The Liveable Cities Method: establishing the case for transformative change for a UK metro

Abstract

There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the UK and globally. While it can be argued that good progress is being made in thinking about the needs of future cities, meeting these needs and aspirations in practice poses major challenges of understanding and measurement (what is meant by these terms and how can progress towards their achievement be measured?), complexity (cities are complex systems of systems with many interacting parts) and resilience (will interventions made today be relevant and effective in the future?). The Liveable Cities research programme created a systematic decision-making method for improving urban sustainability and liveability: the Liveable Cities Method (LCM). The LCM prioritises four criteria – individual and societal well-being, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions as a proxy for environmental harm – in an interconnected framework and assesses the need for, and the resilience of, interventions designed to move cities towards improved sustainability and liveability. This paper illustrates the LCM through an example intervention made to the city of Birmingham, UK, and highlights how addressing sustainability and liveability in this way offers unique opportunities for the UK civil engineering profession to lead thinking among urban professionals.