• Governing urban retrofit;
• The dynamics of urban retrofit transitions;
• Modelling urban transitions and pathways; and
• Steering and navigating sustainable urban transitions.

Taking place in Cardiff on the 12th and 13th of February 2014, it will share findings from across the Retrofit 2050 project, engage with transitions research from across the world and identify priorities for future research.

For more information or to register a place please contact andersonc4@cardiff.ac.uk or huntm3@cardiff.ac.uk.

Although new zero-carbon buildings are an important part of any low carbon transition, but in existing cities it must occur alongside the transformation of the current building stock and infrastructure. Including contributions from experts in systems dynamics, governance, urban design, renewable energy technologies and water management, the book aims to illuminate some of the key changes and challenges that lay ahead as part of a transition to a sustainable built environment.

The book can be found here.

Alongside presentations by the project team, confirmed speakers include:

• Professor John Robinson, University of British Columbia
• Professor Simon Marvin, University of Durham
• Dr Andy Karvonen, University of Manchester
• Professor Chris Tweed, University of Cardiff
• Professor Andy Gouldson, University of Leeds
• Dr Sarah Wilkinson, University of Technology Sydney
• Professor Margaret Bell, University of Newcastle
• Dr Anna Mavrogianni, University College London
• Professor Katie Williams, University of the West of England
• Professor Derk Loorbach, DRIFT Rotterdam

For more information or to register please contact AndersonC4@cardiff.ac.uk or HuntM3@cardiff.ac.uk.

The article can be found here.

A book of abstracts for the day can be found here, while the presentations themselves can be found here.

The book will be available on January 27^th 2014. More information can be found here.

Building Research & Information is a leading peer-reviewed international journal that focuses on buildings and their supporting systems over their whole life. The scope of the journal embraces:

• the performance and impacts of buildings and building stocks
• the linkages between the built, natural, social and economic environments (sustainability, climate change, regeneration, resilience…)
• the changing demands and aspirations for design, development and property

The special issue, edited by Tim Dixon and Malcolm Eames, explores beyond current and near-market solutions to review and integrate knowledge and expectations of emerging and prospective technologies with the potential to underpin the long-term transition to a sustainable urban future. Looking to issues such as the future of suburbs, the energy footprint of water and social practices approaches, these papers broadly follow a ‘Foresight’ approach in scoping out future trends and drivers in key technologies in these sectors at national and city level through to 2050.

Free access is available until the end of 2013, and can be found here.

It aims to promote discussion about the sorts of changes that practitioners and professionals need to make to support new approaches and practices.

The University of Reading Retrofit team contributed to this report and the report references their input, based on the EPSRC Retrofit 2050 research.

The paper can be found here.