Lost and found in translation

One of the most valuable things of research trips is that it makes me reflect on my earlier work. And it makes that have I to sharpen and polish the narrative about the key findings of that work.   In my previous blog post I have shared the presentation that I gave at the International...

Sejong, Korea: the pleasures and perils of a planned city

And so I find myself in Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City. ‘Where?’, you may ask. For those who never heard of Sejong: it’s the de facto administrative capital city of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The USA has Washington DC, Australia has Canberra, Brazil has Brasília, and the Republic of Korea has Sejong. Or better,...

Urban sustainability: Australian cities are leading the world … for now

Originally posted on: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/australian-cities-please-keep-leading-the-world-in-governance-for-urban-sustainability-and-resilience,7199   Cities hold a significant potential to make a rapid change toward reduced resource consumption and waste production, greenhouse gasses included. Yet, an ongoing reliance on traditional building codes will however not result in the change needed. Innovative governance tools hold more potential. My new book highlights that Australian cities may lead the...

Governments are too conservative in using innovative governance tools

In comparing how governments exactly participate in innovative governance tools for urban sustainability and resilience I realised that their involvement is very conservative. This, I argue, leaves opportunities of such innovative governance tools unexplored. I discuss this insight in a recent paper (currently under review). The paper seeks to better understand why and how governments...

Governance for Urban Sustainability and Resilience: A brief update

The last couple of weeks have been truly exciting. Edward Elgar Publishing has been working really hard to get my book published in October this year. The title of the book will be: Governance for Urban Sustainability and Resilience: Responding to Climate Change and the Relevance of the Built Environment. I have already received very...

Why we should not expect too much from voluntary programmes

Over the last weeks I have analysed my data in further depth. That was pretty exciting to do because it was the first time that I could contrast all the theoretical expectations that underlie my research with the data collected over the last three years. It was further exciting to carry out these analyses because...

Benchmarking building environmental performance: What can we learn from LEED?

    In my last post I questioned whether Green Star has caused the green building revolution the GBCA claims it has. I conclude that the ‘revolution’ is very much contained to the high-end of the office market in Australia’s central business districts. In this contribution I will look at Green Star’s big sister in the...

Trends in governance for urban sustainability and resilience

Oops! More than a month without blog entries. But some good new since the last entry: based on a book-outline and two sample chapters Cambridge University Press has expressed their initial and conditional (etc, etc) interest in the manuscript. I will send them the full manuscript for review once done, which is hopefully by June...

Introducing…

So, last week I launched this blog. An opinion piece on urban sustainability and resilience for the Australian Conversation made for a good starter to jump into this new world. The opinion piece is doing better than expected. It now has attracted close to 2,000 readers, got some comments, has been tweeted about, and has...