Under reforms to the English planning system, new powers are being granted to communities to draw up neighbourhood plans in an attempt to produce the 'Big Society'. These plans will take precedence over development plans drawn up at the level of the local authority and thus represent a highly significant potential shift of power to communities in determining how their neighbourhood should function. Crucially, however, the proposed Neighbourhood Forums and Neighbourhood Development Plans seem to ignore the fact that communities are fragmented and that individuals within them may not have a full appreciation of the range of issues facing different people within the same area. Indeed, different parts of the community may have very different conceptions of the geographical area that comprises their 'neighbourhood'. These local understandings may have little or no overlap with the formal legal boundaries that sit across neighbourhoods, making it difficult to interact with the structures of policymaking. The Localism and Connected Neighbourhood Planning project seeks to develop a technique to help disconnected communities come together to gather information and devise creative solutions to mutual problems to inform the neighbourhood planning process. A web-based interface will be built that can be accessed through smartphones to allow community members to gather geographical information about their neighbourhood. This information will appear in the form of online maps comprising boundaries, photos, text and ratings of different areas. Two case studies will be undertaken with neighbourhood groups in Birmingham and Bristol who will be loaned smartphones to gather data about their area. Workshops will be held with community members first to train them to use the smartphone interface and second to help them analyse the materials that they collect. This process will not only allow the community to produce robust information about their area, but in bringing different community members together, will facilitate a process of conversations within fragmented communities to find creative solutions to common problems. The interface will be developed in such a way as to be straightforward enough for communities to use with minimal input from external agencies. This is particularly important as, in the context of public sector funding cuts, third sector organisations that have previously helped communities engage with regeneration and redevelopment are having to scale back their activities. The project will have a longer-term impact through integration with an ongoing undergraduate placement module run in collaboration with Chamberlain Forum, a Birmingham-based umbrella organisation for community groups. Students from the University of Birmingham will be working with neighbourhood groups for the next 3-5 years and will be able to help different communities gather data about themselves to inform neighbourhood plans using the technique developed by this project. The project will work with MADE (Midlands Architecture the Designed Environment) and the Glass-House (a charity focussed on community-led design) to disseminate the technique within the urban design and community sectors. Members of the communities who have been using the technique will take part in a workshop with urban design professionals to talk about their experiences on the project and suggest how it could be further developed.

The aim of the Sustainable Eastside Project is to explore how sustainability is addressed in the regeneration decision-making process, and to assess the sustainability performance of completed development schemes in Birmingham Eastside against stated sustainability credentials and aspirations. The incorporation of sustainability into an urban regeneration program, such as Birmingham Eastside, appears best conceptualised as a complex decision-making process carried out by stakeholders who are embedded within the development process. The barriers to and enablers of sustainability (as identified in Phase I of this project) appear at various moments or locations within this complex. The timing and context of decisions are critical (examined in Phase II), and can cause path-dependency which then limits how sustainability features in final development plans. In Phases I & II, the research set in place a framework of cross-disciplinary knowledge and key partnerships; highlighted the importance of coherent integration of the three pillars of sustainability to enable the complexity of achieving urban sustainability to be sufficiently grappled with; gained access to key decision-making forums in Eastside; built strong links with key stakeholders in the area; and firmly integrated into the policy agenda for Eastside. In addition, researchers are working to establish a cross-cutting baseline dataset of developments in Eastside rigorously to measure change over time and the impact of particular decisions on the sustainability of the overall urban regeneration programme. In so doing the foundations for a zonal urban regeneration case study site are being established, augmented by the creation of a study facility, with library and hot desking, now available for researchers from SUE / IEP consortia, to study the application of research to practice. The emerging findings of Phase II have allowed researchers to develop a series of hypotheses about the timing of decisions for sustainability in a range of decision-making forums, and the extent to which path-dependency becomes problematic. In Phase III, a suite of innovative analytical tools will be employed to elucidate further the complexities and interactions of the key elements of the sustainability vision for Eastside. First, a Development Timeline Framework (DTF), a multi-disciplinary tool that makes explicit the path dependency of decisions toward achieving sustainability goals, and the conflicts and synergies between different sustainability objectives, will be used as the basis for further research. Second, a cross-cutting Sustainability Checklist (SC) applied to the DTF will allow each researcher to analyse the impact of timing and context of decisions for each sustainability element (e.g. biodiversity, public participation, space utilisation, local sourcing, and recycling). Third, an Industrial Ecology (IE) analysis will follow particular resources (e.g. water, aggregates) thus highlighting their interdependence, while a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) approach will enable assessment of the socio-cultural aspects of sustainability (not covered by the IE approach). This suite of tools underpins the delivery of the work package aims. This analysis will be undertaken on a case history site basis, using development sites within Eastside that are all currently 'live,' each site representing a different conceptualisation of sustainability. This provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the specific impact of early thinking about sustainability in the planning and design stages, and the impact of this timing and path-dependency on sustainability performance in the final built form.

The aim of the Sustainable Eastside Project is to explore how sustainability is addressed in the regeneration decision-making process, and to assess the sustainability performance of completed development schemes in Birmingham Eastside against stated sustainability credentials and aspirations. The incorporation of sustainability into an urban regeneration program, such as Birmingham Eastside, appears best conceptualised as a complex decision-making process carried out by stakeholders who are embedded within the development process. The barriers to and enablers of sustainability (as identified in Phase I of this project) appear at various moments or locations within this complex. The timing and context of decisions are critical (examined in Phase II), and can cause path-dependency which then limits how sustainability features in final development plans. In Phases I & II, the research set in place a framework of cross-disciplinary knowledge and key partnerships; highlighted the importance of coherent integration of the three pillars of sustainability to enable the complexity of achieving urban sustainability to be sufficiently grappled with; gained access to key decision-making forums in Eastside; built strong links with key stakeholders in the area; and firmly integrated into the policy agenda for Eastside. In addition, researchers are working to establish a cross-cutting baseline dataset of developments in Eastside rigorously to measure change over time and the impact of particular decisions on the sustainability of the overall urban regeneration programme. In so doing the foundations for a zonal urban regeneration case study site are being established, augmented by the creation of a study facility, with library and hot desking, now available for researchers from SUE / IEP consortia, to study the application of research to practice. The emerging findings of Phase II have allowed researchers to develop a series of hypotheses about the timing of decisions for sustainability in a range of decision-making forums, and the extent to which path-dependency becomes problematic. In Phase III, a suite of innovative analytical tools will be employed to elucidate further the complexities and interactions of the key elements of the sustainability vision for Eastside. First, a Development Timeline Framework (DTF), a multi-disciplinary tool that makes explicit the path dependency of decisions toward achieving sustainability goals, and the conflicts and synergies between different sustainability objectives, will be used as the basis for further research. Second, a cross-cutting Sustainability Checklist (SC) applied to the DTF will allow each researcher to analyse the impact of timing and context of decisions for each sustainability element (e.g. biodiversity, public participation, space utilisation, local sourcing, and recycling). Third, an Industrial Ecology (IE) analysis will follow particular resources (e.g. water, aggregates) thus highlighting their interdependence, while a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) approach will enable assessment of the socio-cultural aspects of sustainability (not covered by the IE approach). This suite of tools underpins the delivery of the work package aims. This analysis will be undertaken on a case history site basis, using development sites within Eastside that are all currently 'live,' each site representing a different conceptualisation of sustainability. This provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the specific impact of early thinking about sustainability in the planning and design stages, and the impact of this timing and path-dependency on sustainability performance in the final built form.

The aim of the Sustainable Eastside Project is to explore how sustainability is addressed in the regeneration decision-making process, and to assess the sustainability performance of completed development schemes in Birmingham Eastside against stated sustainability credentials and aspirations. The incorporation of sustainability into an urban regeneration program, such as Birmingham Eastside, appears best conceptualised as a complex decision-making process carried out by stakeholders who are embedded within the development process. The barriers to and enablers of sustainability (as identified in Phase I of this project) appear at various moments or locations within this complex. The timing and context of decisions are critical (examined in Phase II), and can cause path-dependency which then limits how sustainability features in final development plans. In Phases I & II, the research set in place a framework of cross-disciplinary knowledge and key partnerships; highlighted the importance of coherent integration of the three pillars of sustainability to enable the complexity of achieving urban sustainability to be sufficiently grappled with; gained access to key decision-making forums in Eastside; built strong links with key stakeholders in the area; and firmly integrated into the policy agenda for Eastside. In addition, researchers are working to establish a cross-cutting baseline dataset of developments in Eastside rigorously to measure change over time and the impact of particular decisions on the sustainability of the overall urban regeneration programme. In so doing the foundations for a zonal urban regeneration case study site are being established, augmented by the creation of a study facility, with library and hot desking, now available for researchers from SUE / IEP consortia, to study the application of research to practice. The emerging findings of Phase II have allowed researchers to develop a series of hypotheses about the timing of decisions for sustainability in a range of decision-making forums, and the extent to which path-dependency becomes problematic. In Phase III, a suite of innovative analytical tools will be employed to elucidate further the complexities and interactions of the key elements of the sustainability vision for Eastside. First, a Development Timeline Framework (DTF), a multi-disciplinary tool that makes explicit the path dependency of decisions toward achieving sustainability goals, and the conflicts and synergies between different sustainability objectives, will be used as the basis for further research. Second, a cross-cutting Sustainability Checklist (SC) applied to the DTF will allow each researcher to analyse the impact of timing and context of decisions for each sustainability element (e.g. biodiversity, public participation, space utilisation, local sourcing, and recycling). Third, an Industrial Ecology (IE) analysis will follow particular resources (e.g. water, aggregates) thus highlighting their interdependence, while a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) approach will enable assessment of the socio-cultural aspects of sustainability (not covered by the IE approach). This suite of tools underpins the delivery of the work package aims. This analysis will be undertaken on a case history site basis, using development sites within Eastside that are all currently 'live,' each site representing a different conceptualisation of sustainability. This provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the specific impact of early thinking about sustainability in the planning and design stages, and the impact of this timing and path-dependency on sustainability performance in the final built form.

Cultural intermediation is a process which connects different kinds of communities into the creative economy and wider society. It plays a critical role in raising aspirations, upskilling and building confidence, all of which are vital to allow people to engage with and benefit from one of the most dynamic sectors of the contemporary UK economy. Individual artists, professional networks, events, festivals, commissioning bodies, creative businesses, arts and cultural organisations both large and small can all play intermediary roles. Some of the most exciting opportunities for research in this area are occurring in the city regions. In part this is because of their size and multiplicity of cultural resources, but also because these areas have large concentrations of communities suffering multiple deprivation who are being left behind by the post-industrial creative economy. Investigations undertaken as part of developing this research project revealed that those individuals and organisations undertaking cultural intermediation are coming under significant pressure. Public sector funding cuts and a new agenda of localism are changing the relationship that intermediaries have with the state, requiring a reappraisal of their activities. The 'Big Society' agenda places an emphasis on community-led activities at the same time that the institutional support for capacity building in those communities through cultural intermediation is being squeezed. The creative sector is itself highly fragmented with weak connections between different sectors, different communities and policy processes. So-called 'hard-to-reach' communities remain disconnected, suffering multiple deprivation, social disenfranchisement and exclusion. Acknowledging the importance of cultural intermediation, the research asks to what extent these processes meet the needs of urban communities in the 21st century and how they might operate more effectively. The aim of the research is to discover how the value of cultural intermediation can be captured and how this activity can be enhanced to create more effective connection between communities and the creative economy. The objectives of the research are to: create new ways of measuring value; analyse the historic development of cultural intermediation to inform current practice; examine how intermediation fits within the existing policy landscape and the governance of relations between the different actors; explore the effectiveness of intermediation activity from a community perspective; design new forms of intermediation through a series of practice-based interventions; and reflect on the process of working across and between disciplines and sectors in order to enhance practice. The research has a number of key applications and wider benefits. In providing a means to capture the value of intermediation, policy makers and practitioners will be able to foster better practice. This is of particular importance given the shifts in the governance and funding landscape, particularly within the public sector. The historical material, will provide a crucial evidence base situating understandings of intermediation, providing lessons to current practitioners. Those creative intermediaries directly involved in the interventions will receive training in research methods in order to analyse and improve their own practice. A subsequent 'how-to' research guide will disseminate these lessons more widely. Academically the research will make a major contribution to debates on: creativity and valuation; the historical evolution of the creative economy; governance and localism; practice-based methods; interdisciplinarity and epistemic communities; and the role of culture in connecting communities.