PhD RESEARCH SEPT. 2000 - 2003
A PARTICIPATORY PROTOCOL FOR ECOLOGICALLY INFORMED DESIGN WITHIN RIVER CATCHMENTS
Researcher | |
Joanne Tippett of Holocene Design | |
Supervisors |
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John Handley, Groundwork Professsor of Land Reclamation Joe Ravetz, Director of Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology School of Planning and Landscape, University of Manchester, UK |
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Walter Menzies, Executive DIrector Mersey Basin Campaign |
The challenge of sustainable development, the interplay of environmental quality, economic vitality and social equity, lies in learning how to meet present human needs and improve quality of life without diminishing the Earth's capacity to provide for the needs of future generations. Engendering cross-sectoral partnerships and engaging community and business participation in planning is seen as playing a key role in sustainable development, exemplified by the emphasis on public participation in Local Agenda 21 and the cross-sectoral role of regional planning as exemplified by strategies such as Action for Sustainability (North West Regional Assembly 2000, Luz 2000). Researchers and practitioners are beginning to discuss the key role of design in creating a sustainable future (Hawken et al '99). Design is the creative process of developing new ideas and possibilities and integrating them within the context of a particular organisation, place and time. In the field of sustainable planning and management, there has been attention paid to increasing public participation in 'integrated assessment' and 'scenario building' (Darier et al '99), but there has been little attention paid to developing a practical protocol for applying principles of sustainability with a communicable and clear process of design. This research project seeks to remedy this deficiency within the context of integrated planning and design for a river catchment.
The overall aim of this research is to develop a design process based on ecologically informed principles that encourages participation in integrated catchment planning, with a view to developing a tool kit for sustainable development at the landscape scale.
This poses four interrelated research questions:
The methodological strategy is action-based research within a framework of interpretive grounded theory (Stringer, 1999, Strauss and Corbin '90, Hutchinson '98).
Results will be disseminated to an academic audience in the emerging field of sustainable planning and to a practitioner audience. Publication of articles in refereed academic journals, such as Urban Studies or Landscape and Urban Planning and presentations at conferences will inform the academic field. The findings will also be written up in reports in non-academic terms. These reports will form the basis for articles pitched at a practitioner audience, which would be published in journals such as Town and Country Planning or The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM).
This research will inform the debate on the role of landscape and natural resource planning in sustainable catchment management and the role of public participation in planning at a landscape scale. Models of best practice and transferable principles for successful catchment management will be developed and disseminated to practitioners and academics. The MBC envisages that following the research, the ‘DesignWays’ process may be developed into a transferable toolkit for international dissemination through a possible partnership between MBC, the researcher, Manchester University, the City of Brisbane and the private sector.
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