Richard Laing (RGU Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment) and David Gray (School of Creative & Cultural Business) explore in this webinar ways in which our towns and cities will need to transform in order to meet the challenges and aspirations of COP26.
This transformation needs to go well beyond substitution of fossil fuel-based and high carbon emitting technologies with those using renewable energy.
- How we live and work has been shown during 2020 and 2021 to be less reliant on commuting than our society had perhaps imagined was the case. Therefore, part of a transition to low emitting vehicles must also consider how we can also use motorised vehicles less.
- The lowest emitting form of travel is walking. We need to design neighbourhoods where people are able to live, work, go to school, shop and socialise without having to drive.
- At the moment, just over 90% of Scotland’s electricity is produced using renewable energy sources. This will need to increase in terms of overall scale to meet new demand, but we should not underestimate the benefits of wide use of electric (and hydrogen) vehicles in terms of air and sound quality.
- A human scale, walkable and unpolluted (in terms of air and unwanted noise) urban environment can have significant benefits for public health. This, in turn, has positive implications for the NHS.
What the audience might gain
- An overview of the challenge
- Tangible examples of applied solutions from elsewhere
- Examples of what our cities (and Aberdeen in particular) are already doing
- Ways to engage and work with the community
- What Aberdeen could do