The Opportunities for Digital Conservation in Making Smarter Cities More Natural: The International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) World Building Congress 2019 - Constructing Smart Cities

Michael Grace, Alister Scott, David Proverbs, Jonathan Sadler, Nick Grayson

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

    Abstract

    Globally, the pace of urbanisation is increasing with 68 % of the world?s population projected to be urban by 2050. The quality of life for and engagement of these urban citizens is coming to the fore as a key issue for urban planners and decision makers as they pursue place-based initiatives to optimise city performance and sustainability credentials. Decision makers tackling multiple urban discourses such as the Smart City and Natural (or green or biophilic) Cities, which now heavily influence research policy and practice agendas, find themselves addressing tricky inter-disciplinary problems. Traditional sectoral silo approaches often hinder integration, reduce the quality of the natural environment and so often fail to deliver the multiple benefits expected by communities. Drawing on a desk based systematic review of the evidence base and a workshop involving key city stakeholders, we consider how digital conservation might contribute to new integrated approaches that consider people and nature together to contribute to the wider need to deliver public services in more innovative ways within cities that are both smart and natural. We suggest that added value is identified through the combination of new technologies and this potential new governance framework, to evidence and deliver the benefits of nature for urban citizens. This builds in citizen engagement for enhancing the natural environment by embedding and exploiting the potential of digital solutions. We comment on the strengths and weaknesses of how this new conceptual approach can improve integration of service delivery, whether it can also help overcome some of the problems and risks associated with digital conservation and if, by encouraging innovation through participatory governance, also help to inform the design a more inclusive smarter and natural city. Key words: smart, natural, digital conservation, green, co-production.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages2807-2817
    Number of pages11
    Publication statusPublished (VoR) - 13 Sept 2019

    Keywords

    • smart
    • natural
    • digital conservation
    • green
    • co-production.

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