 highlights the simultaneous and interlinking construction of both a new physical and cultural landscape for an independent modern nation. Lacking any significant industrial complex, the construction of new infrastructures in Ireland was seen throughout the 20th century as a key element in the building of the new State, just as the adoption of an international style modernism in architecture was perceived as a way to escape the colonial past. For Paul N. Edwards modernity and infrastructure are intimately connected.

‘infrastructures simultaneously shape and are shaped – in other words, co-construct – the condition of modernity. By linking macro, meso, and micro scales of time, space and social organisation, they form the stable foundation of modern social worlds’ (2003: 186).
Simultaneously omnipresent and invisible – infra means beneath – Edwards also points out that infrastructure tends only to become apparent when it is either new or broken. Interpreting the meso scale as being that of the building, this session calls for papers that critically and analytically investigate aspects of the architectures of infrastructure in 20th-century Ireland. Like the territory they explore these papers may range across scales to oscillate between a concern for the artefact and its physical landscape, and the larger, often hidden systems and networks that co-define this architecture.

Authenticity, Identity and Sustainability in Post-war Iraq: Reshaping the Urban Form of Erbil City

Issues of authenticity and identity are particularly significant in cities where social and cultural change is shaping active transformation of its urban fabric and structure in the post-war condition. In search of sustainable future, Iraqi cities are stretched between the two ends of the spectrum, authentic quarters with its traditional fabric and modern districts with their global sense of living. This paper interrogates the reciprocal influences, distinct qualities and sustainable performance of both authentic and modern quarters of Erbil, the
capital of the Iraqi province of Kurdistan, as factors in shaping sustainable urban forms for Iraqi cities. In doing so, the paper, firstly, seeks to highlight the urban identity as an effective factor in relation to sustainable urban form. Secondly, the city of Erbil in Iraq has been chosen as a field study, due to its regional, social, political and historical role in the region. Thirdly, the study emphasises the dynamic activities and performance of residential projects according to rational sustainable criteria. The research concludes that urban identity and the sense of place in traditional and historical places should inform design strategies in order to achieve a more sustainable urban context.

The importance of gas infrastructure in power systems with high wind power penetrations

Gas fired generation currently plays an integral support role ensuring security of supply in power systems with high wind power penetrations due to its technical and economic attributes. However, the increase in variable wind power has affected the gas generation output profile and is pushing the boundaries of the design and operating envelope of gas infrastructure. This paper investigates the mutual dependence and interaction between electricity generation and gas systems through the first comprehensive joined-up, multi-vector energy system analysis for Ireland. Key findings reveal the high vulnerability of the Irish power system to outages on the Irish gas system. It has been shown that the economic operation of the power system can be severely impacted by gas infrastructure outages, resulting in an average system marginal price of up to €167/MWh from €67/MWh in the base case. It has also been shown that gas infrastructure outages pose problems for the location of power system reserve provision, with a 150% increase in provision across a power system transmission bottleneck. Wind forecast error was shown to be a significant cause for concern, resulting in large swings in gas demand requiring key gas infrastructure to operate at close to 100% capacity. These findings are thought to increase in prominence as the installation of wind capacity increases towards 2020, placing further stress on both power and gas systems to maintain security of supply.

Empirical testing of genuine savings as an indicator of weak sustainability: a three-country analysis of long run trends

Genuine Savings has emerged as a widely used indicator of sustainable development. In this paper, we use long -term data stretching back to 1870 to undertake empirical tests of the relationship between Genuine Savings (GS) and future well-being for three countries: Britain, the USA and Germany. Our tests are based on an underlying theoretical relationship between GS and changes in the present value of future consumption. Based on both single country and panel results, we find evidence supporting the existence of javascript:void(0);a cointegrating (long run equilibrium) relationship between GS and future well-being, and fail to reject the basic theoretical result on the relationship between these two macroeconomic variables. This provides some support for the GS measure of weak sustainability.

The Day After Tomorrow: Transition Management, Spatial Planning & the Low Carbon Economy

Many of the societal challenges that current spatial planning practice claims to be addressing (climate change, peak oil, obesity, aging society etc) encompass issues and timescales that lie beyond the traditional scope planning policy (Campbell 2006). The example of achieving a low carbon economy typifies this in that it demands a process of society-wide transition, involving steering a wide range of factors (markets, infrastructure, governance, individual behaviour etc). Such a process offers a challenge to traditional approaches to planning as they cannot be guided by a fixed blueprint, given the timescales involved (up to 50 years) and an enhanced level of uncertainty, social resistance, lack of control over implementation and a danger of ‘policy lock in’ (Kemp et al 2007). One approach to responding to these challenges is the concept of transition management which has emerged from studies of science, technology and innovation (Geels 2002, Markard et al 2012). Although not without criticism, this perspective attempts to uncertainty and complexity encompassing long term visions that integrates multi-level, multi-actor and multi-domain perspectives (Rotmans et al 2001).
 
Given its origins, research on transition management has tended to neglect spatial contexts (Coenen et al 2012) and, related to this, it’s relationship with spatial planning is poorly understood. Using the example of the low carbon transition, this paper will review the relationships between the concepts, methodologies and goals of transition management and spatial planning to explore whether a closer integration of the two fields offers benefits to achieving the long term challenges facing society.