Abstract

One of the key drivers of the EPSRC Sue programme is to improve the quality of life of UK citizens. The Sue-mot project, an interdisciplinary consortia of Loughborough University, University of Dundee, Glasgow Caledonian and St. Andrew’s university aimed to develop metrics, models and toolkits to assess holistic sustainability of urban development to achieve such an end. The Loughborough team had been mainly investigating the social sustainability issues within this project specifically on Stakeholder involvement, Barriers and incentives and Social capital. This work surfaced the current gaps in addressing social sustainability issues in urban development, specifically the lack of comprehensive studies on the interaction of socio-cultural systems with delivery of infrastructure and services, at all scales. This is perhaps reflected in the absence of metrics and tools to address the related issues. Our involvement with CABE, BRE and Leicester city council and Braunstone NDC brought to light how such knowledge gaps have affected the needs of the industry. Our continuing work focuses on identifying and addressing the grand challenges associated with integration and connectivity across different spatial and temporal scales within the urban environment to deliver sustainability’ that reiterates the challenge to integrate social systems and services at right scales apparent from our previous work.