Retrofitting Cities: Priorities, Governance and Experimentation

Developing an up-to-date critical framework for analysing urban retrofit, this is the first book to examine urban re-engineering for sustainability in a socio-technical context. Retrofitting Cities examines why retrofit is emerging as an important strategic issue for urban authorities and untangles the mix of economic, competitive, ecological and social drivers that influence any transition towards a more sustainable urban environment.

Retrofitting Cities comparatively explores how urban scale retrofitting can be conceptualised as a socio-technical transition; to critically compare and contrast different national styles of response in cities of the north and global south; and, to develop new research and policy agendas on future development of progressive retrofitting. Bringing together a group of researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds that reflect the complexity of the research challenge, Retrofitting cities looks across different infrastructures and types of built environment, dealing with diverse urban contexts and examining formal as well as community responses. This is a uniquely practical book for urban planning and policy professionals as well as for researchers in urban studies and urban design.

Mike Hodson joined Manchester University, UK, as Research Fellow in April 2014. He is based jointly in the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) and the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), and he primarily works on a comparative EU Framework 7 project, PATHWAYS, assessing transition pathways across electricity, mobility, land-use and agro-food sectors, comparatively across national contexts. Mike was previously Senior Research Fellow at Salford University, where he spent a decade in the Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF) working in the area of urban and regional governance and transitions. He has published and presented widely on this research agenda. His developing research interests are at the interface of systemic transitions and territorial transitions.

Simon Marvin is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Durham University, UK. His research interests focus on the changing relations between cities and infrastructure networks. To date, he has played major roles within urban research towards addressing important questions surrounding telecommunications, infrastructure and mobility, sustainability, smart meters, interdisciplinary urban research, and, most recently, cities, systemic transitions, climate change, ecological security and smart cities.