City dweller aspirations for cities of the future: How do environmental and personal wellbeing feature?

This paper explores city dweller aspirations for cities of the future in the context of global commitments to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2050; cities contribute the vast majority of these emissions and a growing bulk of theworld's population lives in cities. The particular challenge of creating a carbon reduced future in democratic countries is that the measures proposed must be acceptable to the electorate. Such acceptability is fostered if carbon reduced ways of living are also felt to bewellbeing maximising. Thus the objective of the paper is to explore what kinds of cities people aspire to live in, to ascertain whether these aspirations align with or undermine carbon reduced ways of living, as well as personal wellbeing. Using a novel free associative technique, city aspirations are found to cluster around seven themes, encompassing physical and social aspects. Physically, people aspire to a city with a range of services and facilities, green and blue spaces, efficient transport, beauty and good design. Socially, people aspire to a sense of community and a safe environment. An exploration of these themes reveals that only a minority of the participants' aspirations for cities relate to lowering carbon or environmental wellbeing. Far more consensual is emphasis on, and a particular vision of, aspirations that will bring personal wellbeing. Furthermore, city dweller aspirations align with evidence concerning factors that maximise personal wellbeing but, far less, with those that produce lowcarbonways of living. In order to shape a lower carbon future that city dwellers accept the potential convergence between environmental and personal wellbeing will need to be capitalised on: primarily aversion to pollution and enjoyment of communal green space.

A psychosocial approach to understanding pilot and controller acceptance of change in ATM, based on three CDA case studies

Next generation ATM systems cannot be implemented in a technological vacuum. The further ahead we look, the greater the likely impact of societal factors on such changes, and how they are prioritised and promoted. The equitable sustainability of travel behaviour is rising on the political agenda in Europe in an unprecedented manner. This paper examines pilot and controller attitudes towards Continuous Descent Approaches (CDAs). It aims to promote a better understanding of acceptance of change in ATM. The focus is on the psychosocial context and the relationships between perceived societal and system benefits. Behavioural change appeared more correlated with such benefit perceptions in the case of the pilots. For the first time in the study of ATM implementation, and acceptance of change, this paper incorporates the Seven Stages of Change model, based on the constructs of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. It employs a principal components (factor) analysis, and further explores the intercorrelations of benefit perceptions, known in psychology as the ‘halo effect’. Disbenefit perceptions may break down this effect, it appears. For implementers of change, this evidence suggests an approach in terms of reinforcing the dominant benefit(s) perceived, for sub-groups within which a halo effect is evident. In the absence of such an effect, perceived disbenefits, such as with respect to workload and capacity, should be off-set against specific, perceived benefits of the change, as far as possible. This methodology could be equally applied to other stakeholders, from strategic planners to the public. The set of three case studies will be extended beyond CDA trials. A set of concise guidelines will be published with a strong focus on practical advice, in addition to continued work enabling a better understanding of the expected, increasing psychosocial contributions to successful and unsuccessful efforts at ATM innovation and change.