Architecture, Built Environment and Planning (UoA 16)
Almost all of the research in this UoA is officially classified as world-leading or internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
The following academic units form the submission to UoA 16:
ARC and GURU are based at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. CRE is based at the School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development.
Research across the UoA demonstrates a number of strategic priorities, many of which are shared among the three groupings above. We have thus identified seven priorities for staff in the UoA as a whole:
planning, communities and governance
environmental futures
cultures and change
social justice, wellbeing and renewal
discourse, power and materiality
research by design
expertise and knowledge exchange
International impact
Our research in this area is making a positive impact on a global scale:
Studying surveillance in our cities
The following case studies demonstrate the impact of our research:
The work of staff at Newcastle University since the late 1980s has made a significant contribution to the development of strategic and local planning practice in the UK and globally. It has also shaped concepts and expectations of spatial planning and governance.
Based on a concerted approach to the theorisation, analysis and transfer of ideas through teaching and engagement with practice, the role of collaborative planning as a key element of urban governance, to bring different interests and communities together, continues to shape debates about the nature of development processes and their role in shaping place futures.
Research in information modelling at Newcastle University's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, supported by research grants and industry funding, led to the development of a software application (NBS Scheduler) which has become best-practice software in the UK construction industry. This product – developed and marketed by NBS (an arm of RIBA Enterprises) – has revolutionised the development of building schedules for refurbishment projects, and made a significant contribution to developing accurate building project information.
Scheduler has also underpinned the development of another product (NBS Create), which also leads its field through the creation of BIM-compliant building specifications.
Two decades of research by Professor Stephen Graham and colleagues in the Global Urban Research Unit at Newcastle University has significantly shaped public awareness and understanding of the links between technology, infrastructure and security within highly urbanised societies.
Research into the role of cities as key sites of security and war and the spread of ‘the surveillance society' are two interlocking foci that have generated impacts with global reach. Of particular significance are:
the publication of Cities Under Siege in 2010 and its impact on public debate nationally and internationally
a major study into surveillance in Britain that has impacted directly on the formation of national policy
The Crofting Reform Act 2010 and Scottish Government’s Policy Statement on Crofting 2008 implemented the main recommendations of the report of the Committee of Inquiry on the Future of Crofting, chaired by Professor Mark Shucksmith.
The Inquiry itself was an example of a co-production approach to the generation of knowledge for legal and policy application.
The report, in turn, was informed: by work of CRE researchers at Newcastle University in the 1990s and 2000s on 'neo-endogenous rural development'; by theories and studies of 'collaborative planning' developed by planning researchers in Newcastle University [SEE IMPX]; and by Shucksmith’s own work, often in part synthesising the two, from 2005.
This research informed a major overhaul of crofting legislation and governance aimed at reversing the decline of crofting as a social practice with major territorial effects.
Academics at Newcastle have been at the forefront of how research informs science policy and practice. This expertise was recognised in the appointment in 2003 of Professor Philip Lowe as Director, and Jeremy Phillipson as Assistant Director, of the £26m Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU), funded by ESRC, BBSRC, NERC, Defra and the Scottish Government.
RELU research has had significant and widespread impact on knowledge for science policy and strategy, has demonstrated the value of interdisciplinary research and helped catalyse a cultural change in outlook among key research funders and technical agencies in the UK.