Cities provide many functions. They support our economy, society in general and the individual. But with a growing population, most of whom will live in cities, space is becoming an ever-increasing concern. How we live in cities – from the way we heat our houses or use water to how we choose to travel – impacts on the environment in which we live and our quality of life: air quality, congestion, stress levels

Birmingham Heroes: Professor Chris Rogers talks about sustainable cities

Birmingham Heroes: Dr Nicole Metje talks about sustainable cities

Limitations

Worries about budgets and space constraints, pollution and climate change are growing. We are acutely aware of the strain placed on our infrastructure; we can readily see – and therefore monitor – what’s going on at the surface. We cannot, however, easily see what lies beneath our roads and streets. We know it is a vast space and suspect that we don’t currently use it effectively. However, as we cannot see through it or know for certain what lies in it, we cannot fully utilise this space and move some of our cities’ functions below ground to free up the surface to create a better environment for us all to live in.

The future

Given that the majority of people live in cities and these numbers are rising, it is important that we create spaces where people want to live in and are able to thrive – the mix of built and natural environments in which we live, work and play. There is, therefore, a need to move to sustainable, resilient and liveable future cities in which we use space and resources wisely, and to achieve this we need to start doing things differently. Applying engineering ingenuity to the more extensive use of underground space could be really important for us in the future: we would be able to free up the surface to allow space for green corridors for walking and cycling, or relaxation by communing with nature, while utilising its ‘built-in’ resources such as groundwater, heat and minerals. Burying some of our cities’ functions could therefore increase our quality of life.

Our impact

At the University of Birmingham, we are researching:

The sustainability of cities in relation to the economy, society and the environment, and bringing a balance between them all.
The resilience of our cities. We are assessing how we continue to function in the face of change, whether incremental or radical.
How combining the principles of sustainability and resilience can result in our cities becoming more liveable. We are considering individual and societal well-being alongside planetary well-being, understanding how cities can move forward to the future in a way that becomes sustainable, resilient, smart, and liveable.
Engineering for societies: we are putting infrastructure systems in place that support civilised life. We are incorporating the long-term future into our thinking and engineering designs so that our creations will function effectively into the far future – for many decades and even up to hundreds of years.
How we might generate different scenarios to help in this endeavour – from the extreme to the aspirational – and build all of this into the engineering systems that we’re putting into place today. This ensures that they are not only fit for purpose today but they’re fit for purpose way into the far future no matter how the future changes.
How to create a world-leading National Buried Infrastructure Facility, a ‘one of its kind’ facility. It will support research, education and training in buried infrastructure-ground interaction, soil stabilisation and improvement, geophysical sensing, pipeline detection and condition assessment, water leak detection, and tunnelling and trenchless technologies, to name but a few of its possibilities. This facility will allow our academics to conduct research at near full scale, or at full scale, on buried infrastructure systems. It will allow us to understand better how we can produce more effective and resilient infrastructures.
How to better understand our existing infrastructures, so that we can maintain and adapt them for future needs, and new infrastructure systems that will enable society to use and manage our resources better.
How to improve our transport systems. For example, we are researching how we might move towards a greater dependence on non-motorised modes of transport as a means of creating less polluted, better functioning cities.
More effective gravity sensors to look deeper into the underground to reduce the risks to excavations, to understand what is buried and what condition it is in, and to know what areas we can use more safely in the future. Using the National Buried Infrastructure Facility, we are able to trial our sensors and simulate real-world applications at a real scale.
The development of a suite of geophysical sensors to look through the ground and understand its function, which will enable us to utilise this space in a sustainable and resilient way in the future.
Novel modelling techniques to enable us to consider the impact of extreme weather on our infrastructure and cities.

Birmingham Heroes: Professor Mile Tight talks about sustainable cities

Birmingham Heroes: Professor David Chapman talks about sustainable cities

How you can help?

We encourage industry, businesses or other city stakeholders to work with us to develop cities for the future. In particular we are interested to hear from you if you want to test new methods/techniques/materials for use in underground space at near full-scale in our new laboratory under controlled conditions or discuss challenges you have faced when excavating or constructing below the ground surface so we can develop solutions. Or let us know if you have ideas on how to design our streets and make city living greener, healthier, and more sustainable now and into the future.

UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities

UKCRIC

Assessing the Underworld

Liveable Cities

Quantum Technology Hub

Find out more

Mapping the Underworld ➤
i-BUILD ➤
Environmental Engineering ➤
Mapping the Underworld video ➤
Gravity Sensors video ➤
Streetworks for the 21st Century video ➤
Streetworks and Liveable Cities ➤
Learn about our other Birmingham Heroes ➤

Sustainable Cities

Limitations

The future

Professor Chris Rogers

Dr Nicole Metje

Professor Miles Tight

Professor David Chapman