Monthly focus

Sustainable cities

01 August 2019

More than half the world’s population lives in cities, making them focal points for cutting emissions and resource-use. Image credit - Unsplash/ Jurriaan Snikkers, licensed under Unsplash license

In August, Horizon takes a look at the quest to make Europe’s cities environmentally sustainable, while also ensuring a healthy and prosperous population. We speak to geographer Professor Harriet Bulkeley on why cities have such an important role in fighting climate change, what it means for a city to be sustainable and the big challenges that lie ahead. We look at the construction of zero-energy housing, homing in on the case of Nottingham, UK, and find out how scientists are putting nature back into the old Spanish capital of Valladolid. We also talk to the city officials breathing new life into historical buildings in Bologna, Italy, and learn how urban planners and architects are taking emotional feedback into account when designing new public spaces and homes.

Reusing historical buildings for new purposes - an urban planning approach known as adaptive reuse - is breathing new life into cities like Bologna. Image credit - Flickr/ Yuri Virovets, licensed under CC BY 2.0

science in society | environment

28 August 2019

Plants and sensors are being used to help Bologna locals rediscover their city

Lining rundown historic areas of cities with plant life and smart sensors and reusing old buildings for new purposes are helping to breathe new life into Europe’s decaying urban spaces.

Integrating nature into cities can provide citizens with urban cooling, cleaner air, regulated water supplies and flood protection. Image credit - Max Pixel, licensed under CC0

environment

19 August 2019

Mobile forests could help cities cope with climate change

Cities across Europe are trialling schemes such as roof gardens and ‘mobile forests’ to embed more nature into urban areas in an effort to protect their citizens from climate change events like heatwaves, floods and droughts.

Retrofitting of houses on a large scale needs to start now to meet 2050 net zero energy target.Image credit - REMOURBAN

energy | environment

12 August 2019

‘Reverse fridges’ and insulated walls – how to make a house carbon neutral

As the world moves towards a carbon neutral future, many different areas from industry to manufacturing are working to reduce their emissions. But scientists are beginning to look at a different area – houses – to work out if it’s possible to reduce emissions from Europe’s homes to zero by retrofitting on a mass scale. And the early signs are promising.

Neurologists, architects, artists, and epidemiologists are collaborating to design cities that could be used to improve well-being among older people. Image credit - Senior Guidance, licensed under CCby2.0

health | ict | industry

06 August 2019

Emotional response to city design could guide urban planning

Virtual reality and scenario-testing models are being built to help urban planners and architects get real-time feedback about the impact of their designs on mental health, particularly for older people.

Focusing on 'boring emissions' rather than 'sexy' ones could do more to tackle climate change, says Prof. Bulkeley. Image credit - Prof. Harriet Bulkeley

interview | environment | policy

01 August 2019

People in cities hold the key to ensuring a sustainable future

Cities have a critical role to play in fighting climate change but hard conversations lie ahead about the best way to achieve the transition to sustainability, according to Harriet Bulkeley, professor of geography at Durham University, UK.

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Image credit - Ricardo Gomez Angel/Unsplash

Construction: Building for the future

The construction industry has a heavy carbon footprint, accounting for some 40% of global emissions, and yet, as the world’s population grows, demand for housing and building is only soaring. We kick off 2021 by looking at how the construction sector can become greener and some of the radical solutions required. We speak to sustainable architecture expert Dr Catherine De Wolf about the need to design recyclable buildings and how that will require a fundamental restructure of the way the construction industry works. We look at nearly zero energy wooden homes and investigate whether this material can help us kick our concrete habit – concrete being the most used substance on Earth. We home in on techniques to make cement greener and piezoelectric to light up spaces with the addition of vegetable waste, and at how self-healing building materials can prolong the life of civil infrastructures. And we explore the promise of fungal architecture to see whether structures grown from fungus can green the way we build.

Image credit - ESA/Gaia/DPAC, licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Milky Way

In December, as the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission to create a precise 3-D map of a billion objects in the Milky Way releases its next tranche of data, we take an in-depth look at what we know – and what we don’t – about our home galaxy. We speak to astrophysicist Prof. Ralf Klessen about why it might enhance our understanding of the Milky Way to consider it as a constantly evolving ecosystem rather than studying different parts in an isolated way. We speak to scientists who are trying to image the centre of the galaxy, which is hidden from view behind giant dust and gas clouds, and we explore the latest research into how stars are formed. And finally, we find out what the galaxies surrounding the Milky Way can tell us about our home system.

Data on the impact of delaying the second dose of mRNA vaccines is still missing, says Mariola Fotin-Mleczek, chief technology officer of CureVac, which is in the late stages of developing a vaccine using this technology. Image credit - U.S. Secretary of Defense/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>

Five things you need to know about: Delaying the gap between Covid-19 vaccine doses

As the first coronavirus vaccines started to be rolled out at the end of a tumultuous 2020, UK officials unexpectedly endorsed stretching the gap between the first and second vaccine dose by up to three months – an approach also considered by other countries.

Better predictions of volcanic eruptions would help protect the lives of those living close to them. Image credit - Jorge Nava - Navart/Wikimedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Unravelling the when, where and how of volcanic eruptions

There are about 1,500 potentially active volcanoes worldwide and about 50 eruptions occur each year. But it’s still difficult to predict when and how these eruptions will happen or how they’ll unfold. Now, new insight into the physical processes inside volcanoes are giving scientists a better understanding of their behaviour, which could help protect the 1 billion people who live close to volcanoes.

Sustainable cities

Republish this content

Plants and sensors are being used to help Bologna locals rediscover their city

Mobile forests could help cities cope with climate change

‘Reverse fridges’ and insulated walls – how to make a house carbon neutral

Emotional response to city design could guide urban planning